Fake news has not merely become a business but a designation. It is a way of silencing dissent, and questioning accounts. For the authoritarian, this is not merely a delight, but a necessity. News accounts are deemed the stuff and dreams of the inventive, and those inventors deserve punishment. Denial becomes a state of mind, and a very convinced one[Read More…]
The Proposed expansion of the Sterlite copper smelting plant in Tamil Nadu has renewed protests among the people of Tuticorin district. Protests are continuing for over 45 days, till date in the district demanding an immediate closure of the copper plant. On March 24, 2018, thousands of people marched against the decision to expand the plant which has been causing[Read More…]
The United States is in a major upheaval. Trump’s cabinet shake up moves the country into an alarming direction. From the nomination of torturer Gina Haspel as a head of the Central Intelligence Agency to Mike Pompeo, the former CIA Director and a vocal opponent of nuclear deal with Iran as a new secretary of state, his selection exposes the White House’s dangerous[Read More…]
By now the West – the US, Canada, Australia and the super-puppets of Europe, overall more than 25 countries – has expelled more than 130 Russian diplomats. All as punishment for Russia’s alleged nerve gas poisoning of a former Russian / MI6 double-agent, Sergei Skripal (66) and his daughter Yulia (33), who was visiting her father from Moscow. Sergei Skripal[Read More…]
Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet and professor of Creative Writing at Texas State. Her father was Palestinian and a refugee journalist. In one of her poems after 9/11, entitled “Blood,” she writes: I call my father, we talk around the news. It is too much for him, neither of his two languages can reach it. I drive into[Read More…]
“The existent, the body, disappears. We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks….Nobodies and no Necessity – for Necessity is the condition of the existent. It is what makes reality real.” – John Berger, “Steps Toward a Small Theory of the Visible” “The real body. To be real, it must be bodily; and to be a[Read More…]
The more ancient the abuse, the more sacred it is.” — Voltaire I’m not a fan of Voltaire’s, but I quote him here to underscore that longstanding practices don’t justify themselves by virtue of their continuing embrace by society. What’s popular in this world is quite often a sign of bad health. That said, I believe there are several paths in[Read More…]
You’ll notice that I end each paragraph in this piece with a question or two. It’s the last one, though, that’s crucially important. Will you read it twice for me? I’ve spoken to a number of educators in California about UCLA doing Big Pharma’s bidding in India this week… to no avail. Administrators, professors, teachers of the lower grades et alia. And[Read More…]
Speech and hearing impaired have difficulty in communicating to the people. They use hands and other gestures. Their communication through ‘ sign language’ is a common way of expression of ideas. In an effort to remove communication bottlenecks, the country’s first of its kind sign language Dictionary with around 3,000 Hindi and English words has been released all over[Read More…]
As there are multiple narratives about the Partition of 1947, so are there multiple theories about the emergence of Bangladesh. One school of thought tells us there was nothing inevitable about the emergence of Bangladesh; its birth could be averted had the main actors, Bhutto, Yahya, Mujib and some others behaved differently. The other narrative highlights the fundamental differences[Read More…]
Reports emerged on Wednesday that another Ahwazi Arab prisoner in Iran has died under torture in a regime prison, with horrific video footage showing marks left by torture all over his body after it was returned to his family. Adding insult to injury, prison personnel warned the dead man’s family that they should not treat their loved one as a[Read More…]
The present Indian state is treating JNU as an occupied territory. State-sponsored violence and molestation against the students call for a #metoo moment against the state. Co-Written by Amrita Datta and Arani Basu A piece of land with people – young and old, vibrant, thinking beings. Police posts in and around the land. Random police raids of homes of these[Read More…]
In a momentous announcement at an event in Ohio on Thursday, Donald Trump said, “We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS. We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.” What lends credence to the statement that the Trump administration will soon be pulling 2,000 US troops out of Syria –[Read More…]
Being a netizen, to use that popular term of sociological derivation, can be a difficult business. It presumes digital engagement, often of the sharper sort. To become a fully-fledged member of such citizenry, however, presumes access, a degree of Internet speed and appropriate platforms. Absent those, then different forms of activism must be sought. Governments and authorities the world over[Read More…]
On 26 March 2018 Julian Assange tweeted out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London the following correct comparison: “In 1940 the elected president of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, was captured by the Gestapo, at the request of Spain, delivered to them and executed. Today, German police have arrested the elected president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, at the request of Spain, to[Read More…]
The neoliberal economy has changed the manner in which labour, love and relationshipshave been recognized,appreciated and structured in a society. The economic crisis which has cropped up in recent years, where the employment is shrinking, the economy is deteriorating, the common people are left with little options to earn their livelihoods and the state is rolling back from its[Read More…]
Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has won re-election as Egypt’s president, according to preliminary results reported by a number of state media outlets, showing el-Sisi winning 92 percent of the vote. The official MENA news agency and the state-owned newspapers al-Ahram and Akhbar el-Youm said on Thursday that 23 million out of the 60 million registered voters – 40[Read More…]
“Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval, and that has led to consumer craziness with high tech gadgetry purchases, excessive time permitted in isolated narcissism, and many other ills. Parents need to grow up.” — Richard Martin Oxman The farther back you look, the faster kids grew up.[Read More…]
The election of Donald Trump prompted a number of people, including historians to make comparisons of Trump’s cult of personality with various historical figures from Benito Mussolini to Roman Emperor Caligula (37-41 A.D.) While such comparison’s make for entertaining reading, they place all emphasis on the individual rather than the system that permitted the individual to rise to power. Hardly[Read More…]
Déjà vu? Are we correct the feeling of reliving the current geopolitical, economic and military situation being experienced today has already been experienced in the past century? Wars just don’t happen suddenly. Wars are planned. Enemies are studied- physiologically- for their strengths and weaknesses, geographical terrains are observed and enemy strengths and positions are assessed. Wars also require resources.[Read More…]
![My great grandfather’s house (Ismail Najjar) in upper Lifta, now inhabited by Jews [Photo: Rima Najjar]](https://cdn.countercurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/grandfather-house-200x150.jpg "Will the Jews whom Israel is to house on the ruins of Umm al-Hiran feel any shame or complicity? 41")
If you have never heard of Umm al-Hiran, don’t blame yourself. What’s happening there is a well-kept secret in the international media, along with Israel’s other ongoing crimes. But within Israel, Umm al-Hiran (and other forced evictions and ethnic-cleansing projects taking place today in the Naqab, the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem and elsewhere) is run-of-the-mill news coated with hasbara that doesn’t flinch even at an image[Read More…]
The ‘deal of the century’ is a farce. We suspected that, of course, but, upon his return from Washington, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu revealed in more detail why the long-anticipated plan of the administration of US President Donald Trump has no basis in reality. Netanyahu told his cabinet that there are “no concrete details” to report on the US peace plan.[Read More…]
He slept as a truck driver with vertigo, in the Mungling lodge midday buffet of daal, bhat, tarkari and naked women, all left on their own. Dreamt he was asending to the heaven of prosperity on an escalator made out of her thighs holding The World Bank’s “Annual World Development Report” in his hand. Bhuwan Thapaliya was born in Kathmandu,[Read More…]
When first arriving in Kurdistan / Iraq in 2017; colleagues, students, friends and neighbors, and others averred pessimistically that the Islamic State (IS) wouldn’t go anywhere soon. Common retorts to my inquiries were “America wants the IS in Iraq,” “there is no more Iraq,” “there will never be peace in Iraq” were enervating and discouraging. Now in 2018, the Islamic[Read More…]
I find two things that catch my eye this morning. One is an article in the Moscow Times, a liberal English language newspaper written for Moscow expats, the other, a website sent to me by my friend, Alexey Vasilyev. They are of interest to me because they deal with what might be called the “Putin Generation” – those young[Read More…]
The ‘Ram’ of worship and devotion signified by ‘Ram Ram’ gives way to Ram of hatred depicted by ‘Jai Shri Ram’ on Rama Navami. Depicting just a trailer of ‘Acche Din’, it shows the direction of the real movie of ‘New India’. The raw material of festivals of religious nature gets converted into finished manufactured products of communal violence. Ram[Read More…]
We strongly condemn the demolition of the statue of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad at Kakinara in North 24 Pargana (West Bengal) on 27 Mar 2018 by the Bharatiya Janata Party cadres as reported by media including the Citizens Bureau. Maulana Azad was a renowned freedom fighter, India’s first Union Education Minister and one of the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia,[Read More…]
Co-Written by Amit Kumar & Skand Priya Ever since the MHRD made its intentions clear to grant autonomous status to institutions of higher education as a result of which 60 institutions have already been granted autonomy including 5 central universities and 21 state universities, teachers’ movement at University of Delhi has become extremely charged and committed in its fight to[Read More…]
The Kashmiri word “Pheran” is contraction of the Persian word “pairahan” which literally means garment & which clearly shows its origin to the time of Mughal rulers who had Persian descent; notwithstanding, some Kashmiri Pandits in recent times have tried to connect its origin to the Greek word “Apron” & even the Tajik word “Peraband. But both these words are[Read More…]
(Even though digitisation of various services has helped a lot yet it has adversely affected personal privacy) The Facebook/Analytica scam has shaken the digital world. There are allegations about the use of personal data during last US elections. According to the expose the information about people is being collected, stored and processed to produce psychographic profiles that can judge peoples’[Read More…]
“In general, the rural moneylender as a species has proved surprisingly resilient, even in countries such as India and Indonesia where it has been a declared objective of state intervention in financial markets to suppress him.” — Hulme and Mosley, Finance Against Poverty A sense of deep despair runs through the lives of farmers in India. They have lost[Read More…]
Back in May 2017, just prior to the British general election, I wrote a piece arguing that a victory for Theresa May would see Britain dragged further towards war with Russia. While Britain is militarily weak compared to Russia, the point was that May would continue to do the bidding of Washington by demonising that country and engaging in provocative[Read More…]
It is not enough for us to sign a petition to suggest Chandrashekhar Azad ‘Ravan’ to be released from prison. We must write essays so as to rally and encourage the people rejecting his imprisonment to protest in masse. Whenever I think about him, I start to get tears in my eyes. It is because I can’t imagine losing another[Read More…]
Facebook has blocked Punjab-based Suhi Sahver, a website that covers alternative politics, allegedly under pressure from supporters of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). Its publisher and editor, Shiv Inder Singh, is a critic of religious fanaticism and is known for his progressive and secular views. He earlier used to give daily updates to a Vancouver-based Punjabi radio[Read More…]
The coordinated mass expulsion of Russian diplomats announced Tuesday by Washington, 14 European Union countries, Ukraine and Canada over allegations of Moscow’s responsibility for the March 4 poisoning of former Russian spy and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the southern English city of Salisbury marks a major escalation of the political and military threats against Russia,[Read More…]
“It’s really quite incredible how, at nearly every turn the New Zealand government has managed to mess up the legal case against Kim Dotcom.” Mike Masnick, Techdirt, Mar 26, 2018 Put it down to his tigerish perseverance, or sheer faith in those powers of endurance, but Kim Dotcom’s victory before New Zealand’s Human Rights Tribunal had a stirring ring[Read More…]
One voice from the wilderness is too weak to be listened to. My voice, for example, is not clear enough, strong enough, loud enough or adequately established so as to be heard. How can any person in a position of influence among our most wealthy and powerful leaders possibly be expected to receive a ‘best available science message’ until we[Read More…]
Fake news is a sort of propaganda intended to mislead the audience; a kind of yellow journalism. Propaganda or fake news is not a new thing in the digital age. Power struggle between Octavian and Anthony wasaccompanied with the propaganda; Maulavi Muhammad Baqar was martyred for his spirited struggle against the British propaganda. Even, peeping in tothe religious echelons, we[Read More…]
If “the brain is the screen, as Deleuze would have us believe, Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s third venture, S Durga “both expresses and induces thought, as images at once move us and move in us.” The brain/screen assemblage is, for Deleuze, an event of images in motion, which is to say both that we think in moving images and that moving[Read More…]
“You can’t reduce violence in the U.S. without being proactive about violence abroad. Not just the continuing catastrophes we bring down on others, but the violence that others inflict on one another… like what some educators in France did to their students on March 24th this year.” — Richard Martin Oxman “Doesn’t it seem strange to anyone that all of those[Read More…]
This image shows a US Predator drone firing a missile in Yemen. It is admirable and courageous that many students and others in the USA and around the world want to keep guns out of schools, out of robberies at stores and in home invasions, and out of streets where shootouts often lead to death of innocent civilians, including babies,[Read More…]
Life in Russia, for the average person, is lived “close to the bone.” Closer and closer to the bone as the economy suffers under the relentless attacks of the capitalist world. Well, there is no profundity in that statement I think to myself. On the one hand, what is true of Russia is true of the whole world, The vast[Read More…]
Following are three political incidents/developments from two matured bourgeois democracies. Alleged bribe Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, isn’t shameful for all the election bribery he allegedly accepted gladly from a foreign “friend”, who was murdered later, and in this murder ploy, the French leader was an aggressive participant. A stark show of bourgeois politics with “friendship”! The interventionist is[Read More…]
In 2015, one Deepak Sharma a RTI activist from Jammu filed an application with General Administration Department/GAD of the State Government seeking details about who had conferred sobriquet of “Shere e Kashmir” on Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah / SMA. GAD in reply said that there was not any official record conferring or confirming that the sobriquet was ever officially bestowed upon[Read More…]
When it comes to plundering of public spaces for the benefit the builder lobby, there is not much to choose in Mahrashtra between the Shiv Sena-BJP combine or the Congress parties. In the year 2005 during the Congress rule, Ganesh Naik, environment and forest minister, openly talked of the need to sell public spaces. That these were very scarce in[Read More…]
India’s education sector is one of the largest sunrise sectors in the economic and social development of the country. With more than 1.5 million schools — 1.1 million of them run by the Government — and more than 250 million student enrollments, the country’s K-12 school system is among the largest and most complex in the world. Between 2010-11 and[Read More…]
(The holding of the 64th Convention and Exhibition by the Travel Agents Association of India in Srinagar is expected to send positive signals for Kashmir in different travel markets) After thirty years, the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) is holding its 64th Annual Convention in Srinagar. This is the apex body of Travel Agents throughout India and holding of[Read More…]
It has given those in a permanent state of jitters greater reason to jump off the cliff to a certain fate, but John Bolton’s elevation to President Donald J. Trump’s inner circle is predictable and, patterns of employment permitting, brief. It is easy to see each and every appointment of the current president as manically dangerous, shading those of his[Read More…]
‘Age is a question of mind over matter.If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter’.If we have the passion to work for the betterment of the society,it hardly matters.Ahmed Ali,a 82-year-old rickshaw puller from Assam’s Karimganj, is a proud man as he has been the man behind building nine schools for the poor children in his area. Ali had to drop[Read More…]
Some days back, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, decided to step aside and passed on the baton of the Tahreek Hurriyat Jammu and Kashmir to his second in command Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai. On the expected lines, the decision taken at a Shoora meeting of the Tahreek Hurriyat made it to headlines in the newspapers across the sub-continent. The decision caused[Read More…]
We do not know who tried to kill former UK-Russia double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, assertedly by a nerve agent, Novichok, and the UK refuses to supply Russia with a sample of the agent for analysis. However with stunning hypocrisy and mendacity the UK, US, Australia and the US-allied EU have been quick with confected outrage[Read More…]
If Israel were to become a majority Muslim Arab state, we can expect such a unitary bi-national (since the minority of Jews will remain substantial) state to be secular and democratic. There is no reason to expect otherwise, especially as the existing Jewish settler-colonial regime brought along with it from Europe democratic ideals to Palestine. These ideals manifest themselves in[Read More…]
Sonoma County, Northern California: Over a million students and allies walked out of classes in the U.S., from Maine to Hawaii, and elsewhere in the world on March 14. Ten days later, March 24, hundreds of thousands of defiant marchers flooded the streets in Washington, D.C., and at more than 800 places on every continent except Antarctica. What might they[Read More…]
The Maldives’ ambassador to China Mohamed Faisal says that the country would push ahead with Chinese projects and seek more investment from the country, regardless of concerns raised by regional power India. His statement to South China Morning Post came after Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen lifted a state of emergency on Thursday March 22 after 45 days. Rivalry between China[Read More…]
Three things have occurred simultaneously to bring joy to the hearts of the Babushki of Perovo on this Sunday morning: the sun is shining brilliantly, the fierce cold of the past months has subsided, and the paths are clean enough to walk. We emerge from our apartments to walk and sit in the sun in Perovski Park. My bones and[Read More…]
Unlike corporations that sell to consumers, Lockheed Martin and the other top contractors to the U.S. Government are highly if not totally dependent upon sales to governments, for their profits, especially sales to their own government, which they control — they control their home market, which is the U.S. Government, and they use it to sell to its allied governments,[Read More…]
Echoes of Caryl Chessman have been present at every death penalty and execution in the United States since he was delivered to the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison on May 2, 1960. If his defiant loner’s death was not the very embodiment of arbitrary, cruel, and unusual punishment, then that claim can scarcely be made for any American subsequently[Read More…]
“There was a point at which Jackie Robinson refused to ‘respect’ the flag at ball games.” — James Baldwin Demonstrators protesting the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man blocked entrances to Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California Thursday night amid chants of “black lives matter,” prompting police to shut down admission to the Sacramento Kings’ National Basketball Association[Read More…]
“I know that you’re job-hunting at present and/or looking to volunteer with non-profits. If your article gets posted, it’ll stand to undermine your chances of being brought on board in most quarters, Richard. You’re taking a risk in submitting your piece.” — One of the author’s colleagues “Why don’t you found a secular educational institution which focuses on your passion, Richard?[Read More…]
Pragatisheel Mahila Sangathan, Delhi sent a team to Kathua(Jammu region of J&K state) to Study the situation which has developed after the rape and murder of a little 8 years old girl in Kathua District of Jammu and Kashmir. P.M.s was particularly astonished to read the news of gran organisation called Hindu Ekta Manch coming into existencein favour of[Read More…]
We the following writers, film makers, artists, students, academics and social movements express our deep concern over the continued, unjust imprisonment of Dalit activist and Bhim Army leader Chandrashekhar Azad ‘Ravan’ by the Uttar Pradesh government. Azad is in prison since June 2017, put away as a threat to ‘national security’ for championing the cause of India’s Dalits – a[Read More…]
In a previous piece in Countercurrents I once again lambasted Churchill, this time in the context of the recent movie The Darkest Hour and the Academy Award for the “Churchillian” Gary Oldman. I bristled then as I do now that another hagiographical treatment was gifted to the notorious Imperialist and Racist. I bristled too at other things of which the[Read More…]
An Israeli military court has approved a plea deal which will see Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi serve an eight-month prison sentence on top of a fine of nearly $1,500. Ahed, who turned 17 in January, was charged with assaulting soldiers and incitement after a video recorded by her mother Nariman circulated, showing Ahed and her cousin Nour slapping and shoving two heavily armed Israeli soldiers on 15 December. Ahed was arrested in the middle of[Read More…]
There was an audacity about it, carried out with amateurish callowness. As it turned out Australian batsman Cameron Bancroft, besieged and vulnerable, had been egged on by Australian cricket captain Steve Smith and the Australian leadership to do the insufferable: tamper with the ball. Before the remorseless eagle eyes of modern cameras, Bancroft, in the third Test against South Africa[Read More…]
March 20 went by nearly unnoticed. It was the 15th anniversary of the Iraq war. Exactly one week earlier seven marines lost their lives in western Iraq in what was reported as a helicopter crash. The war has not ended. The flattening of cities to recapture them from ISIS also flattens civilians. How many dead? Who knows? Or, for that[Read More…]
I live in a great state of the USA. I do not take this situation for granted since the fight for the condition in which I live is long-standing and ongoing. In short, we have to be ever vigilant to protect our rights and favorable conditions. It is considered the best state in the union — the best out of[Read More…]
Frontline has done a series on Vladimir Putin, called The Putin Files. They are available on Youtube and are well worth the watch. In them, a variety of “experts on Putin”, ranging from people who worked with him in Russia, such asGlebPavlovsky (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp84TerPgyI&t=4487s) who helped him with the PR for his first campaign for president, through John Bannon, former head[Read More…]
On March 21, 2018 Kosovo’s opposition used tear gas to disrupt a parliament vote on a border demarcation deal with Montenegro. Lawmakers had to be evacuated from the Assembly building after the opposition Self-Determination Movement party used tear gas in the hall where the vote was due to start. The 120-seat parliament was expected to vote, with two-thirds required to[Read More…]
Muslims are second largest religious community after Hindus in India,accounting about fifteen percent of the total population. As a Muslim community they are second only to Indonesia. They are present in every region of India, in thestate of Jammu and Kashmir, West Bengal, Asam and in Kerala they are substantial in number. But when viewed as per representation in different[Read More…]
Sana was the master idol maker of a large community of Bedouins who inhabited & dotted along the long stretch of oasis in the Arabian Desert. The Bedouins didn’t have cohesiveness, centrality & uniformity in their worshiping practices of any particular God or God’s image. Strong pre-historic roots of animism running through their entire cultural edifice had made them venerate[Read More…]
The students of the public school systems in India are lagging massively behind in terms of learning outcomes according to the National Achievement Survey (NAS), conducted by National Council for Education and Research (NCERT). The numbers are especially stark in Mathematics with national averages of 64%, 54% and 42% at Class 3rd, 5th and 8th levels according to an Indian[Read More…]
New Delhi, March 24 : Keezhattoor Vayalakilikal’s Struggle has been going for more than a year now to protect their Paddy fields and precious drinking water, in a state where fertile land is fast declining due to rapid urbanization and infrastructure development. They have been protesting acquisition of fertile paddy fields for National Highway 66. The struggle has remained[Read More…]
A species which has invented combustion, electromagnetic radiation and nuclear energy orders of magnitude more powerful than its own physical potential, needs to be perfectly wise and in control lest it is overwhelmed by these powers. As tipping points in the Earth’s climate amplify, including hurricanes, snow storms and wildfires, it appears to be beyond human power to contemplate[Read More…]
The hacking community, like poets, tend to be irritable tribesmen and women. Their modus operandi functions on the stab, the enthusiastic penetration of insecure computer systems and mockery. Their role is as much to instruct as it is to disrupt. To that end, such figures cut different forms. There is the lonesome soul finding solace in being a nuisance, or[Read More…]
Data is being acquired without much thought as to its security or end-use. Take for instance, the National Cadet Corps (NCC) collecting the names, mobile numbers and e-mail IDs of 1.3 million young boys and girls so that the PM can interact with them via the Narendra Modi App. [“For chat with PM Modi, NCC collects mobile, email IDs of[Read More…]
China has sold Pakistan a powerful tracking system in an unprecedented deal that could speed up the Pakistani military’s development of multi-warhead missiles, South China Morning Post has reported. News of the sale – and evidence that China is supporting Pakistan’s rapidly developing missile program – comes two months after India tested its most advanced nuclear-ready intercontinental ballistic missile[Read More…]
“Recidivism has a lot to do with resignation. Ditto for other ills.” — James Baldwin Why do people go back to prison repeatedly, until they die or are too feeble to commit any more crimes? What the loved ones of the incarcerated tell me — for the most part (having polled hundreds over the years) — is resentment. All “cons” resent the[Read More…]
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” — Act I, Scene v, Hamlet I remember very clearly how when Sylvie and I were organizing a major event designed to bring together community members and folks from all over the world in 2004 to address our collective crises at the time, one[Read More…]
Self-Published by Barry Brown January 17th, 2017 · ISBN-10: 1773022253 · ISBN-13: 978-1773022253 322 Pages, Paperback Barry17@rogers.com Genres: History, Culture, Society In this groundbreaking work, author Barry Brown has managed to definitively prove humankind’s natural tendencies to be peaceful, cooperative, and egalitarian. Brown’s work is the first ever to document the history of humankind before and after the advent[Read More…]
Why do you have a burglar alarm on your car or home? Not because you believe that no burglar in the world can get past it. But because you know that burglars, very sensibly, always look for easy gains. The reality is that if someone really wants to break into Fort Knox, I am sure there are ways to do[Read More…]
The deeply hidden social perceptions on ‘other’ based on class, caste, gender, religion, region and race find its expression in the form of opinions expressed in day to day social interactions. One often comes across opinions which reflect these deeply held biases. These deeply held biases are socially transferred on the basis of one’s own social position in terms of[Read More…]
Even after seventy years of Partition, the discourse as to who, Jinnah or Nehru, Indian Muslim League or Indian National Congress, was responsible for division of the Indian subcontinent. There are divergent views. Some blame Muslim League, some Congress while others both. Every one of these views has some arguments to put before us. From Congress point of view, since[Read More…]
The country’s largest bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), has closed as many as 41.16 lakh savings accounts between April-January in the current fiscal year for not maintaining the minimum balance, reveals an RTI query. Between April and November 2017, the bank had netted a windfall of Rs 1,771.67 crore, more than its second-quarter profit, from customers for non-maintenance[Read More…]
Police brutally attacked a peaceful march dubbed as “Long March” organised by JNU Teachers’ Association and the JNU Students’ Union near INA market New Delhi yesterday. Many students were injured. The police detained 23 students. The protest was organised against various issues inside the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) including privatisation of education, scuttling of reservation and demanding suspension of Professor[Read More…]
It might have made a bit more than a whimper had the US political scene not found itself in yet another paroxysm of the drama known as the Trump White House. Fifteen years before, governments aligning with the dogs of war decided, in defiance of millions of protestors globally, to invade a sovereign state. Papers cheered with blood lust; propagandists[Read More…]
Mahmoud Abbas today is in the terrible grip of the second phase of the Oslo accord of 1993, also known as “the peace process”. Many, including myself, have written about the death of this agonizing process, but in reality, it is not dead; it is very much in progress as scripted. The epic tragedy of the “Peace Process” is[Read More…]
“Why won’t Trump call Austin bomber what he is? A Terrorist,” this is the title of the story by Alice Salles of Carbonated TV. The Austin bombing suspect is being called a domestic terrorist by people on social media, but why won’t the media and the White House call him that?, she writes. While police are still unsure of Mark[Read More…]
On March 3, several Trumpite thugs tried to barge into Revolution Books in Berkeley, located near the University of California campus. They verbally assaulted staff members who stopped them, and threatened, “We’re going to burn down your bookstore.” The store has been targeted by “alt-right” fascists before, but this is the first time a threat like this was issued. Pls[Read More…]
Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) stands firmly with all those who have come forward to report their experiences of sexual harassment and assault in university spaces and colleges across the country by male faculty members. The feminist movement has acknowledged that there is no one way to seek justice and each complainant must have the autonomy to[Read More…]
Twenty years ago, geologist Mark Crawford came out with his Toxic Waste Sites: An Encyclopedia of Endangered America, listing the 1300 Superfund sites that — as the worst pollution locations in the U.S.A. — collectively form the National Priorities List (NPL). Created by the Comprehensive Environmental Response and Liability Act, the NPL has not been addressed adequately to date, to[Read More…]
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. – George Orwell In the USA, there are 357 million guns in civilian hands based on federal manufacturing tallies, from subtracting the number of firearm exports from the number of firearms imported to and remaining in the United[Read More…]
Google announced Wednesday that it is partnering with the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times and other major news outlets to reinforce their monopoly over news coverage by blocking independent news organizations. The New York Times, whose stock price soared after the announcement, said Google’s initiative was aimed at combatting “the epidemic of false and unreliable information on the internet,” by “pledging[Read More…]
The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union gave the American administration the opportunity to become the only political and military global power. The world, then, became unipolar. The American Military Industrial Complex, though, suffered greatly since the main American enemy; the Soviet Union, had been neutralized and there was no more need for arms race. The attacks on 911[Read More…]
Marx Bicentennial Lecture by Ravi Sinha at Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur, March 16, 2018 etaddhastidarshanaivajatyandhah That is like people blind by birth viewing an elephant. (Shankaracharya’sbhasyaon Chandogya-Upanisad18.1)[1] It was six blind men of Indostan, To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. John[Read More…]
The two day People’s Literary Festival, organised by the Kolkata Chapter of the Bastar Solidarity Network, is all set to roll. Very rarely do we come across a literature festival dedicated exclusively towards upholding and portraying narratives of people’s struggles and resistances against various oppressions. This politics of direct celebration of dialectical materialism through such a literature festival, of course,[Read More…]
Homer is the name ascribed to one or more men, presumed to have lived between 700-800 BC, among Greek . Homer is credited with writing of two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which hold central position in Greek mythology & Western literature. The Iliad is the sequel to the Odyssey. Both are classic poetry that will hold sway[Read More…]
Whether it creeps into politics, marketing, or simple profiling, the nature of surveillance as totality has been affirmed by certain events this decade. The Edward Snowden disclosures of 2013 demonstrated the complicity and collusion between Silicon Valley and the technological stewards of the national security state. It took the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016 to move the issue[Read More…]
Women insurgents wearing the Zapatista’s iconic black balaclavas greeted thousands of women from over four dozen countries at the entrance to the Zapatista Caracol in the highlands of Chiapas under a vibrant banner reading “Welcome women of the world.” The insurgents ushered visitors through gates emblazoned with red stars and the letters EZLN into what would be a women-only space[Read More…]
(To elaborate the political nature of Kashmir problem, one needs to examine the historical perspective of the land and its people) Recently Kashmir’s Finance Minister lost his job for saying that Kashmir is not a political problem. Apart from that he had denigrated the political leadership of Kashmir standing for its total freedom. He had stated that they were barking[Read More…]
“Toddlers drugged with psychiatric medication?” — Martha Rosenberg in a very good article Pfizer, Merck, Celgene, and GlaxoSmithKline are major league drug dealers responsible for lots of citizens descending into homelessness, many vets committing suicide, loads of teens contemplating patricide and/or matricide, more than a few housewives and their spouses resorting to adultery, a significant number of pre-teens having[Read More…]
” Water, water, every where And all the boards did shrink Water, water, every where Nor any drop to drink. …” The Rime of the Ancient Mariner By Samuel Taylor Coleridge Since the start of celebration of World Water Day in 1993, very little has changed in respect of protecting fresh water resources and sustainable water management. The water[Read More…]
“Right now teachers are– understandably — fighting for their rights, but not for the lights that need to be turned on for our youth. And journalists cover up what’s most important with their coverage of protest these days. Often unintentionally, simply because they’re on treadmills.” — Annapurna Tosca Sriramarcel bouncing off of an article by Ilana Novick I’m going to[Read More…]
KUMAR HASSAN,1962 is a well decorated poet, born in Samblpur Town and grew upin paternal hamlet on the bank of Hirakud Dam Reservoir,Bichchedgarh in Jharsuguda Dist. in Orissa. His father late Moulana Mustakim Khan Gountia was an eminent local amateur vocalist, instrumental music artist, astrologist and mother Late JubeidaBai a housewife. He has so far more than forty books both[Read More…]
South Asian activists gathered at Holland Park in Surrey on the evening of Tuesday, March 20 to mark the 18th anniversary of Chittisinghpura massacre and subsequent incidents of state violence in Indian Kashmir. 36 Sikhs were massacred in the village of Chittisinghpura on March 20, 2000 close to then-US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India. The assailants wore Indian army[Read More…]
Review of : Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and The End of Public Education Author: Noliwe Rooks If you care about Race and Class and their intersection with Public Education in the United States, then you won’t be the same person after reading Cutting School. In this chronicle of the historical (and ongoing) assault on public education, Rooks introduces a brilliant[Read More…]
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, along with 18 members of the House of Representatives—15 Republicans and three Democrats—has sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanding that the Qatari-run Al-Jazeera television network register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The letter was issued after Al-Jazeera said it planned to air a documentary by a reporter[Read More…]
In 2014 I wrote an article titled ‘The Global Elite is Insane’. I want to elaborate what I explained in the earlier article so that people have a clearer sense of what we are up against in our struggle to create a world of peace, justice and ecological sustainability. Of course, as I explained previously, it is not just[Read More…]
The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected a direct challenge to the the death penalty, refusing to hear an Arizona death row prisoner’s argument that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. The court also refused to consider the constitutionality of Arizona’s capital sentencing system, under which nearly all convicted murderers are eligible for the death penalty. In a statement,[Read More…]
What will the world’s sprawl of human beings look like in every major urban world centre in the next ten, fifty or one hundred years? Whichever way the world will wend, it all has something to do with that mythical search for the so-called Good Life. But how is humanity’s never-ending ethereal search for the so-called ‘Good Life’ now most[Read More…]
The policy of responding to assassinations on British soil is a near non-existent one. Her Majesty’s Government is certainly in the habit of huffing, and steam can issue from deliberations in the House of Commons. But substance is often absent. When Buzzfeed conducted an investigation into the mortuary of incidents in 2017, it found a degree of indifference on the[Read More…]
Palestinians are in a constant state of rage. And the question that presents itself daily is: Against whom to focus this rage? Today, 19 March 2018, our rage is split, as summed up by KamelHawwash on Twitter: “#Abbas launches stinging attack on #Hamas holding it responsible for the explosion that targeted Prime Minister Hamdallah’s convoy when he visited #Gaza but also calls US Ambassador Friedman a[Read More…]
The Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, a right wing Hindu nationalist political party in the Northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, released a Hindu New Year calendar which says that Taj Mahal along with several mosques and monuments from the Mughal era, are “Hindu Temples,” Times of India reported Monday (March 19). The calendar refers to Taj Mahal as “Tejo[Read More…]
Elections are the festival of democracies and the same holds true for India, the world’s largest democracy. Indians, after achieving independence from the British colonialism, have been exercising their voting rights to choose their representatives through the means of elections, held at regular intervals. The period of emergency from 1975 to 1977 being the only exception to this much-extolled fact[Read More…]
“Do something fresh, Richard, for God’s sake!” — Lorraine Hansberry, an atheist, to the author in the early sixties… when he was a young instructor of Dramatic Art Let’s have a new kind of dramatic fare. The food served on stage these days is not very palatable for the people in my quarters, bogged down as they are with concern over our[Read More…]
India has long undervalued one of its most precious resources—water. The country’s chronic mismanagement of water is staring at it now. Over 600 million Indians rely on the monsoon to replenish their water sources and the unpredictable nature of rain leaves them vulnerable. The country breaks out in a cold sweat every time the monsoon is delayed. Despite these alarming signals[Read More…]
On March 13, while on his way to the besieged Gaza Strip, two 33-pounds bombs targeted the convoy of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah. Hamdallah was visiting Gaza, through the Israeli border checkpoint, Erez, to open a large sewage treatment plant that, if allowed to operate regularly, will make life easier for hundreds of thousands of Gazans, who[Read More…]
Chinese military releases video of aircraft on smooth runs in country’s mountainous southwest, suggesting advances to problem-plagued AL-31F engines, South China Morning Post has reported. Footage of Chinese warplanes on drills in the country’s mountainous southwest suggest the military has overcome engine problems plaguing the aircraft at high altitudes, sounding a warning to regional rival India. Video of Chengdu[Read More…]
Is the UN-Global Community working to Protect the Civilians in War Zones? Increasingly frightening trend of crimes against humanity committed in the Syrian war signal a major shift in prevalent Western world’s tendency to becalmed and bewildered without any action. After the cold blooded massacres of civilians at Aleppo, the cruelty is being repeated on helpless mankind in Eastern[Read More…]
On March 4, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury. A week later, another Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov was found dead in his London home and police has launched a murder investigation into his death. Skripal was[Read More…]
Heraclitus, the brilliant Presocratic philosopher, is remembered for having said “You cannot step into the same river twice,” to which one of his contemporaries responded, “you cannot even step into the same river once.” The doctrine of change or “flux”is, in the mind of Heraclitus, logically tied to two other important concepts. The first of these is the concept of[Read More…]
The escalation of tensions between the United States, Britain and France, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, should not surprise anyone. In the last few years, the US leadership and mainstream British media have presented Russia as a major threat to global peace and the international order. Russian president Vladimir Putin in particular has been demonised as[Read More…]
Nazareth: Seemingly unrelated events all point to a tectonic shift in which Israel has begun preparing the ground to annex the occupied Palestinian territories. Last week, during an address to students in New York, Israel’s education minister Naftali Bennett publicly disavowed even the notion of a Palestinian state. “We are done with that,” he said. “They have a Palestinian[Read More…]
In June last year, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that according to information, the leader of the Islamic State Abu-Bakr Al-Baghdadi had reportedly been killed as a result of airstrikes conducted by the Russian aircrafts on a southern suburb of Raqqa on May 28. According to Russian claims, the airstrikes targeted a meeting of high-ranking Islamic State leaders where[Read More…]
People are starving and some are doing so to death. People are homeless and living in streets. People are without jobs and are in poverty. (There are not enough jobs available.) Resource shortages (including water and food in some regions) are coming. Climate change is worsening in dire impacts. Elites want to set up mining, logging and other operations on[Read More…]
Does burning wood helps reduce pollution? Well, a school goer who has to read environmental studies these days would yell a resounding ‘no’. If one wants to go deeper, one can come across guidelines issued by the central pollution control board itself to avoid wood burning. Just a while back, when there was a dip in the air quality of[Read More…]
SatyamevaJayate – “Truth alone Triumphs.” She Stood Tall Against All – Hadiya My Hero! International Women’s Day 2018 brought the best present that Hadiya deserved. Perfect time to celebrate inspiring women who have shown the nerves of steel to the ever-discriminatory patriarchal world we live in. So, my heartiest congratulations to Hadiya and credit to the Supreme Court for[Read More…]
‘ I didn’t want to be a blind writer. I wanted to be a writer who is blind’ ‘ Now we are living in an age everything has to be fast. We are living in an odd world where the written word is at a discount. To me, a book is a long journey. I don’t like short cuts. Literature[Read More…]
50 years ago today, on March 16,1968, a company of green, battle-untested US Army combat soldiers from the Americal Division, swept into the un-defended Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai, rounded up the 500+ unarmed women, children, babies and old men, and efficiently executed almost all of them in cold blood, Nazi-style. No weapons or Viet Cong soldiers were found in[Read More…]
Let’s put it out there with suitable portions of provocation: free trade has never actually taken place. There is an uncomfortable, skirmish-ridden middle ground, where states compete for primacy over surplus and deficits, where the notion of prosperity is language deferred, not to citizens, but corporations who are often backed for pursuing technological remits. The debate about US President Donald[Read More…]
A politician on center stage calls Mexican immigrants rapists and killers for those people send their bad guys here; says Syrian refugees are snakes and they and other Muslims could harbor ISIS among them; says African countries are sh*tholes and Haitian immigrants carry aids … . Then without a hint of irony or embarrassment — except a permanently red face[Read More…]
“When will they finally see that it was never really worth it? When will this charade end?” — Bre Payton The general public in each and every country on earth — especially those with the greatest environmental footprints — need to radically review their recycling practices. As per a recent study from the UK, we’re — collectively — in[Read More…]
Stop the censorship! It is impossible for Palestinians to advocate against Israel without using the words “Jews” And “Jewish”. My answer on Quora to ‘What is the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)” movement regarding Israel?’ does not break any Quora rules, certainly not the one meant to keep discourse on Quora civil, even when the question itself was altered[Read More…]
Ensuring Citizen Safety through Law Enforcement and thereby ending Everyday Violence is a Prerequisite to End Poverty in India Violence in society at macro level is manifested in multiple forms such as genocide, wars, ethnic cleansing, attacks prompted by religious bigotry, and heinous acts of terrorism.Some thinkers include state led violence against civil resistance also in this category. Such[Read More…]
Today, March 18, is a red letter day for the working class and all true friends of the workers in the country and throughout the world. For, on this day, one hundred forty-six years ago, in the municipality of Paris, in France, the Parisian workers garnered a historic greatest achievement. Their proletarian revolution triumphed and established the first working class[Read More…]
I have lived my whole life under the notifications of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and their Doomsday Clock. It is currently set a two minutes to midnight after many years of variance, some as far away as seventeen minutes. After reading Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine, it would probably be more appropriate to move it forward to ten[Read More…]
Those first days in Moscow,
they were the enemy:
their gray down gathering in corners
like the frail remains of long dead cicadas.
their dropping scarring the glass,
melding with black soot.
On the whole, the USA public is a kindly and responsible lot. For example when the New Hampshire governor called people to action to provide help after the last hurricane to hit the island, 60,000 pounds of food, water and other goods were donated in the state that is called “Live free or die” based on early US Revolutionary tendencies.[Read More…]
Second of three interviews from the cradle of the revolutionary uprising Aneek, an independent, radical Baanglaa monthly from Kolkata, India, in its 53rd years of publication, interviewed three leaders of the Naxalbari Uprising. The leaders with working class background were organizing armed struggle of the poor-landless peasantry in the Naxalbari region since the earliest days of the revolutionary initiative. Following[Read More…]
Achhe din Achhe din
The good times are here.
Modi is just like Santa Claus
spreading much good cheer.
[This is the second of two parts. The first section covered the origins of the Workers’ Opposition (WO), interpretations of “workers’ control,” and the 10th Party Congress.] How Do You Strangle an Opposition? After the 10th congress, anti-WO campaigns multiplied. Party leaders removed former WO organizers from positions and/or transferred them to locations where they would be isolated. The[Read More…]
South Africa is passing through one of the most troubling times since 1994. The country was brought to its knees by a cynical mafia elite in the governing African National Congress. It’s presence in government had nothing to do with governance. From the president down, their goal was simple: self enrichment at any cost. Selling their country to to bunch[Read More…]
Memorandum submitted to union commerce minister and agriculture minister To Shri. Suresh Prabhu Honorable Minister for Commerce and Industry Udyog Bhavan, New Delhi 11017, India Sir, Sub : An appeal to take forward the WTO negotiations on fisheries This is in relation to multi-ministerial meeting in New Delhi on the 19th and 20th of March, 2018 by the Ministry of[Read More…]
At times some words or phrases or idioms, more particularly those maliciously spoken to demean a nations pride get badly stuck up in one’s mind. Like witches, they haunt even in the bed. These cannot be jettisoned from the mind unless talked about boldly and candidly. For couple of days,an idiom ‘barking up the wrong tree’ has been bothering my[Read More…]
Nicknaming people, places & things is an old practice among all communities usually to express affection, but in Kashmir certain nicknames in vogue till now, while some others handed-down the memory lane by elders for posterity carry ridicule with them. To start with, if you think the underlying purport of the nicknames “Nabdhi” , “Ikhwani” or “renegade” or “betrayer” &[Read More…]
The March 20, 2000 killings of 36 Sikhs in Indian-occupied Kashmir remains a mystery. It happened close to then US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India. The massacre took place in the Chittisinghpura village of Kashmir. The assailants wore Indian army uniforms, lined up the Sikhs from the village, and shot them to death. Kashmir is a disputed territory[Read More…]
Zapatista women taking notes at ConCiencias. Photo credit: David Meek Below images of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, and a many-headed hydra consuming humanity, sit two groups. To the right, facing a stage, are approximately 200 delegates of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), seated as a homogenous block. Wearing black ski masks, they furiously take notes. To the left, 300[Read More…]
The Israeli authorities are exerting pressure on Facebook to comply with more of their demands. Earlier this month, members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, discussed how to suppress content of which they disapproved on the social media website. One objective was to get Facebook to ban pictures of Ahmad Nasser Jarrar, a Palestinian extrajudicially executed by the Israeli army in February. Human rights groups have concluded that the military[Read More…]
The United States has devised on ongoing strategy of tension towards Russia. It has initiated economic sanctions against Moscow, concocted a narrative about ‘Russian aggression’ for public consumption and has by various means attempted to undermine and weaken the energy-dependent Russian eeconomy. It has moreover instigated a coup on Russia’s doorstep in Ukraine and is escalating tensions by placing troops in Europe. The reality is that[Read More…]
While all eyes in India have understandably been on a few important political developments in the past few days. First, the by election results of 3 Parliamentary Seats and 2 Legislative Seats, given the fact that BJP had to face a surprising rout in the strongholds (Gorakhpur, Phulpur) of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister, Keshav[Read More…]
It is all about the Russian election now: the world press, the Russian press is filled with articles about the upcoming elections. Of course, the position of the West, which views Putin as Public Enemy #1, focuses on the fact that except for a brief hiatus when his friend Medvedev served as Prime Minister, Putin has led Russia since 2000. [Read More…]
Outside the spotlight of Washington politics, without passing a major piece of legislation like the notoriously repressive Patriot Act of the George W. Bush era (still in effect), the fascist forces led by the Trump/Pence regime are escalating political repression, and laying the legal and ideological groundwork for an unprecedented clampdown on political protest. The recent threats by Trump’s attorney[Read More…]
Regarding the story Al-Jazeera headlines as: ‘Two Israeli soldiers killed in West Bank attack Incident in the West Bank comes amid ‘100 days of rage’ protests by Palestinians against Trump’s #Jerusalem embassy move.’ CNN, which also broke the news, could use the following pointers from a Palestinian reader to improve its presentation of the story to a world-wide audience. FIRST, notice that[Read More…]
The U.S. Government certainly leads the world in invasions and coups. In recent years, it has invaded and occupied — either by military assault or by coup, but in either case followed by installing (or trying to install) a new regime there — a number of countries, especially Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. U.S. propaganda says that its[Read More…]
The Doomsday Machine – Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Daniel Ellsberg. Bloomsbury, NY et al. 2017. …ten seconds to midnight. After reading Daniel Ellsberg’s history of his impact on the global nuclear war posture of the U.S., The Doomsday Machine, I would think that the the Doomsday Clock as maintained by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic[Read More…]
The CDC (Center for Disease Control) web page falsely states that “genetic factors…have a role in causing”… obesity. https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/resources/diseases/obes Obesity which is responsible for the diabetes epidemic kills thousands every year. Other established medical authorities such as the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic state on their web pages that the causes of obesity include genetics. The CDC also says[Read More…]
In the first 11 weeks of 2018, there have been 12 school shootings. Although shootings on school campuses only make up a tiny fraction of gun injuries and deaths annually, a March report from the Giffords Law Center focuses on the deep impact of gun violence on children in the USA, elaborating on how it extends far beyond the classroom.[Read More…]
Would you trust your government if it were headed by a President who just now appointed to become the head of the CIA, the very same person who had headed the CIA’s interrogation of a 9/11 suspect whose interrogation consisted of 83 waterboardings (plus other tortures, which blinded his left eye), all in order to get him to say[Read More…]
In 1919 Charles Ponzi, a clerk in Boston, suckered Americans with a scheme that is now identified with his name. At a time when interest rates stood at 5 percent, Ponzi offered investors a 50 percent return in just 45 days. The pitch was to buy postal coupons—used for buying foreign stamps, in a particular country, and then capitalize[Read More…]
Former Delhi University professor G.N. Saibaba and four others were sentenced to life imprisonment by the Gadchiroli sessions court in Maharashtra in 2014. He spent 14 months in jail before the Bombay High Court granted him bail for six months in July 2015 in view of his deteriorating health condition. He had to surrender and again go back to jail[Read More…]
The Trump administration Thursday announced a new set of punitive sanctions against Russia, targeting 19 individuals and five organizations, including the country’s two main intelligence agencies, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor to the KGB, and the GRU, the intelligence arm of Russia’s military. Coming together with a virtually unprecedented joint statement by the heads of the US,[Read More…]
To rebel is to create
To conform is to stagnate
To question is to know
To follow is support to status-quo
To doubt is to be radical
To undoubtedly assent is to be ‘practical’
To self-criticize is to grow
To self-eulogize is just to blow with the flow
So dare to think
99 Smart Cities, and an investment of Rs. 1,91,155 of which 80% funds are being spent on a mere 9% population of a city in the Area BAsed Development component of the project. Housing for all by 2022 of which foundation lies in concept of slum free city. Is this how we are heading towards an inclusive, participative and[Read More…]
“His vision, from the constantly passing bars has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else.” — from Rilke’s The Panther I’ve worked, recruited, organized and serviced — in various capacities — in every single Spanish-speaking country in South and Central America, without being anything near fluent in the language. My successful track record in those realms I attribute, in[Read More…]
Hilarious! – Fired by Twitter. Apparently, that’s how Rex Tillerson learned about his dismissal, while he was talking to Chinese diplomats about a possible rapprochement between Pyongyang and Washington. Frankly, Tillerson is no loss to humanity. The only point in his favor is that he disagreed with Trump on the Iran Nuclear Deal. Trump wants to abolish it (following like[Read More…]
It takes much to make a figure like Rex Tillerson seem not merely sane but competent. The Trump administration, with its almost paranormal sense of revisionism and fantasy, has managed to make old Rex seem mildly credible. His sacking, inflicted with adolescent petulance, was bound to happen. At stages, Tillerson came across with clues and cues about what would happen,[Read More…]
In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, in his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel drove home the point that one thing does not replace another, just like that, plain and simple. Rather, that which has been is carried forward, moved from one level to another in an ongoing evolutionary process. So it is with the Soviet Union; it is not[Read More…]
His kidneys gave him away when he was 73 years young. Perhaps we needed a couple of decades more of his conscious life; another side, equally loving but a tad more compassionate, thinks perhaps he would have been better off leaving us 40 years ago thus avoiding all the tortures, solitary confinements, indignities, suicide of his beloved spouse who had[Read More…]
Yesterday, in solidarity with the 17 students killed in Parkland, FL., students all across the country left their classes for 17 minutes. These students echoed the moral determination of their grandparents, almost fifty years ago, in nationwide student strikes following the murder of four student antiwar protesters at Kent State. Check the Congressional Record, and you’ll find one speech commemorating[Read More…]
Sonoma County, California: Driving through small-town Sebastopol on March 14 toward the Senior Center, this 73-year-old noticed groups of young students with signs gathering on downtown street corners and waving to motorists. These active participants in direct democracy joined thousands who walked out of schools across the U.S. and the world, organized by the Women’s March Youth branch. As[Read More…]
A superintendent threatens to suspend students protesting gun laws. But that’s not legal. Curtis Rhodes, the superintendent of the school district in Needville, a small town southwest of Houston, wrote a letter to students and parents that was distributed Tuesday on the social media page for the town’s high school. It began with a reference to the protests around the country[Read More…]
Integrated Programme for Older Persons, a scheme of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India is for improvement of quality of older persons of poor community. It is evident that in India, poor elderly have to live with hunger, ill-health, and negligence. They are mentally ill because of social isolation, disrespect and burden to their family. Younger[Read More…]
Since Narendra Modi came to power in India in 2014 a few hundred thousand upper caste Indians not only acquire Audis, Ferraris and Mercedes Benz vehicles to prove that the loans for their real estate businesses translate into private luxury. No developer in India is complete without a picture of himself next to an excavator these days. Whilst the[Read More…]
While the working conditions of disabled in organised sector has been addressed to some extent, the plight of unorganized sector disabled persons has not been addressed by the government. Even activists have not raised the issue to the extent it should have been raised. As per a survey carried out by National Sample Survey Organisation(NSSO) in 2009 -10 ,[Read More…]
Delhi (15 March): Today people from 14 states testified about their situation of hunger and unemployment in a national public hearing at the Gandhi Peace Foundation, organised by the Right to Food Campaign. These testimonies were heard by a panel comprising of activists, journalists, lawyers, legislators, scholars and trade union leaders. Denial of ration to eligible households The hearing began[Read More…]
On Monday, the government of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, officially banned children’s dance performances at all public and private schools. The Punjab School Education Department (PSED) announced that the ban will be applied to all school events, including talents shows, parents’ days and teachers’ days. The education department has also warned that it will suspend the license of any[Read More…]
Richard Attenborough‘s movie “Gandhi” was released in late 1982 and received many awards for its brilliant portrayal of Gandhi’s life and his wonderful espousal of truth and non-violence. However while quoting Gandhi’s dictum “Poverty is the worst form of violence”, this important movie is remarkable for making no mention of Britain’s WW2 Bengali Holocaust in which 6-7 million Indians[Read More…]
I would like to announce the publication of a new book entitled “The Devil’s Dynamo”. It is a collection of articles and book chapters that I have written about the way in which military-industrial complexes throughout the world drive and perpetuate the institution of war. A considerable amount of new material has also been added. The book can be freely[Read More…]
Britain’s reaction of sending 23 Russian diplomats back is hasty. Not supporting the death/killing of the former Russian Spy (later a traitor for Russia and Spy for MI6), but we don’t know the reasons behind that as of now. As per the legal definitions, “innocent until proven guilty”; why not to wait for the outcome of an investigation? I didn’t[Read More…]
In July 2003, Dr. David Kelly, a British weapons inspector who disclosed to the media that Tony Blair’s government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was “sexed up,” was found dead in a public park a mile away from his home. The inquiry into his death concluded Kelly had committed suicide by slitting his left wrist but the mystery[Read More…]
Major immigration raids swept across Northern California recently. Hundreds of people were arrested and deported. As this nightmare was underway, Libby Schaaf, mayor of Oakland, went on the airwaves and alerted people of an impending Gestapo (oops, make that ICE) assault upon that city. Donald Trump, his attorney general Jeff Sessions, and other officials in the fascist regime he heads[Read More…]
Military strength is one pillar of Israel’s strategy to incorporate all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and possibly beyond, into its territorial borders. Other pillars are a strong economy to finance the adventure and a worldwide deception plan that confuses those who aid Israel and, if they had all the facts, may object to Israel’s illegal tactics. Because Israel devotes excessive resources in a[Read More…]
“I am done with you!” This, coupled with an accusation of bigotry, is the reaction by an anti-Zionist Israeli Jew to my questioning of the pro-Palestine speech of another Israeli Jew and assuming he was a liberal-Zionist. This characterization on my part meant that I believed all Jews are Zionists – such was her knee-jerk assumption. All Jews are[Read More…]
The current warming of Earth (Figure 1),manifest in the rise in extreme weather events (Figures 2 and 3), including collapse of polar ice sheets, melting of the Arctic Sea ice, penetration of snow storms into mid-latitudes, permafrost thaw and methane release, hurricanes and wildfires(Figure 4), manifestsa shift in state of the atmosphere-oceansystem, constituting an existential threat to humanity and much[Read More…]
In a post-capitalist society, who should control production? How should decisions about worklife be made? Who should decide what is produced, where it is produced and how it is exchanged within a country and between countries? For the first time in history, the great Russian Revolution of 1917 had to confront these issues in more than a theoretical way.[Read More…]
I read with some interest a piece on CNN today https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/14/europe/russia-us-election-compare-intl/index.html, which compared the “happiness” of people living in Russia and America in regards to factors such as wages, housing, the status of women, etc. While I would like to address all the factors, I cannot do so without writing a small book. However, I would like to address[Read More…]
State-interests run supreme: India is in essence a unitary State where apart from three basics of defense, communication & foreign affairs, overwhelming items of legislative competence have been constitutionally vested in the central government, albeit “few” federal features also exist in its constitutional scheme. Despite being a predominantly unitary system, it can’t be lost sight of that the State governments[Read More…]
Pre-view: Propaganda isn’t anything new in the world. It’s a history since pre & post medieval wars when, however, its use was confined to around battlefields only. But with passage of time, & advent & advancement of science & technology, it assumed looming proportions reaching out to larger populations of several countries, at a single time, to garner their support[Read More…]
As Shakespeare has said, “A rose is a rose by whatever name you call it” Similarly, Kashmir is a serious problem whether you name it Social or Political that is presently irrelevant! Haseeb Drabu, lost his job by merely stating that Kashmir is a Social Issue and not a Political Issue. Incidentally, he is one of the architects of the[Read More…]
The day before the 90th Academy Awards, a friend from the academia called me with a suggestion. He was adamant. “You know that the Churchill Movie will win some awards and you should have an article ready to publish before the announcement,” he admonished. I agreed but failed to produce it in time. Strangely enough, I wrote a lot in[Read More…]
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), British genius, the leading most scientist in all the spheres in contemporary time with focus on astrophysics has left the planet earth. A man with severe body debility, he contracted ALS, a form of motor neurone disease when he was about 21 years young person, continued with nerves of steel and became the epitome of strongest will[Read More…]
China has become the world’s fifth-largest arms exporter, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). China replaces Britain in the top five arms-dealing countries between 2008 and 2012, a group dominated by the United States and Russia, which accounted for 30 percent and 26 percent of weapons exports, SIPRI said Monday March 13. Germany and France ranked[Read More…]
Donald Trump’s days of playing the passive/aggressive host of a reality-television game show are coming to an end. Either he fires all the apprentices who might slightly hesitate to wage a much larger world war and lets the bombs fly, or he will be replaced by one who will. Signs are that he has learned what his job entails[Read More…]
It says a lot that societies who are still part of what is rather weakly called the free world could do this. Technology, viewed as emancipating and rewarding, can actually introduce different chains and shackles, becoming repellent and self-defeating. The field of privacy is one such precarious area, permanently assailed by the chest-thumping innovators. Privacy, that intangible phenomenon Mark Zuckerberg,[Read More…]
It is impossible to tell the whole oil story, but perhaps I can offer a few insights regarding where we are today. [1] We already seem to be back to the falling oil prices and refilling storage tanks scenario. US crude oil stocks hit their low point on January 19, 2018 and have started to rise again. The amount of crude oil fill[Read More…]
If scandal-plagued Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, exits his country’s political scene today, who is likely to replace him? And what does this mean as far as Israel’s Occupation of Palestine is concerned? Netanyahu, who is currently being charged with multiple cases of corruption, misuse of government funds and public office, has, for years, epitomized the image of Israel[Read More…]
Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek People in the Middle East are joking,cynically: “From Incirlik, Turkey to Al-Azraq, Jordan with love.” That is, if they pay any attention to the movement of NATO troops in this part of the world. They should. At least one substantial part of an incredibly deadly and aggressive force has beengradually relocated, from an ‘uncertain’ and[Read More…]
Our MA, USA governor, Charlie Baker, informs us to all stay home or shelter in place as a state of emergency response when weather gets dangerous. We even have emergency response information to keep us updated about what to do and where to go: https://www.mass.gov/orgs/massachusetts-emergency-management-agency Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency ensures the state is prepared to withstand, respond to and recover[Read More…]
Let us examine the human-induced global predicament from different ‘clinical’ perspectives. The first one invites you to recall J. D. Salinger’s book, Catcher in the Rye (1951). Imagine you are a clinician and your purpose in life is to be ‘a catcher in the rye.’ Your work is saving lives in the face of death. That is what you do.[Read More…]
We are little grains of sand in an endless beach.
Our unique and relative placement is of no account.
Swept along by tides of time,
Flung and refined (with the rough edges removed)
By harsh unyielding winds of change,
We exist here on no grounds save that we simply are.
In Pakistan’s context, the national security establishment originally meant civil-military bureaucracy. Though over the years, civil bureaucracy has taken a backseat and now “the establishment” is defined as military’s top brass that has dictated Pakistan’s security and defense policy since its inception. Paradoxically, security establishments do not have ideologies, they simply have interests. For instance, the General Ayub-led administration in[Read More…]
Does a career in the Indian civil service mean a life of ‘public service’? It is a puzzling question given the sloth and the thickets of red-tapism that have eroded the bureaucracy. Moreover, the way events have been unfolding, most will tend to agree that all it means is a lifetime of serving the most despicable lot of politicians[Read More…]
The spectacular red flag , disciplined march of farmers spearheaded by the kisan wing of the Communist party of India (M), and other Left organizations in Maharashtra has galvanized public opinion. The week-long march which reached Mumbai on March 12 is a great morale booster for the Left. The images of sore feet of women and men trudging nearly 180[Read More…]
His brain awash with solar rays
The man with the solar brain
Walks past the cotton fields
And the mobile towers
Listening to the tweets and
The songs of extinct birds.
A farmers’ march in India has triumphed, for now. Countercurrents (Countercurrents.org), an e-journal from southern India, headlines on March 12, 2018: “Historic Victory for Farmers of Maharashtra”. The victory is in Mumbai, India’s financial-heart, hundreds of kilometers west of Tripura, an industrially less-developed state, where, only days ago, Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) experienced massive rightist assault, and, rightists,[Read More…]
President Trump’s bold ‘protectionist’ move of introducing import duties of 25% and 10%for steel and aluminum, respectively– and possibly more to come – maybe more than just ‘populism’ and fulfilling a campaign promise. And why is the term ‘populism’ always used with a derogative slant? As if it was way below the intellect of those who deride it as addressing[Read More…]
Millions of Americans celebrated, or were surprised or outraged, and some even went into hysterics, and many powerful people felt great anxiety, when Donald J. Trump, ‘unexpectedly’ (to most media, ‘experts’ and pollsters), was elected president of the United States. This perplexing political ‘happening’ and its aftermath – some call it The Trump Phenomenon – comes after a generations long[Read More…]
After the 2016 U.S. election, Barack Obama provided some perspective on the U.S.’s growing fear of Russia; fear that has only grown in the year since. “Russia can’t change us,” Obama said. “They are a smaller country, they are a weaker country, their economy doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy except oil, and gas and arms.” Obama was[Read More…]
The rush amongst the super-rich started after the key event of 2014; this single stunning event suddenly sparked that rush by the super-rich to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, and the rush has been nonstop since that event. Though many news-media in The West have reported on the existence of this suddenly booming market for luxurious and supposedly nuclear-proof bunkers, none[Read More…]
The status of dissident offers a certain moral latitude in behaviour, and, in various cases, misbehaviour. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is one such figure. He is a feted figure of dissent of the Chinese political establishment, and celebrated by the artistic fraternity. He is the anointed and favoured contrarian. “The one thing I should give the Chinese government credit[Read More…]
Sri Lankans were looked for a change with sanguine hopes on good governance, reconciliation and development when the current president MaithripalaSirisenacame into power in 2015. However the greatexpectations yearned by Sri Lankans began to fade away with the lethargic, inefficient rule of the new government and the most recent ethnictension in the island has become its’ worst nightmare. The anti-Muslim[Read More…]
Being from Hajan and waking up to the azaan being played to a familiar beat of bullets, to a familiar anguish and desperation in the family, to the fear of a stray bullet smashing your window anytime and hitting you in the bed, to a strange discomfort to hear the gun shots off and join the unruly crowd[Read More…]
For the last few years the study on Dalit cause has been increasing widely in Pakistan. Many of the people who were unaware of the work on Dalit enthusiastically tried to know maximum of Dalit and started reading Dalit literature. Whereas there are two sides of a coin on the discussion of dalits in Pakistan. The one who are Dalits[Read More…]
We, the Adivasi Students at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai strongly reject the Plan of Action for GoI-PMS students (dated – 3rd March 2018) and (dated – 10th March 2018). According to the proposal under Section IV: Admission for the academic year 2018-2019 of (1) ST/SC Students eligible for GoI-PMS for Masters Programme – the eligible SC/ST students have[Read More…]
New Delhi / Mumbai March 12: Seven days after the Kisan Long March of 50,000 small and marginal farmers have finally resulted in a positive outcome with Maharashtra government accepting all the demands raised by All India Kisan Sabha. National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) congratulates the struggle of the farmers and adivasis and hopes that the Fadnavis government will[Read More…]
The farmers in Maharashtra won a historic victory after 50,000 farmers threatened to siege the state assembly. The Devendra Fadnavis government of Maharashtra has agreed to the demands of protesting farmers. A committee has been set up, which will consider all aspects of their demands, which includes loan waiver, free electricity and a higher price for their produce.The government has[Read More…]
India and Pakistan have earned a ‘sad and bad distinction.’ Perhaps in the world, only these two nations since their birth as independent countries are endlessly engaged in war of attrition. The two important South Asian players, now nuclear powers have continuously been exchanging mortar shells and fighting battles along the line Jammu and Kashmir. The line drawn by the[Read More…]
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is in the news again. (Of course, once again for entirely wrong reasons) A few days back while talking to a news channel he had shared the dark prophecy that India could become Syria if the mandir issue was not resolved soon. “If the court rules against a temple, there will be bloodshed. Do you think the Hindu majority will[Read More…]
An Egyptian Kangaroo court Saturday (March 10) sentenced 10 people to death and five others to life in prison for allegedly forming a “terrorist group” to plot attacks on security forces and other institutions. The state-run MENA news agency said the defendants are affiliated with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. MENA said three of the 15 defendants were sentenced in[Read More…]
I expect most of you, if not all, saw this post on WhatsApp about how and why fake news spreads faster than real news. For those who didn’t here it is. http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/08/media/fake-news-mit-study/index.html This is a ten plus year MIT study which comes up with many surprising findings one of which is: “A surprising twist in the study was that bots[Read More…]
![Hebron: A news photographer is arrested. Inside the military booth, a Palestinian woman is being detained. [Photo: T. Suárez]](https://cdn.countercurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/hebron_arrest_photographer-200x150.jpg "J’accuse: Zionism, Israel, And The IHRA 459")
The so-called “conflict” in Israel-Palestine continues unabated today, decades after Oslo, a half-century after Israel dramatically expanded its occupation, a full century after Balfour, and one and a third centuries after it all began. Stripped bare of all its artificial, obfuscatory alleged complexity, this tragedy can be reduced to a single word: Zionism. Nor is the damage done by this[Read More…]
Co-Written by Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null The year 2017 was a record-breaking year for extreme weather and environmental catastrophes since records started to be kept in the 19th century. The Arctic experienced temperatures up to 70 degree F above normal. Many countries were baked in unusual heatwaves killing thousands. Incidents of droughts, extreme typhoons in the Pacific and[Read More…]
Co-Written By Mirza Yawar Baig, Steven Earl Salmony and Sally Dugman According to Yawar: Change the Script We have reached a stage in our development (if I dare to call it that) as human beings where our world seems to run on hatred, not love. I think we all know the many reasons for this and how the flames are[Read More…]
Let’s play a game. Let’s see if you can guess what two crucial questions are not addressed… or not addressed properly in the report directly below. When Albert Wong returned from an Army deployment in Afghanistan in 2013, he knew it had affected him. He had trouble adjusting to regular life, couldn’t sleep at night and was hyper-vigilant about[Read More…]
When the kids decided to live in different countries from us their parents, one did not factor in not having family around to help when the babies arrived. As the boys grew, I always had my parents support and the aid of help in India, which came in on a daily basis, or lived in with us till the boys[Read More…]
A new chief minister has sworn in Tripura. Obviously, BJP also played the same politics by selecting the Bengali immigrant as chief minister of the state as the CPM has been doing. In the din of despicable and condemnable attack on Lenin’s statue, the larger issues that these results have thrown have been ignored deliberately. Normally, the elections in the[Read More…]
The past few days have been crazy for statues all across the country. I even saw one sweating with worry over his fate the day the Saffrons and the Reds clashed on the streets of Kolkata. I told him he was safe given Didi’s quick dispersal of police squads, who faced the odd predicament of manning blocks of stone over[Read More…]
“For behind the sense of insecurity in the face of danger, behind the sense of discouragement and depression, there always lurks the basic fear of death, a fear which undergoes most complex elaborations and manifests itself in many indirect ways….No one is free of the fear ofdeath.” – Gregory Zilboorg, psychanalyst “An anxiety is a lack that causes pain; a[Read More…]
A historic ralley of over 35,000 farmers which started from Nashik district will surround the Maharashtra Assembly tomorrow demanding loan waivers and other just demands. They walked about 180 km over the last five days. They entered Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra today and are camping at KJ Somaiya Ground in Sion. The farmer contingent, including tribal cultivators, led by[Read More…]
Do not provoke them to another Muthanga; Do not commit them as cannon fodder to the Maoists. In the light of the cries of agony from the tribal hamlets of Kerala, the last instance of which is the brutal murder of Madhu, the hungry forest dweller of Attappadi, in the Palaghat district of Kerala that has shocked mainstream sensibilities, civil[Read More…]
My girlfriend Janet Ward started a food bank with a few thousand dollars from a religious leader and a small walk-in closet. Now that very same food bank puts out more than a million meals a year. This is more than a $million US dollars a year worth of food for people who would otherwise starve or partially[Read More…]
Tehran, Iran – The four words ‘DOWN WITH THE USA’ prominently stood out of the white concrete wall. They looked so full of life, fuming and screaming in defiance, as I stood next to the graffiti right outside the busy exit of the Taleqani Metro Station on Taleqani Avenue in Tehran. The bold, iconic message etched on the wall was[Read More…]
Since long time Sinhalese Extremists such as Bodhu Bala Sena, Sinhala Ravaya and Sinhala Lay(lion blood) have been very tactfully propagating racism and violence against Sri Lankan Muslims. In that long process recently few clashes between two groups occurred on 22nd February based on a minor traffic accident between a lorry and a three wheeler in Teldeniya near kandy. Due[Read More…]
As the vandalisation of the statues of the Great Indian leaders continue the integration of the soul of India is under threat. PM has strongly condemned and warned against such low acts and all true Indians fail to understand why is this happening?. This is really un understandable that Indian society has still not learnt to respect its leaders; whatsoever[Read More…]
The moon gently ascends out of a stand of quiet birch. It backlights them so the edge of each limb, twig and leaf Is momentarily light up and etched with dazzling white brillance. Drenched in light, each lacey bough stands out, blazing in vivid sharp detail. Then as the moon rises away, the birch gradually sink back to being a[Read More…]
The incidents of the recently-exposed poor and poverty in the US [an article on hungry children, evicted old lady and other poor people carried by Countercurrents.org on December 21, 2017 & Frontier on-line, December 22, 2017] tell a few aspects that trail the exposed poverty. Tracking the aspects helps lay bare a few facts; and the facts help take away[Read More…]
How deep is the historical illiteracy of Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic Party and Donald Trump and his party? It is so deep, they are even immune to déjà vu, also known as “cryptomnesia”, which is where history is forgotten but nevertheless stored in the brain. Consider how AIPAC and the White House and State Department advisers[Read More…]
From North Korea and Iran, to Russia, China, and beyond, the Trump/Pence regime—largely backed by the Democrats—is belligerently escalating its “America First” military, economic, and political threats. Global tensions are rising as other reactionary powers react and make their own moves. Flashpoints where conflicts could break out are intensifying. The danger of unimaginably cataclysmic war is looming larger and larger,[Read More…]
……I cannot tell you How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible, then, when the crowded fish Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall to the other of their closing destiny the phosphorescent Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body sheeted with flame, like a live rocket A comet’s tail wake of clear[Read More…]
Another departure from the White House, but then it is almost a weekly affair now. This time it is Gary Cohn his chief economic adviser. A former president of Goldman Sachs, he was the head of the National Economic Council. Apparently he was furious at Donald Turmp’s import tariffs on steel and aluminum. Mr. Trump believes the scales are weighted[Read More…]
The regulatory system for GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in India is in tatters. So said the Coalition for a GMFree India (CGMFI) in 2017 after media reports about the illegal cultivation of GM soybean in the country. In India, five high-level reports have already advised against the adoption of GM crops: The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal [Feb 2010]; The ‘Sopory[Read More…]
How Billionaires Celebrate Naxalbari@50(And some other sides of the Half Truth they showed) A bare bodied mason, whose name was given as some Murmu, stood outside Kanu Sanyal’s home, “a single room hut thatched with corrugated tin… in a dilapidated condition… portion of the roof has cracked; sun-rays light up the room where his books, notepads and clothes lay in[Read More…]
While numerous anti-racist Jewish intellectuals are resolutely critical of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide, Western Mainstream Media variously censor or white-wash the nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, and grossly human rights-abusing conduct of Apartheid Israel. A part explanation for this huge moral discrepancy is that the American 60% of the world’s 30 biggest media companies have a disproportionately high Jewish Board[Read More…]
When it comes to Russia or the Soviet Union, reports and historical accounts do get blurry; in the West they do, and consequently in all of its ‘client states’. Fairytales getintermingled with reality, while fabrications are masterfully injected into sub consciousness of billions of people worldwide. Russia is an enormous country, in fact the largest country on Earth in terms[Read More…]
“My own little world Is what I deserve ‘Cause I am the only child there is. A king of it all The belle of the ball I promise I’ve always been like this. Forever the first My bubble can’t burst It’s almost like only I exist. Where everything’s mine If I can keep my mouth shut tight, tight,[Read More…]
I met with five administrators of schools in San Joaquin County, California this week, and those principals and vice-principals of public and private educational institutions in the Golden State had one thing in common. They didn’t believe that the oceans were dying. One said he thought that “the oceans are big and can regenerate easily enough over time.” Another[Read More…]
The night is dense with thickening clouds That press downward against the earth; No light whispering winds glide across the darkening land. Only silent, transparent dimness reaches out From every direction To smoothly engulf everything. Melting the distinct contours of each shape Into one massive blackness, The night consumes everything And slowly becomes all that there is. Gradually my hands[Read More…]
India produces enough food to meet the needs of its entire population yet, it is unable to feed millions of them, especially women and children. India ranks 100th among 119 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2017, where it has consistently ranked poorly. Despite the fact that every twelfth Indian has to sleep on an empty stomach, the[Read More…]
In another milestone in the growing integration between the military-intelligence complex and Silicon Valley, Google’s parent company Alphabet has confirmed that it has provided software to identify targets used in the illegal US government drone murder program. Since initiating its drone assassination program in 2009, the United States claims to have killed close to 3,000 “combatants” in drone strikes. Internal[Read More…]
We are approaching the end of our Axial Age. Planet earth is warning us that our survival is conditional; that like any other organism alienating itself from the earth’s Biosphere, if we continue doing so, we will be rejected. Can we prevent this? Yes, but only if we change the way we think. First we must fully accept a new[Read More…]
Anyone reading the scientific literature (or the progressive news outlets that truthfully report this literature) knows that homo sapiens sapiens is on the fast track to extinction, most likely some time between 2025 and 2040. For a taste of the evidence in this regard focusing on the climate, see ‘Climate Collapse and Near Term Human Extinction’,‘What They Won’t Tell[Read More…]
“The Commission instead opted for the easiest way out, which is a shame as in my perception it reveals a lack of impartiality on your behalf!” Chief East Timorese negotiator, Xanana Gusmão, Feb 28, 2018 In the scheme of things, Australia has deputised as regional bully for imperial powers since it became an outpost of the British empire. Neighbouring states[Read More…]
I hate the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – AIPAC, “the preeminent power in Washington lobbying” today. I hate it with a strong, unadulterated passion that has been burning inside me for decades. Throughout most of these decades, there was no outlet for me to say these words or to do anything about them (Watch U.S.-Israel Relations and Middle East[Read More…]
It is almost certain that Vladimir Putin will continue to be in office as elections in Russia are about to be held. Things have changed for Russia after the collapse of the USSR. Still, there are a lot of things which seems to be the same as they were. An article by Anders Åslund (Anders, A (2001). Russia. Foreign Policy,[Read More…]
” By propagating women’s nature as non – violent they are discouraging women from becoming fighters in the struggle for their own liberation and that of society ..” Anuradha Ghandy , “Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement ( Part I) International women’s day is one of the many occasions to debate various pros and cons of present feminist movements and[Read More…]
This beats even Hema Malini’s absurd observation in the wake of the fire in the Kamala mill compound in Mumbai last December in which 14 people mainly from affluent families were killed. She blamed it on the influx of people from outside for the city’s problems. That was bad enough for a BJP MP and popular film actor. But at[Read More…]
The saffron forces find their foothold in North-eastern states in recent elections to Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya. This new found sense of power pushes them towards acts of vandalism of statues. It starts with Lenin in Tripura. This is later followed by Periyar Rama Swamy in Tamilnadu and Ambedkar in Uttar Pradesh. There can be no doubt that ideological differences[Read More…]
The continuous firing on the Line of Control and the Indo-Pak border looks ominous and could spiral out of control with disastrous consequences! Recently, there have been numerous statements from leaders as well as defence services officers of the two neighbouring countries in the Indian sub-continent about the escalating situation on the border. Saner people have been repeatedly emphasizing that[Read More…]
Like all other flora and fauna of our planet, what we have considered the most common, have steadily declined, due to various reasons. So it is exciting to find a population of a declining species, which was considered common earlier, in a remote, undocumented area. For the past 40 years, the total number of Adélie Penguins, one of the[Read More…]
The right wing Sangh Parivar elements are on a statue destroying spree in India. Just hours after Lenin’s statue was toppled in Tripura after BJP’s historic victory there, statue of Dravidian icon and social reformer EVR Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar was vandalised in Tamil Nadu. The vandalisation came after a top BJP national secretary H Raja posted on Facebook[Read More…]
As a group of women from Jammu and Kashmir, we express great anguish over the unjustifiable delay in the investigations into the heinous rape and murder of a minor eight year old Bakerwal girl, Asifa in Rassana village, Hiranagar, Kathua district. We are equally concerned over the excessive politicization and communalization of an incident which is clearly one of sexual[Read More…]
When the democratically-elected President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in the bloody US-backed coup of February 2014, turning Ukraine against Russia, one of the beneficiaries was Ukraine’s ‘anti-Russian church’: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyivan Patriarchate (UOC-KP). This church was established in 1992 by a former Metropolitan of the Moscow Patriarchate, Filaret (Denisenko), after he failed to be elected Primate[Read More…]
My journey begin from home some 50Km away from destination. When a little light from shadowy was coming out, I went up to have some moments with Insha Mushtaq after she had passed 10th class exam. Insha-a girl on whom pellets were showered by the brave security forces of, world’s largest democracy during the 2016 uprising, just after three days[Read More…]
Is there a possibility of recovering the poetry, the common possession of humanity, beyond attempts to construct meanings and achieve pre-assessed meanings? Joshy Joseph’s, taps into the kinetic deposits of memories (of the Mizo community), placing next to it and often, intermingling, interventions of Duniya Mikhail’s poetry (translated and recreated in Malayalam), and filmmaker’s own will to go beyond[Read More…]
As global voices continue to demand the freedom of 17-year-old teenage Palestinian girl, Ahed Tamimi, Israeli authorities have arrested nine additional members of her family. Those who were detained on February 26 include Ahed’s 15-year-old cousin, Mohammed Tamimi. Israeli troops had shot Mohammed in the head last December, shattering his skull. The teenager, who is awaiting reconstruction surgery, is[Read More…]
There are still some reasonable people in the US security establishment who have the guts to speak the truth about the real intentions of the Zionist regime. Perhaps President Obama’s most significant achievements were not to be dragged into a war with Iran by Netanyahu and his then time Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Probably under the enormous influence of the[Read More…]
Mountains, a moment’s earth-waves rising and hollowing; the earth too’s an ephemerid; the stars— Short-lived as grass the stars quicken in the nebula and dry in their summer, they spiral Blind up space, scattered black seeds of a future; nothing lives long, the whole sky’s Recurrences tick the seconds of the hours of the ages of the gulf before birth,[Read More…]
Co-Written by Sheikh Attar and Palvi Singh Ghonkrokta The spate of civilian killings by military personnel in Kashmir continues unabated with the latest killings at Shopian leading to a mass shutdown across the valley. The public outcry and call by separatists for mass protests is nothing new. Neither is the Army’s claim of an encounter, purportedly after the militants[Read More…]
The torture and abuse of two young Christian men, Patras and Sajid Masih, at the hands of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in the Pakistani city of Lahore late last month has sparked outrage among Christians across the country. The two cousins’ ordeal began after Muslim supremacists accused one of them of violating Pakistan’s draconian “blasphemy” laws. The incident has[Read More…]
Why was the Aadivasi youth Madhu belonging to Chindakki ooru of Attappadi in Kerala was killed? Was it becayse Kerala society’s loss of sense of justice ? Was it a case of mobocracy on a poor alleged thief ? Was it a case of hunger or poverty? Was it because of the erosion of the values of the much celebrated[Read More…]
Tripura, an eastern-India state, is experiencing post-election violence, which is completely a rightist onslaught on its opposition political activists, the progressives. The onslaught has not spared a statue, a statue of Lenin; and thus it has confirmed the onslaught’s political character: extreme rightist; and extreme right is extreme anti-working classes; and working classes are the biggest segment of people. Thus,[Read More…]
The White Man’s High-Rises, Like Deadly Noxious Weeds, Grow Everywhere in the New World Photo: Peter Rae This Canadian writer has been married to a lovely ‘Sydney Girl’ now for some forty years and, lo, though having mostly lived those years with her abroad in Canada and the United States, has nevertheless endeavoured to return to his common-law relationship[Read More…]
“To protect our Country, we must protect American Steel!” Donald J. Trump, Twitter, Mar 5, 2018 As an agent of chaos, US President Donald Trump is keeping busy. Last week’s announcement that tariffs will be imposed on steel and aluminium imports – 25 percent on the former, 10 percent on the latter – has not gone down well with[Read More…]
It was meant to be another day in the normalization of the Trump/Pence Regime. Steve “The Mouse” Mnuchin came to the UCLA campus to speak and “politely” converse about the regime’s cruel and brutal Tax Plan. But students and professors had been organizing to greet him. And in the midst of protest, boos and hisses from the audience, women from[Read More…]
As anyone even slightly aware knows, Americans are being inundated with endless Russian and Muslim propaganda aimed at convincing the American people that it is the United States that stands in the way of peace around the world. Sophisticated and crude in turns, what the psychologists call passive aggressive, these efforts at mind-control can be seen all across the[Read More…]
It may be tragic to think this way, but sometimes I consider that zoos and aquariums are part of the solution to keep certain species alive. It is because our species is directly and indirectly involved in killing perhaps the majority of all living things across the world. Then we are breeding out of control to take over their former[Read More…]
Nazareth: It is has been a very bad week for those claiming Israel has the most moral army in the world. Here’s a small sample of abuses of Palestinians in recent days in which the Israeli army was caught lying. A child horrifically injured by soldiers was arrested and terrified into signing a false confession that he was hurt[Read More…]
I am here to make a case that India, which is known as the world’s so-called largest democracy is currently going through an era of self-imposed media censorship under a right wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government. This has not only made the working environment of journalists in India extremely challenging, but the problem has spilled over[Read More…]
(CNS): This is the story of Razia, a girl from village Bahpur in Moradabad district of Uttar Pradesh. It has all the ingredients of a fairy tale, but with a difference. Razia might not be a run-of the-mill princess depicted in fairy tales, rather she represents a brave and mighty character in her own right. Razia comes from a[Read More…]
I) Current situation According to the World Health Organizations WHO (2013) air pollution is the fifth largest killer in India. 13 out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India with Delhi being at the forefront. The air pollution in Delhi is caused by different sources, with emissions from Diesel vehicles being one of the main[Read More…]
Very few persons have relentlessly fought for the rights and welfare of disabled. The services of Javed Abidi regarding providing reservations for disabled in employment and exerting pressure on government to pass laws protecting disabled are milestones in the movement for empowerment of disabled persons. His untimely demise due to chest infection has left many activists and disabled persons[Read More…]
Feminism took root with the aim of establishing social, political and economic equality between men and women. Based on how one tackles the problem of gender equality, feminism took various forms such as, Liberal Feminism, Radical Feminism, Marxist or Socialist Feminism and Cultural Feminism. Propagating various revolutionary thoughts to annihilate male chauvinism by identifying the root cause for various forms[Read More…]
It was while discussing ways to thwart my parent’s plans of getting me married that one of my friend said, “Doesn’t saying yes to marriage equate saying yes to patriarchy? I mean how different are the two?” The more we delved into the question, the more we found the two similar. But it would be wrong not to contextualise the[Read More…]
Tripura elections results have come and the obituaries of left in general and the CPI (M) in particular are being written. BJP, in alliance with a secessionist outfit IPFT is going to form the next government in the state. BJP has, apart from other factors, utilized massive deployment of money and other resources to influence the elections. The BJP[Read More…]
‘Fatherhood’ is a status attained by having a child and it is irrevocable. The term, fatherhood in contemporary research is used interchangeably with the kins fathering- childbearing roles, activities, duties and responsibilities that fathers are expected to perform and fulfill regardless of whether they carry out by biological or non-biological fathers. Therefore, fatherhood is primarily nothing but responsibility and obligation,[Read More…]
In breathtaking cognitive dissonance that is impossible to explain, so-called liberal Zionists stand against every wrong known to man except for the wrong meted out by the Zionist movement to Palestinian Arabs. Zionism is, as Dr Gideon Polya put it, “genocidal racism in awful theory and appalling, intentional genocidal practice”. [See Zionist quotes reveal genocidal racism and Palestinian Me Too: 140 Alphabetically-listed Zionist crimes Expose Appalling[Read More…]
Lynching of Madhu in Attappadi shocked the conscience of Indian society. #ApologyMadhu hashtags went viral on social media. We have to go beyond hashtags and look for the real reasons why Madhu was murdered for allegedly stealing some rice and chilly powder. It is two decades since the Aadivaasi in Kerala lost his right to self-rule. It is time to[Read More…]
Let me introduce you to the tiger. He is not an animal. He is not a spectacle. He does not exist for your pleasure or like all politicians, for photo ops. He is not living in your land, you are encroaching on his. The tiger (gender neutral term as it refers to the species, and not to the male alone)[Read More…]
The BJP and its ally – the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) – have won the 2018 elections to the Tripura state legislature. The alliance of the BJP and the IPFT will now form a government. The Left It is the first time in twenty-five years that Tripura, a state of four million people in India’s northeast, will be[Read More…]
Co-Written by Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese President Trump ordered the Pentagon to start planning a military parade on Veteran’s Day this November. Trump wants to outdo the military parade he attended in France on Bastille Day. Estimates are it could cost up to $50 million. The last military parade was after the Gulf War in 1991. A coalition of groups is organizing[Read More…]
While the bibliophile and aphorist Samuel Johnson claimed that people of appropriate mental discipline could avoid talking about the weather, the British have found weather an irresistible topic of conversation. Storms are recalled with nostalgic exaggeration; accounts are rendered colourful after the fact. The Beast from the East, as this latest cold freeze has been termed, stands as a form[Read More…]
At one point at my parents’ summer resort was a young teenager girl. She was ashamed of herself because she only had one leg. The other had been sheared off around six inches below the hip. So she initially always wore her artificial leg and long pants, even on extremely hot days when everyone else wore shorts. My family and[Read More…]
Dr. Ron Forthofer, who wrote U.S. Mainstream Media: Empire’s Too, has made a huge mistake in his characterization of the mainstream media respecting domestic issues His “mistake” is worth citing mainly because it’s one that U.S. educators all across the country make routinely, compounding ignorance with ignorance. Review, if you will, how he opened his article: “The U.S. mainstream media[Read More…]
A popular adage claims that the history of the world would have taken a different discourse had it been penned down by women, tribals, blacks and the colonised. Over a period of time after plethora of initiatives and struggle by various academicians, activists and the interested section of the society, there has been a substantial space created, though inviting ire[Read More…]
Batla house encounter took palace on 19 September 2008 in Jamia Nagar Delhi.In the encounter two suspected terrorists Atif Amin and Sajad Mohmad were killed. Mohd Saif and Zeeshan were arrested and as per the reports one of the accused managed to escape. In this encounter inspector Mohan Chand Sharma who led the operation was killed. After the encounter the[Read More…]
The Government of India has been framed and introduced the National Child Labour Project as per the statutory provision of the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act, 1986 aimed at prohibiting engagement of children below the age of fourteen in certain hazardous occupations and processes and regulating the conditions of service of such children engaged in other occupations and[Read More…]
Dr. Ambedkar Society, SOAS, condemns the casteist onslaught on Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) campuses across India by denying them access to Post Matric Scholarship. We stand in solidarity with TISS students who have been resisting this systematic stripping of their rights since last year. The protest has intensified in the last[Read More…]
Saadat Hassan Manto is considered one of the great short story writers of the world and righly so. It takes a long for a reader to come out of the magic of the short story of Manto, once he/she reads it. Manto’s characters speak of the language of this world and these characters are taken from this world. He[Read More…]
Manimmai’s original name was Gandhimathi. Born around 1920, she was the daughter of Kanagasabai Mudaliyar, a member of the Justice Party, which was renamed the Dravidar Kazhagam in 1944. At a conference immediately after Periyar’s death in 1973, she described her childhood as a time when she refused to act like the demure girl she was expected to be. “She[Read More…]
The world’s great philanthropist and investment leader, Warren Buffett, once said, “It’s only when the tide goes out that you realise who has been swimming naked”. Well, it’s the ebb of the tide for many of India’s high-flying crony capitalists like Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, as they find themselves caught in an ignominious buff. Their diamonds may have sparkled[Read More…]
The Georgia Straight Editor Charlie Smith and anti-racism educationist and activist Alan Dutton were honoured for standing up against white supremacy at the fourth annual Raise Your Hands Against Racism (RYHAR) campaign event held in Vancouver on Saturday afternoon. Launched by Spice Radio 1200 AM in 2015, the RYHAR encourages people to celebrate Holi – a Hindu festival of colours[Read More…]
Since February 21, 2018 students at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India (TISS) have been striking against the changes in the Government of India–Post Matric Scholarship (GoI-PMS), which leads to the withdrawal of scholarship of students belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Despite regular threats by the TISS administration, students belonging to different[Read More…]
Putin’s recent unveiling of an “invincible” nuclear missile has dealt a fresh blow to U.S.-Russia relations. The announcement about the development of a new range of strategic nuclear missile came just weeks ahead of the Russian presidential election. Putin’s claims on rendering US and NATO missile technology ‘useless’ seemed more than just domestic muscle-flexing; it was almost a direct[Read More…]
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, seemed perplexed, sticking to a drafted script. Politicians on the Hill were troubled. The Pentagon attempted to be reassuring. The Russian bear was on the move in indelicate fashion – again. In his fourteenth state of the nation address, President Vladimir Putin was keen to focus on Russian-made and prowess in military[Read More…]
The Middle East’s nuclear technology clock is ticking as nations pursue peaceful capabilities that potentially leave the door open to future military options. Concern about a nuclear arms race is fuelled by uncertainty over the future of Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement, a seeming US willingness to weaken its strict export safeguards in pursuit of economic advantage, and a willingness by[Read More…]
For the last 16 years, the U.S. and a host of other reactionary forces have bombed, shot, and tortured their way across Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other countries in the greater Middle East. Literally millions of lives have been damaged or destroyed. It’s hard to imagine how the situation could get even worse—possibly much worse—for the people. But that’s[Read More…]
The U.S. mainstream media has an important role to play as the fourth estate. Sometimes it does an excellent job of informing the public on issues, particularly on many social issues. However, the mainstream media long ago abrogated its responsibility of accurately informing the public about U.S. foreign policy. Instead it has become a tool to advance the interests[Read More…]
Here in Kabul, as the rising sun begins to warm our chilly rooms, I hear excited laughter from downstairs. Rosemary Morrow, a renowned Australian permaculture expert, has begun teaching thirty-five young students in a month-long course on low-resource farming. In war-torn Afghanistan, there’s a desperate need to rebuild agricultural infrastructure and help people grow their own food. People verging on[Read More…]
“You can’t deal with obesity without dealing with poverty and nutrition, and too few educators and parents are getting those connections. It’s not enough to put food on the table and exercise.” — One of the author’s home schooled teens First thing I’d like the reader to do is to calculate her or his BMI, using the National Institute[Read More…]
Why does a President Trump lay himself open to mockery? Simply because his behavior is not only unlike a dignified president but his policy tweets are quite outrageous. From ‘my nuclear button is bigger than yours’ addressed to Kim Jong-un to arming teachers to defend schools against mass shooters — he is quite off the wall. Two weeks after the[Read More…]
The undersigned have been involved witha few publishing projects to do with the theme of state impunity, in India and more generally in South Asia. This projects have yielded severalbooks to date. Historians, sociologists, economists, lawyers, and civil rights and women’s rights activists across the country have contributed to these volumes. The research focused on India meticulously documentspecific instances of[Read More…]
Marriage (Nikah) is highly recommended and much encouraged in the religion of Islam. Teacher of humankind Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) explicitly stated the importance of marriage in many hadith and even said ‘‘Marriage is my Sunnah; whosoever keeps away from it has nothing to do with us” (Ibn-majah). Marriage is described as the legal contract between[Read More…]
Psychoanalytic Interpretation- By Anil Gokhale Unusual Postures of King Shivaji First Prize winning TABLEU of Maharashtra displayed during India’s Republic Day Parade 26th January 2018, secured prominence by winning the first prize. However landed into controversy on significant issues of Arts, Sculpture and Culture. Matter of the highlight was unusual postures of King Shivaji’s horse riding Sculpture or Statue. The[Read More…]
Trafficking[1] of humans for the purpose of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation is an organized crime. Currently, India does not have a comprehensive and strong anti-human-trafficking law. As a result, the Indian police sometimes depends onImmoral Traffic Prevention Act, sometimes Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and some other times a few existing labor lawsto deal with the[Read More…]
India is home to one-fifth of the world’s population which includes a third of the world’s poor and one-eighth of the world’s elderly. Several million of them who spend their whole lives as informal workers have no retirement security other than the hope that their children will care for them in their old age. This arrangement worked well as[Read More…]
Recently, General Joseph Votel, the head of US Central Command, accused Kremlin of playing as both arsonist and firefighter in Syria. This projection is farthest from truth because in fact it’s Washington which kindled the fires of militancy in Syria and now it appears desperate to douse those fires. First, Washington nurtured militants against the Syrian government for the first[Read More…]
Nic Robertson, CNN’s international diplomatic editor, writes about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s two-hour annual State of Nation speech: “It is bombastic talk in the extreme: a waggling of military parts in the faces of other nations, most likely right now the United States”. (CNN, “Russia’s ‘invincible’ missile is chilling for everyone”, March 1, 2018) The mainstream media leader primarily searched[Read More…]
“Drinking water for everyone, And water for the land we till, A job for every hand The peasant getting his due for the toils. Hospital in every village, And school for all the children, Land and home for every family, No poor, no place for the exploiters and capitalists. When will we get Chhattisgarh of our dreams? Only when the[Read More…]
Dr Ramzy Baroud’s new book, The Last Earth: A People’s Story of Palestine is described simplistically as ‘non-fictional narrative of modern Palestinian history.’ It is much, much more; for us readers, it is an intimate encounter, chapter by chapter, wherein we are entertaining new friends; having the privilege of listening to, savouring and indeed cherishing the rarely heard Palestinian[Read More…]
Australians are said to be “appalled” by U.S. President Donald Trump policies, including the banning of Muslim immigrants and refugees from entering the U.S., and his threat of aggression and ongoing wars against weaker nations. But how different are Trump’s policies from Australian policies? Trump was criticised during the election campaign by the Australian political and media (Tabloid culture)[Read More…]
Last week I wrote that “all signs point toward an upcoming large-scale Israeli/U.S. attack on Lebanon and Syria, and all the sycophantic mainstream media are in the kitchen prepping for the feast. Russia and Iran are the main course, with Lebanon and Syria, who will be devoured first, as the hors d’oeuvres.” Those signs are growing more numerous by[Read More…]
“When someone stops me on the street and hands me a flyer, it’s like they’re saying, ‘Hey, you throw this away for me.’ Well, I feel the same way about signing petitions. Putting one’s John Hancock on a piece of paper is a way of throwing away one’s responsibility for a cause… if that’s all you’re doing.” — Mitch[Read More…]
The Aligarh Muslim University’s administration is busy preparing the ground to grandly welcome the President of India Shri Ramnath Kovind as the Chief Guest of the 65th convocation of the university to be held on 7th March. AMU will be dressed in a bridal gown and tiny lights all over the corner will add charm. The University Road which[Read More…]
(In view of the failure of the government to implement various flood prevention measures especially dredging and strengthening of river banks, someone has to become a Hakeem Suyya to save Srinagar!) The popular minister of the famous Kashmiri King Avanti Varman, Hakeem Suyya, is still remembered everywhere as a Messiah who saved Kashmir from the ravages of flooded Jhelum and[Read More…]
Arctic ice breakdown As is well known to students of the history of the climate, once a temperature threshold is breached, abrupt events follow due to amplifying feedbacks, even within a few years, examples being (1) stadial[i] freeze events which followed temperature peaks during past interglacial peaks due to influx of cold ice-melt water into the north Atlantic Ocean[ii]; (2)[Read More…]
In other times Jyoti could have gotten at least a little outrage for her, often all poor and the marginalized get in the country after such tragedies inflicted upon them. Alas, the country is busy over outraging the USD 1.7 billion fraud, and counting, that the Punjab National Bank has complained Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi of committing against it.[Read More…]
Today in Delhi there was a demonstration call given by BAPSA at Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in support of TISS Students. While the protesting students were detained at Parliament Street Police Station for no reason as such (some were injured, roughed up), but thankfully the police incharge at the end allowed (and helped) us to meet the ministry.[Read More…]
When an airplane is approaching Singapore Changi Airport, it makesthe final approach either from the direction of Peninsular Malaysia, or from theIndonesian island of Batam. Either way, the scope for natural disaster under the wings is of monumental proportions. All the primary forest ofthe Malaysian state bordering Singapore –Johor – is now gone and the tremendous sprawl of scarred land,[Read More…]
To The Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Government of India Shastri Bhawan, C-Wing, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road New Delhi – 110 011 February 28, 2018 REGARDING DEMANDS OF STUDENTS OF TATA INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Dear Madam/Sir, We, the students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences writing this to seek your urgent attention to the protests going on since[Read More…]
In an article published in Al-Monitor without a single verifiable citation, Israeli journalist, Shlomi Eldar, went to unprecedented lengths to divert attention from the corruption in his country. He spoke of Palestinian journalists – all speaking on condition of anonymity – who ‘applauded’ and ‘admired’ Israeli media coverage of corruption scandals surrounding the country’s rightwing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Eldar’s[Read More…]
Among the many banalities of partisan rhetoric is a rationalizing of the Dow Jones when it is falling or stagnant and a fetishizing of it when it is ascendant. Countless social media memes, not to mention articles in the business press, have be written comparing the stock market performance during Trump’s first year in office to Obama’s first year. This[Read More…]
One can understand the BJP suppressing the involvement of its drunken leader in the killing of nine school children and injuring 20 other children in broad daylight in Bihar last week. But why did a large section of the media join in suppressing the news while it gave saturation coverage to the death of film star Sridevi ?. We are[Read More…]
(CNS): The photograph accompanying this article, was clicked on Chinese New Year (16th February 2018) in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It is a signpost/ notice written in Thai, English and Chinese (in that order) in a temple, having a statue of Ganesha, situated in the heart of the city in front of Maya Mall. I reproduce the English version: “1. Women[Read More…]
Rohtak may not be a prominent city on the map of India but is, all the same, an important city and major hub of education in Haryana. In the very recent past it was witness to an unprecedented development on the campus of one of the foremost universities of the state, once again forcing one to think about the[Read More…]
The tropical Andes of Ecuador are at the top of the world list of biodiversity hotspots in terms of vertebrate species, endemic vertebrates, and endemic plants. Ecuador has more orchid and hummingbird species than Brazil, which is 32 times larger, and more diversity than the entire USA. In the last year, the Ecuadorean government has quietly granted mining concessions to[Read More…]
Oxfam has outdone itself. In the murky, squalid business where charity seems to chase, then embed itself in disaster zones like a dedicated virus, Oxfam ranks highly. In terms of a tally, the number of reported abuses in the charity sector is galloping ahead, with one of Britain’s most noted charities in the lead. The revelations this month that the[Read More…]
“Excuse me, Mr. Murray?” “Yes?” “I just, I just… I just think you’re the best!” “Well, kid, then you’ve got to get out more.” — an exchange which took place on a Brooklyn sidewalk in 2014 between a young New York City educator and Bill Murray, while both were waiting to see Peter Brook’s The Valley of Astonishment Bill was born[Read More…]
Many thanks to Pablo Solón for his insightful essay on this important alternative to the catastrophic juggernaut of industrial modernity. Having spent so much of my life interacting and working with a land-based, indigenous society in a mountainous region very distant from the Andes—Ladakh, in the Trans-Himalaya—I was struck by how the philosophy of Vivir Bien, or BuenVivir as it is[Read More…]
Co-Written By Sally Dugman and Steven Earl Salmony Some years ago, my mother and another relative of mine went to a funeral mass near Philadelphia, PA. The two of them were the only white skinned people in the church. Nobody batted an eyelid since everyone who knew the dead person knew that he had a deep and long enduring relationship[Read More…]
Introduction Recently, an international assembly of scientists from 184 countries endorsed an article published in the journal Bioscience entitled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice”. As the warning states, “We are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many[Read More…]
National science day (February 28) once again shifts focus on ‘ scientific temper’ as envisaged in constitution. In the present situation, when all sorts of pseudo -scientific postulations, dogmatism and ‘ scientific religiosity ‘ are gaining momentum, this day assumes additional significance. Science and disabled According to indiacelebrating.com, the theme of 2017 was ‘ science and technology for specially[Read More…]
“Academia in the U.S. — in most places — offers kids an invitation to a mental institution where qualified medical professionals are absent and the drugs offered have not been tested.” — Annapurna Tosca Sriramarcel, a member of the Oxman Collective “One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” — Ken Kesey’s inspiration Highly educated people[Read More…]
Before my transfer to an Engineering College recently, I taught at Govt. Degree College Bandipora, situated on the top of a hillock, an idyllic place surrounded by a majestic bulwark of mountains on almost three sides and overlooking the bucolic expanses of famous Wullar Lake on one side; undoubtedly a wondrous place with amazing ambience for the transaction of education.[Read More…]
It doesn’t do much good to point out that mothers are going to keep crying their souls out — losing their lovely children — unless those mothers themselves are willing to die to keep a horror of horrors like the U,.S. Military from twisting the minds of their youngsters… and propagandizing parents to the point of their, then, willingly handing[Read More…]
Bard of Avon’s “As you like it ‘begins with intriguing phrase “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely its actors”. These actors, after playing six different acts grow older and finally exit from all stages of life forever. However, the older-stage is one, when their condition becomes miserable. Once an infant and child himself,[Read More…]
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My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
