“Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners.” — Robert Graves, Goodbye To All That(1929). I’m one of the lucky ones. Leaving the madness of Army life with a modest pension and all of my limbs intact feels like a genuine escape. Both the Army and I knew it was[Read More…]
In Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the country on the successful test of Anti-Satellite Missile (A-SAT), he said, “There can be no greater moment of pride for every Hindustani.” The critique from the Congress, the main opposition party, was muted as it was confined to the propriety of the announcement while the Electoral Code of Conduct is in place,[Read More…]
The morning of freedom August 1947 This daybreak, pockmarked- This morning, night-bitten. Surely, this is not the morning we’d longed for, in whose eager quest, all comrades had set out, hoping that somewhere in the wilderness of the sky would emerge the ultimate destination of stars; somewhere, the wave of the slow night will meet the shore and somewhere will[Read More…]
John Smith, former oil rig worker, bus driver, telecommunications engineer, longtime activist in the anti-war and Latin American solidarity movements, and author of Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis (Monthly Review Press, January 2016), discusses the question of imperialism in the following interview taken by Farooque Chowdhury during July 2018-February 2019. The interview, in slightly[Read More…]
800% increase of US surveillance on Venezuela Venezuelan electricity system sabotaged again We will defeat aggressions: Maduro Hundreds march in Washington, DC, to protest US interference in Venezuela Venezuelans march in defense of freedom and peace Solidarity from South African Alliance Imperialism is increasing its interventionist acts in and around Venezuela. People’s protest against imperialism’s intervention in Venezuela is also[Read More…]
In the current elections to the Lok Sabha and the Andhra Pradesh Assembly Defeat the ruling coalition at the Centre, the BJP-led NDA, that is pro-American super power, and pro-landlord classes! Defeat the Telugu Desam Party, an ally of reactionary BJP until recently, that carried on anti-people rule in Andhra Pradesh! Support the candidates of communist revolutionaries who are fighting[Read More…]
K.P Sasi is one of the unsung heroes of Indian parallel cinema movement. His repertoire of films are amazing. From feature films , music videos to a plethora of documentaries that touch every aspect of our lives. His films are a collectors delight. A Package of 21 Films Directed by K.P. Sasi Are Available. All these films are social issues[Read More…]
According to a recent United Nations report, extreme weather events displaced 2 million people during 2018. While no single event can be unambiguously attributed to anthropogenic climate change, scientists believe the the increasing frequency of extreme weather events is definitely linked to global warming. The World Meteorological Organization’s statement on the state of global climate in 2018 can be found[Read More…]
As carbon emissions have been growing at an accelerated rate (Figure 1) and new power plants are under construction (Figure 2) the race to destroy species and civilization is heading toward its critical conclusion (Figure 3), already with fatal consequences (Figure 4). According to the UNHCR, since 2008an estimated 22.5 million people have been displaced by climate or weather-related events.[Read More…]
Punjabi journalist Shiv Inder Singh, who was sacked as a field reporter by a Canada-based prominent South Asian radio station for being critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has received the Jagjit Singh Anand Award. Singh used to give daily news updates to a radio station in Surrey. His services were terminated abruptly in 2016 following complaints over his[Read More…]
Seeing the media sensitivity towards current electoral trends, the Election Commission of India (ECI), a constitutional body responsible for conducting elections, has come up with the extra precautionary measures to monitor the media’s critical role in the upcoming general election However, measures adopted by the ECI to tackle false and misleading contents flooding on the mainstream media and social media[Read More…]
23rd March is Dr. Rammanohar Lohia’s birthday. But it is said that he did not want people to celebrate the day because it was on this day that the revolutionaries – Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were executed by the British government. So most of his admirers and Indian socialists celebrate Lohia Jayanti by observing it as the Martyrdom Day.[Read More…]
“Russians will pay a price”: threatens U.S. Venezuela slams U.S. threats against Russia, reminds of Pentagon military activity Focus on actual activities: Venezuela tells U.S. “Do the right thing”, Venezuelan defense minister reminds Bolton S. asks EU to build up pressure on Venezuela’s Maduro with more sanctions US warns Turkey to halt its support for Maduro Venezuela to armor its[Read More…]
India’s democratic values can’t sustain a simple cinema test, the episode draws attention to a wide issue of India’s discriminatory practices against artists and professional minorities. Bhobishyoter Bhoot (Ghost of the Future), Anik Dutta’s fourth film, was suddenly removed from theatres on February 16 just after running for a day. Reports suggest that Kolkata Police mentioned to the producers about the possible[Read More…]
This morning light is not enough For me to wake up My sleep is not yet over Do not disturb my dreams For they are more beautiful Than your reality And I do not have to pay for them. Welcome to the world of free dreams Take a room in this hotel of free dreams Order whatever you want You[Read More…]
#NaseeruddinShah #Democracy #Lynch #Riots #Riot-Bhais #JNU #Islam #Spain #Boss #GotoPakistan #Allizzwell [ An attempt to know, if people of all hues and garden variety are one and the same on the Lynch Stage? ] Like a good patriotic citizen I always try to live in my own cowardly shell, habitually pretending, all izz well. May God really send[Read More…]
The wage rates for NREGA workers for 2019-20, notified yesterday, have again exposed central government’s lack of commitment for NREGA workers’ rights. The hike ranges from a meagre Re 1 to a majestic Rs. 17 for various states and Union Territories (UTs). And workers of 6 states and UTs will have to be content with no hike at all. Workers[Read More…]
On March 27th, U.S. President Donald Trump said that “Russia has to get out” of Venezuela, and that “All options are on the table” if Russia refuses to withdraw from Venezuela the protection it has recently provided to Venezuela’s elected Government, which Trump is attempting to overthrow, by an illegal coup. And Vice President Mike Pence, on the same day,[Read More…]
Today, March 30th, is the anniversary of two ominous events that occurred on our land and to our people. The first anniversary happened 43 years ago to the day. That was when the Israeli army in 1976 usurped over 2000 hectares of land owned by Palestinian families in the Galilee area. All the government of Israel needed to do was[Read More…]
Let’s not be too churlish about this; but then again, let us not be ignorant. The singer once known as Cat Stevens (in pre-conversion state), and known as Yusuf Islam to others, made a considerable impression on the stage in Christchurch. The slaughter of fifty at two mosques in the New Zealand city had made enough of an impression to[Read More…]
When Michael Cohen, fixer for Donald Trump, payoff-artist and jailbird-to-be, who starts 3-year prison sentence on May 6, branded his former boss a liar and cheat who ran for president not to help the country but enhance the Trump-brand, was he wrong? How many of Trump associates are in jail, going to jail or indicted, i.e. scumbags, albeit rich scumbags?[Read More…]
Punjab faced the full fury of the communal violence in 1947 during the Partition of India. The state witnessed an extremely turbulent and traumatic situation in the run up to the independence and Partition of the country. The transfer of power from British to the dominion of India and Pakistan accompanied large scale transfer of population from both sides of[Read More…]
Through a written blog followed by his tweet, Union Finance Minster Mr. Arun Jailey has yet again stirred the issue of Article 35A due to be adjudicated by Supreme court any time now. His tweet on the issue reads as: “Chowkidar Arun Jaitley @arunjaitley Article 35A surreptitiously inserted by Pt. Nehru’s govt. in the Constitution in 1954 vide Presidential order is[Read More…]
Kashmir, once christened as paradise on earth is now a crown of militarization from last three decades where Kashmiris are paralyzed in conflict molded battleground resulting in generations growing up with disruption and conflict way of life. The burgeoning crisis in Kashmir is tantamount to a powderkeg and could bring two nuclear-armed neighbors to the brink of war, as was[Read More…]
The CPI-M in Telangana state (TS) had taken two major initiatives in recent past. It took initiative to form T-MASS, and later a BLF to fight elections. The Secretary of CPM of TS, Tammineni Veerabhadram, a CC Member, is the General Secretary of both these Fronts, indicating its decisive role in both. The Chairman of T-MASS is Prof. Kancha Ilaiah,[Read More…]
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) takes serious note of the dramatic declaration of the Indian Prime Minister, on March 27, early afternoon, claiming, in a nationally televised address, successful testing of an ASAT missile by way of destroying an Indian military Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite at an altitude of almost 300 kms, over the Bay of[Read More…]
Introduction Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was a pupil of Edmund Husserl (1859– 1938), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), and Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), three significant, prominent, 20th century German philosophers whose work grounded and remained noticeable in Arendt’s philosophy. Arendt’s philosophies also recall the German philosophical systems of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), and have the courage to say, Karl Marx[Read More…]
For decades, I am observing my mother growing old. 3 memories, 3 falls stay in my mind. The first fall was on the streets of Kolkata and that made her housebound after she fractured her hip and had to have surgery. Fortunately, it was a big house in Kolkata and there was plenty of space to move around but gone[Read More…]
Moscow responds to U.S. threat Sniper rifle took out hydroelectric plant Fake photos of Venezuelan health situation: AFP Guaido announces “tactical action” Russia has made a strong response to the U.S. warning on the Venezuela situation while more information on the electricity sabotage and fake photographs disseminated by the interventionists is being exposed. Sniper rifle took out hydroelectric plant: Maduro[Read More…]
As if this Machiavellian recipe to commit crimes in total impunity hadn’t been used and reused over and over again, and while the victim are always the ones being blamed for the inflicted crimes (Daraa, Syria, 2011; Kiev, Ukraine, 2014 etc.), the US decides to use in Venezuela the very same recipe of: Committing crimes against a weaker state, which,[Read More…]
Any measure of annexation is based on the extension of a military’s boots. Diplomats tend to be silenced before the noise of tanks, weaponry and garrisons. Countries may claim to possess territory but can only dream in the absence of military weight. When it came to the issue of negotiating the post-World War II agreements, Generalissimo Joseph Stalin of the[Read More…]
Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it. ~ Hannah Arendt After a day of hypnotised hijack of the nation by the announcement of “Mission Shakti” (which unfortunately[Read More…]
Tamils demand the Right to Self-Determination as Tamils in Sri Lanka qualify as a People and Nation When the United Nations was created after World War II, one of the main purposes of the United Nations was spelt out in Article 1 [2] of the Charter, which states ‘To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principles[Read More…]
A child miseducated is a child lost – John F Kennedy While all the mainstream parties are busy issuing statements of promises to various sections of society, there is little concern for the children who are at present outside the electoral process. These ‘ non- voters’ are being neglected and the potential of ‘ future’ voters is not being discussed[Read More…]
U.S. threatens Russia: Must get out of Venezuela, all options open U.S. to assess Russian “influence” in Venezuela: House passes three bills Interventionists’ diplomatic debacle: Germany won’t recognize Guaido’s envoy as ambassador Elliott Abrams fumbles on Guaido, the “President” Guaido’s “achievements” With imperialist threats to allies of Venezuela tension around the Bolivarian republic is increasing. Media reports said: U.S.[Read More…]
For the last two or three months, I have been following the news on the school strike movement of teenagers, the purpose of which is to urge the grown-ups, particularly the politicians, to immediately do what is necessary to solve the problem of global warming, which is resulting in what has been summarized in the term “climate crisis”. As Greta[Read More…]
It was on last Saturday the state leadership of the Congress party made a statement taking the entire population and party workers on a high. The announcement that the Indian National Congress (INC) President Rahul Gandhi might contest from Wayanad, one of the party’s stronghold in the state, came as a big surprise. The news became a sensation both in[Read More…]
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies Forty-five years after Congress passed the War Powers Act in the wake of the Vietnam War, it has finally used it for the first time, to try to end the U.S.-Saudi war on the people of Yemen and to recover its constitutional authority over questions of war and peace. This hasn’t[Read More…]
Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek No one can agree how high above the sea level that La Rinconada really lies at: 5,300 meters or 5,200 meters?On the access road, a metal plate says 5,015. But who really cares? It is indisputably the highest settlement in the world; a gold mining town, a concentration of misery,a community of around 70,000 inhabitants,[Read More…]
I visited the city of Christchurch on May 23, 2018, as part of a larger speaking tour in New Zealand that also took me to Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton and Dunedin. New Zealand is an exceptional country, different from other countries that are often lumped under the generalized designation of the ‘western world.’ Almost immediately after my arrival to Auckland, New[Read More…]
The comedian Dave Chappelle put it like this: why were accusations of inappropriate conduct directed at Michael Jackson always so superbly timed? “Listen Michael,” goes Chappelle’s mock white executive voice, “we need you to jerk off another child.” (Chappelle is also prudent enough to append a qualifying note: he might have done it, but who knows?) Jackson could always be[Read More…]
Now that Donald Trump, like Barack Obama before him, has failed to remove Syria’s Bashar al-Assad by means of American training of, and supply of weapons to, ‘rebels’ (almost all of whom were actually jihadists) in Syria, Trump, on March 21st, has set into motion a process that is designed to provide a ‘justification’ for an all-out U.S. military invasion[Read More…]
Scott Harris has been hosting a show at WPKN, Bridgeport’s independent, alternative radio station, for a remarkable 42 years. He began in 1977 with a music show which he transformed a decade later to Counterpoint, a two-hour weekly program chock full of news, analysis, interviews and discussion not heard in corporate media. Along the way, Harris and his colleagues created a[Read More…]
(Most of the political leaders in Kashmir have been selling “Dreams” to the people that ultimately get interpreted in their own personal well-being leaving the people high and dry!) The tragedy of Kashmir right from the start of the struggle of its people for emancipation has been their political leaders behaving like the “Dream Merchants”. The people have been shown[Read More…]
26 March 2019 marked the 4th anniversary of thee start of the Saudi Arabia-led armed intervention into Yemen. The purpose of the war has been lost in the sands of the war. However, the necessary negotiations in good faith to end the war have not taken place. There have been limited negotiations under the leadership of United Nations mediators. The[Read More…]
Today, it’s impossible to ignore the question of imperialism in any discussion concerning people as imperialism is distorting and destroying all aspects and areas of life. Ignoring the question of imperialism is synonymous to betrayal of people’s cause. John Smith, former oil rig worker, bus driver, telecommunications engineer, longtime activist in the anti-war and Latin American solidarity movements, and author[Read More…]
A huge congregation was held at the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey this past Sunday, March 24 to show solidarity with three Sikh men who were recently convicted in the world’s so called largest democracy for merely keeping literature perceived as “seditious” by the Indian state. Arwinder Singh, Surjit Singh and Ranjit Singh were criminally charged in 2016 under[Read More…]
I would like to announce the publication of a new book entitled “We Need An Ecological Revolution”. The book can be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/We-need-an-ecological-revolution-John-Scales-Avery.pdf If printed copies are desired, they are avilable from Lulu.com Our present crisis of civilization is unique Does history repeat itself? Is it cyclic, or is it unidirectional? Certainly many[Read More…]
The oldest idea of history; the perennial problem of station: education. Get the child as far as possible so that he or she can be propelled, as if from a trebuchet across the ramparts of life. Nasty obstacles – one being a lack of intellect – will be cleared, and the wretched genetic issue will find itself in sinecures, positions[Read More…]
(NOTE: This article — prior to its current updates — was offered as an exclusive to each mainstream and other pro-U.S.-Government ‘news’-media, and none even replied; so, it now is offered to all of them again for publication, but on a non-exclusive and free basis, and this time it is also being submitted to many of the smaller or “alternative”[Read More…]
Nearly three months ago, on January 6, Patriarch Bartholomew signed the Tomos of Autoceplahy for the Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Though the whole process of granting autocephaly took less than a year – Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko appealed to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in April 2018 – the “healing of the schism” seems to be requiring much more time as the reconciliation between[Read More…]
The nation has stood as one in condemning the dastardly suicide terror attack carried out by the Pakistan based Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) on the CRPF Bus that has led to the tragic death of 44 of our Jawans. Across the country, people have mourned and have come together in this hour of crisis and sorrow. The Pulwama terror attack, the Surgical[Read More…]
New attack on Venezuela’s national electric system Venezuela presents evidence of opposition paramilitary plot Over $30 billion of Venezuela’s assets stolen by US Lavrov to US: Your Venezuelan coup violates UN Charter Venezuela may divert US-bound oil to Russia & China Venezuela electricity crisis may challenge global oil market – IEA Trump’s failed bid to isolate Venezuela Trump Admin wants[Read More…]
Events just fly by in the ever-accelerating rush of Trump Time, so it’s easy enough to miss important ones in the chaos. Paul Manafort is sentenced twice and indicted a third time! Whoosh! Gone! The Senate agrees with the House that the United States should stop supporting Saudi Arabia in Yemen (and Mitch McConnell calls this attempt to extricate the country from cooperation in[Read More…]
Here are three important lessons for the progressive left to consider now that it is clear the inquiry by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russiagate is never going to uncover collusion between Donald Trump’s camp and the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election. Painting the pig’s face The left never had a dog in this race. This was always an[Read More…]
La Rinconada, 5,000 to 5,400m above sea level, corrugated iron shacks, glued to the hills of the surrounding mountains, home to some 50,000 to 70,000 mining inhabitants and competing mafia mobs that control them. La Rinconada, in the Peruvian Andes, the world’s highest, chaotic, poisonous and illegal goldmines, some 210 km northeast of Puno, a 4-hour drive by car over[Read More…]
Nazareth: When President Donald Trump moved the US embassy to occupied Jerusalem last year, effectively sabotaging any hope of establishing a viable Palestinian state, he tore up the international rulebook. Last week, he trampled all over its remaining tattered pages. He did so, of course, via Twitter. Referring to a large piece of territory Israel seized from Syria in[Read More…]
U.S. Backs Israel’s Annexation of Golan Heights: “Blessing” More Genocidal Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and a Mafia-Style Message to Russia On March 21, Trump declared “it is time” for the U.S. to “fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty” over the Golan Heights—a militarily strategic region of Syria seized by Israel in a war in 1967. A story on the announcement in a[Read More…]
Finally, it appears that there is realistic hope for an end to the brutal, far-right, regime that U.S. President Barack Obama, through his chief agent on Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, had imposed upon Ukraine, by means of an extraordinarily violent coup in February 2014, which replaced Ukraine’s democratically elected sitting President, by a rabidly anti-Russian imposed regime. Although, until recent days,[Read More…]
Despite enormous ongoing effort over more than a thousand years, during and since the formation and shaping of the modern world, and as the number of issues being contested has steadily increased, activists of many types have made insufficient progress on key issues, particularly in relation to ending violence and war (and the threat of nuclear war), stopping the exploitation[Read More…]
By Pilar Viviente and Gary Steven Corseri Pilar Viviente: Winter tree in Spring light Ready to wake up after Winter No birds yet hopping on the tree But how beautiful you are! Gary Steven Corseri: Tree unblossomed, whose feather-branches brush the morning air…to wake the rocky, sleeping giant, stirring under the blue-pink sky as the waves lap, and clouds[Read More…]
Indigenous activist Cecilia Point and former Vancouver Park Board Commissioner Niki Sharma honoured at annual anti racism event in Surrey On Saturday, March 23 Spice Radio honoured two inspiring women for standing up against racism as the world grapples with growing bigotry. As part of its annual campaign “Raise Your Hands Against Racism”, Burnaby-based Spice Radio held this year’s event[Read More…]
The club of emerging political and economic powers of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa in response to new global challenges is famously known as BRICS. Since its inception in 2006, it has been a platform to highlight the prominence of multi-polar world order challenging the collision of G-7 members. These five countries account for 20 percent of world[Read More…]
The glorious War for Liberation in Bangladesh turned powerful with the participation of people – the downtrodden, the exploited. They came from poverty-ruled rural areas; they came from machine shops chained to capital; they came from educational institutions – teachers and students primarily identifying with the aspiration of the exploited. To this huge human spirit, the bell of liberty was[Read More…]
Rahul Gandhi’s minimum income announcement has jolted the government. Even if it is merely a political announcement during the poll season and we will have to see its repercussions as well as how it is implemented but that comes later. The political announcements need to be critiqued either by the politicians or discussed by the economists but what is happening[Read More…]
Among the many challenges India faces, the most underappreciated is the ongoing mental health crisis. Mental illness is actually India’s ticking bomb. An estimated 56 million Indians suffer from depression, and 38 million from anxiety disorders. For those who suffer from mental illness, life can seem like a terrible prison from which there is no hope of escape; they are left forlorn and abandoned,[Read More…]
Employment Service facility in India has a long history. Till 1946, the facility was limited to the mobilization of service personnel and discharged war personnel. Directorate General Employment & Training (DGET) set up Sri Shiva Rao Committee and on its recommendation Employment Services were called upon to deal with the resettlement of large number of displaced persons as a[Read More…]
20 years have passed since NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days. The air campaign with at least 900 bombing sorties again announced imperialist power – destroy everything to loot. It was an act of aggression against Yugoslavia, deny the country’s sovereignty and integrity, and violently carve away Kosovo for creating an imperialist enclave. The NATO aggression officially claimed at least 758 civilian[Read More…]
Gilets Jaunes march with a banner with photo of Zineb Redouane (80) killed by a tear gas shell fired by police in Marseilles.Photo: Youcef Brakni[1] The amazing movement of Gilets Jaunes is continuing for 18 weeks, while six central trade unions CGT, FO, Solidaires, UNEF, UNL and UNL SD jointly issued a small leaflet[2] with the call of a General[Read More…]
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) data revels that the terror attack in the country saw a major decline since the Narendra Modi government came to power. The data was presented by the Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir in a written statement in the Parliament. The MHA said in the last 5 years from 2014 to 2018,[Read More…]
In our generation, perhaps rarely any of one might have read it or heard about it. In my small collection of biographies, there is a purple coloured hardbound, with pagesturned to smoke yellow biography published eighty-eight years back by George Allen and Unwin Limited, 40 Museum Street, London. It has a foreword by father of Indian Nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.[Read More…]
Sustaining a democratic system through periodic free and fair elections is one of the most critical political challenges the world has witnessed. Across countries, people have run the risk of their lives to call for free elections, democratic accountability, the rule of law and respect for human rights. Though elections are widely recognised as the indispensable foundation of democracy, there are[Read More…]
Borders are cruel. I know this because I’ve been studying the U.S.-Mexico border for more than 40 years. It features prominently in two of my books, written in different decades. It keeps pulling me back. Every time I cross that border, I say to myself that this is no big deal — I’m used to it. And every time, I feel that[Read More…]
Given the media barrage surrounding Venezuela’s “humanitarian crisis”, recent tensions on the Venezuela-Colombia border, and talks of “military options” and coup attempts, it was hard to know what to expect on returning to the country for the first time in five years. I envisaged a country on a knife’s edge, particularly as I arrived in Caracas on March 5. This[Read More…]
The US coup with the self-proclaimed Venezuelan puppet president Juan Guaidó has been failing. Right-wing Latin American countries and the European Union, while willing to go along with the charade farce president have not been willing to take military action against Venezuela. This week the US was caught seeking to create violent chaos with imported mercenaries disguised as Venezuelan military,[Read More…]
This article was first published on World Water Day, 22 March 2018. Author’s Update, March 24, 2019: Today is World Water Day 2019 – and the situation has become much worse. Today, Jair Bolsonaro, is Brazil’s President, pushed in by Washington, a fascist with no respect for human life, as long as it is not his own, or that of his cronies,[Read More…]
Listen: it isn’t about me about ego and it isn’t about you your property income taxes but about EARTH about life about spirit and grandchildren about seven generations and seven times after that about the full spiral circle of planetary life with its shrinking diversity of species and the corrupting atmosphere but the circle goes around circles undulates comes back[Read More…]
“Dekh raha hai kya kya sapna raat ko sone waala Ho sone waala Yeh na jaane aankh khule to kya hai hone waala Haa hone waala ( From ‘ yeh duniya nahi jagir kisi ki……. Lyrics by Rajender Kishan in ‘Chowkidaar’ ( 1974) (What dreams the person sleeping might have been dreaming O! That sleeping person It is unknown what[Read More…]
The UCCRI-ML is contesting elections to the Loksabha, with the above call, by fielding candidates in Telangana (10 constituencies out of 17) and Andhra Pradesh (3 constituencies out of 25).The UCCRI is an organization, founded by veteran communist revolutionaries DV Rao (1917-1984) and Tarimela Nagi Reddi (1917-1976), which believes that the present system can not be changed by parliamentary path.[Read More…]
Inaam (left), Habib (right) and I (photographer) sharing a good laugh at the Borderfree Nonviolence Community Centre in Kabul I decided to write this ninth love letter specially to Inaam, the 21st century generations of the world and the people of Okinawa because of threepersonal reasons. I miss having the wonderful energies of 15-year-old Inaam at the Borderfree Nonviolence Community[Read More…]
Revolutionary people is the guarantee for peace and democracy: Maduro Rightists organize mercenaries Plan to assassinate political and military leaders, and judges Plan to sabotage metro system and the Caracas cable car Plan to spread fake news through social media, and organize strikes Bolton’s threat Imperialism’s interventionist acts are getting exposed while imperialism is renewing its interventionist acts in Venezuela. In[Read More…]
Many have framed the battle lines in the geopolitics of the emerging new world order as the 21st century’s Great Game. It’s a game that aims to shape the creation of a new Eurasia-centred world, built on the likely fusion of Europe and Asia into what former Portuguese Europe minister Bruno Macaes calls a “supercontinent.” For now, the Great Game[Read More…]
On 14th February 2019, vehicles of security forces which were on its way to reach Srinagar came under a heavy attach when a vehicle-borne bomber attacked the vehicles at Lethpora Pulwama. As a result of the attack, 49 CRPF personal died along with the person who carried the attack. As soon as the attack took place, the Kashmiri students studying[Read More…]
India is witnessing a national crisis of mob lynching for last few years. The term ‘mob lynching’ was unheard until the national media began reporting the incidents from some part of the country. The politicians turned the issue politically, while the numbers of civil-society organizations and activist blaming the ruling government responsible. The Dalits were lynched because of being born[Read More…]
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. -Eleanor Roosevelt The world is witnessing a spring of a new generation of young game-changing women social entrepreneurs that is gate crashing and boldly scripting inspiring stories even as they are pairing their ingenuity and knowledge with passion for bringing innovative and sustainable solutions to its long[Read More…]
Nothing happening in the country right now seems to surprise us any more, so few people took any notice of a statement made recently by Injeti Srinivas, the Union Secretary of Corporate Affairs. Speaking on the sidelines of a CII event on 25 February, Srinivas defended a judgement, recorded by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in the IL&FS[Read More…]
Modi as PM (Each year of Modi as PM is dealt as one stage, as follows) The THIRD STAGE :2014 onwards “The Third Stage” of ascent and governance covers the first year of Modi’s Rule as Prime Minister of India and a few important developments of this period are sketched hereunder. The very first event covered here is the swearing[Read More…]
Soldiers from Opération Sentinelle on patrol in Strasbourg in 2015 Yesterday, the governor of the Paris military district told France Info that soldiers of the Operation Sentinel counter-terror mission had been authorized to fire today on the “yellow vests.” Asked about whether soldiers were capable of carrying out law enforcement duties, General Bruno Le Ray replied: “Our orders are sufficiently[Read More…]
I assure you I haven’t, all of a sudden, found religion. The God I refer to is not the God of compassion and humanity, but a mythical God of power, destruction, thievery, under-handedness, double standards etc. etc. as has been used by various western powers throughout history. When those first Christian crusaders marched towards Palestine, under the banner of Pope[Read More…]
Rude language and strong denial of atrocities define JNU Administration today. On March 14, JNU’s prospectus was allegedly leaked on social media. JNU Students’ Union called for strike against the alleged 300% fee hike. The leaked prospectus was found doing the rounds on social networks. The leaked prospectus mentioned the fees for General Category/EWS, OBC, SC/ST/PWD/BPL/Transgender to be Rs 1200,[Read More…]
23rd March, 1931! At 7:30pm, the British Government silently hanged three revolutionaries in Lahore Jail. Then through a pit smuggled the dead bodies to Ganda Singh Wala village (now situated in Pakistan). They burnt the corpses and threw the ashes into the river. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged 11 hours earlier than the allotted time. Those whom the[Read More…]
A public meeting was organized by Janhastakshep on The Challenges of 2019 and the Role of Media on 22 March 2019 at the Press club. Veteran journalist and columnist Prem Shankar Jha; Hartosh Singh Bal, the editor of Caravan and Professor Apoorvanand of Delhi University were the main speakers. Pankaj Srivastava, a member of the Punya Prasoon Vajpeyi’s team that[Read More…]
We keep hearing it. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is firm on the view that the Yemen conflict should conclude. “We all want this conflict to end,” he never tires of saying. “We all want to improve the dire humanitarian situation.” Then comes the nub, poking, irritating and undeniable: “But the Trump administration fundamentally disagrees that curbing assistance to the[Read More…]
“Will it serve the purpose in curbing growing wave of Islamophobia in world or it will further potentiative it to level than ever” INSIDE OUT Sheikh Umar Ahmad New Zealand terrorist attack on Muslims in mosque was one of the worst attacks depicting rising wave of Islamophobia in world. This attack was taken by majority as a direct reflection of[Read More…]
Edited remarks at Brookings seminar in Doha: Lessons from the 2019 Asian Cup: Sports, Globalization, and Politics in the Arab World Imagining himself as a peacemaker in a conflict-ridden part of the world, FIFA President Gianni Infantino sees a 2022 World Cup shared by Qatar with its Gulf detractors, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as the magic wand[Read More…]
The Christchurch tragedy has exposed the Canberra virus that haemorrhages hypocrisy, racism, lies, scaremongering and heartlessness infecting the Australian psyche. Normalised cruelty against asylum seekers Since Tampa, and more specifically since John Howard, Australia changed. Howard, the arch-white supremacist, monarchist and friend of pedophile Pell, spawned Abbott, Morrison, Dutton and the 28 LNP senators that voted it’s OK[Read More…]
A Critique – by Dr. K. S. Sharma Chief Minister – Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Policies – Programmes X-rayed is the Title of a mega-volume of 672 Pages in Kannada, traversing and x-raying the two decades of Narendra Modi’s Political travelogue. In order to provide a Bird’s Eye-view of this long travelogue, a concise summary in English has been sketched[Read More…]
People displaced by flooding are seen at Bangula evacuation camp, in Nsanje, Malawi, March 12, 2019 [ Credit: L. Masina/VOA] The dire social and economic conditions which prevail for millions of workers and toilers in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Madagascar have been tragically exposed by Cyclone Idai, which has left a historic humanitarian crisis in its wake across the southeast[Read More…]
Boeing’s sales-driven avoidance of producing effective manuals with upgraded pilot training was courting disaster as was outrageously leaving many of the pilots in the dark As internal and external pressures mount to hold Boeing responsible for its criminal negligence, the giant company is exerting its immense influence to limit both its past and future accountability. Boeing whistleblowers and outside aviation[Read More…]
“Why don’t you go to Venezuela and speak to people living there to find out what is really going on?” Invariably, any article or post on social media presenting a different view to that pushed by the corporate media would prompt numerous comments such as this — almost always from people not in Venezuela and who, mostly, have never[Read More…]
Let me remind that we are living in the era of the deep crisis of thought and ‘age of cultural intolerance’ across the world because of the Right-wing conservative forces has captured the power in most of the countries. For instance, the rise of Donald Trump in the USA, Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and PM Modi in India etc. could[Read More…]
Co-Written by Shobha Shukla and Bobby Ramakant Although governments of 193 countries had promised way back in 2015 to end tuberculosis (TB) by 2030, the global annual rate of TB decline since then has been much less than what is required. The rate of TB decline which is currently hovering around 1.5%, should catapult to over 10% by 2025 globally,[Read More…]
A-Z Reasons – Why No to Vote for Modi in 2019 Letter Reasons A Anti-Minority-Dalit-Women-Working Class – The BJP / RSS displays a clear Anti-Dalit-Minority-Working Class attitude as reflected in its policies and ideological leanings. B Big Brother – This is a government run by Mota Bhai (Big Brother), an unconstitutional figure who in connivance with another Big Brother (Prime[Read More…]
Something is infinitely wrong in the picture, a juxtaposition of polar opposites: New Zealand, a country of unfailingly courteous and kind people, and an extremist terrorist killing 50 Muslims at prayer. Of course, modern guns made it possible, a hate-filled extremist of Australian origin set the stage, and a country not familiar with such violence — thus an easy target. [Read More…]
Well, not exactly like that, but in a way, yes. Now, finally, ‘the gloves are off’. The U.S. is openly threatening the historically timid ICC (International Criminal Court) and its judges. And unexpectedly, the ICC is hitting back. It refuses to shut up, to kneel, and to beg for mercy. Suddenly, even the Western mass media outlets cannot conceal[Read More…]
Politics around the world has been changing dramatically. Extreme right has risen into the power throughout the globe from the Donald Trump of US (2016) to Rodrigo Duterte of Philippines (2016) and from Victor Orban of Hungary (2010) to Jair Bolsanaro of Brazil (2019). Rise of[Read More…]
“And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” (Howard Zinn, late American historian and distinguished[Read More…]
This is a transcript of the full interview with PressTV for their Program “Economic Divide”, of which sections were aired in this broadcast – U.S. military use of IMF, World Bank https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/03/14/590986/US-Military-Use-of-IMF-World-Bank Background Wikileaks revelation Here is the link to the news story: https://www.mintpressnews.com/leaked-wikileaks-doc-reveals-how-us-military-uses-of-imf-world-bank-as-unconventional-weapons/254708/ The U.S. Army states that major global financial institutions — such as the World Bank, International[Read More…]
Gallup headlined on March 21st, “Ukraine’s Election: Voters Disenchanted Ahead of Key Vote”, and “World-Low 9% of Ukrainians Confident in Government”. Might the reason for both be that no candidate in the contest is respected by the Ukrainian public, and that only three — the candidates with the least-low public approval — are the only ones who have even a[Read More…]
Fifty million or more people are estimated to have died due to the 2nd World War; untold many millions more bore scars of every kind: Catastrophe enough. The weapons of war had by the end of the war begun to reach a destructive capability that made another world war likely to be very much worse. A primary motive for the formation[Read More…]
After Wednesday’s meeting of the council of ministers, French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux announced that President Emmanuel Macron would activate army units during this weekend’s “yellow vest” protests. This is the first time since the 1954–1962 war in Algeria that the army is to be mobilized in police operations on French soil against the population. Griveaux announced that the operation[Read More…]
It turns out that walls can’t always be seen. Donald Trump may never build his “great, great wall,” but that doesn’t mean he isn’t working to wall Americans in. It’s a story that needs to be told. This past month, for instance, claims of ISIS’s near total defeat in Syria have continued to mount. As a result, numerous foreigners who had traveled[Read More…]
Wake Up India: Essays for Our Times – continued A democracy needs at least two big parties and to rotate them. Time to rotate and give the baton to the Congress and its allies now. Demonetisation failed to bring back any black money. In fact, the BJP government is being asked to give an explanation for the excess money it[Read More…]
Never let a bloody and opportune crisis pass. In New Zealand, there is talk about gun reform after attacks on two Christchurch mosques left fifty dead. There have been remarks made in parliament about unchecked white supremacy growing with enthusiastic violent urge in Australasia. In Turkey, the approach has shifted into another gear: the canny, even menacing exploitation by Turkey’s[Read More…]
Jewish supremacists in 2000 celebrating Baruch Goldberg’s massacre of 29 Palestinian Muslims in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron The Christchurch shooting and ensuing furor over white supremacy brought to mind a similar massacre of Muslims in a mosque in Palestine perpetrated by a Jewish supremacist several decades ago. Two recent headlines about fascism have coalesced in my mind into mirror images.[Read More…]
Fifty innocent Muslims were killed after terrorist showered bullets on them, who were offering Friday Salah (Namaaz), in two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch. The stomach turning massacre is birthing brand new terminologies like ‘White Zealotry’ and ‘White Christian Extremism’ as the writings on the shooting gun, that was recovered and clearly seen in the live video[Read More…]
Information Millions can be seen, in photos and videos, supporting Maduro, the democratically elected Venezuelan President. If a westerner believes himself to be well informed by his Orwellian propaganda machine, can that westerner explain the reason why none of these images are shown in Western Lying Media? And no, westerners cannot afford to say that all these lies and manipulated disinformation are[Read More…]
During the period of 17 September to 11 December of 2016, the United States and its allies carried out a massive operation to move ISIS’s surviving jihadists who were in the oil-producing Iraqi region of Mosul, into the Syrian oil-producing region of Deir Ezzor and Palmyra. This was done so that those oil-stealing-and-selling jihadists in Iraq would now be[Read More…]
May the soul flourish; May youth be as the new-grown grain Navroz, usually celebrated on 21 March in Iran and Central Asia, is the “New Day”, the end of the old year with its hardships and deceptions and the start of the New Year to be filled with hope and optimism. With each periodical festival, the participants find the same[Read More…]
A biopic and a web series on Narendra Modi scheduled for release in middle of general elections are indeed new and innovative ways of spreading propaganda. Whether it causes violation of model code of conduct in any ways is for Election commission to ascertain. With dates being announced it has the required apparatus at its disposal to enquire into the[Read More…]
(The fourth Chinese veto in preventing declaration of Masood Azhar as a global terrorist is not only a rebuff but the signal of an additional factor in the very basic Kashmir problem!) The recent incident in Pulwama which drew condemnation from all over the world was attributed by the Indian authorities to Masood Azhar, the head of the Jaish-e-[Read More…]
On Friday, the youth spoke. And they spoke loudly. In excess of a million young people skipped school and colleges and marched around the globe demanding urgent action on climate change. They did so in over a hundred countries. Listening to one young activist about why their generation cares so much about climate change, they replied: “it is the urgency[Read More…]
Our modern industrial economy traces a straight line from resource extraction to manufacturing to sales to waste disposal. Since Earth has finite resources and limited ability to absorb pollution, the straight-line economy is unsustainable; it is designed for eventual failure. Why not make the economy circular, with waste from one process feeding into other production processes, thus dramatically reducing the need[Read More…]
A censorious and censoring attitude has engulfed responses to the mental airings of the Christchurch shooter. Material in connection with Brenton Tarrant, the alleged gunman behind the killing of 50 individuals at two mosques in New Zealand, is drying up; his manifesto, for one, is being disaggregated and spread through multiple forms, removed from their various parts with blunt razors. [Read More…]
We’re dead men walking. Last summer a group of eminent climate scientists published a warning that we were close to a threshold where human induced warming could set off a cascade of positive feedbacks which would increase temperatures to Hothouse Earth, a 5-7C rise in temperature, the end of civilization and maybe even humanity. They warned that “Incremental linear changes[Read More…]
Political commentators sympathetic to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Fatah Movement, in particular, fanned out as soon as the news was announced of Mohammad Shtayyeh’s appointment as the new Palestinian Prime Minister. It is no surprise to witness this gush of support and enthusiasm, for Shtayyeh is a Fatah man, par excellence. Gone are the days of the factional[Read More…]
Co-Written by Amita Basu and Shilpi Bhardwaj One of the countless Holika pyres dotting the Allahabad cityscape before Holi Amid growing environmental awareness, government has recently targeted Diwali fireworks. Laws on manufacture, sale and hours of use have been passed, altered, flouted and forgotten. But public awareness is growing: pockets of concerned young people are boycotting fireworks and[Read More…]
Very few journalists stood by peoples’rights and dared to expose atrocities committed by corporates and government. One such fine committed journalist was Darryl D’Monte who inspired younger generation. He passed away on March 16 in a Mumbai hospital. Pioneering work A prominent advocate of the advanced locality management (ALM) movement, which involved citizens in care of their neighborhoods, he was[Read More…]
A Professor from Madras University was describing the background of Champaran Satyagrah of 1917, at an International Conference on India Vietnam Relations through the Prism of Gandhian and Ho Chi Minh Philosophies at Centre of Southeast Asia and Pacific Studies Sri Venkateshwara University Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh on March 18, 2019. As the learned Professor was speaking why Mahatma Gandhi[Read More…]
Delhi is the ancient city of India. The city’s history bears testimony to settlements and also to ruins. This order of settling and deserting of the city has been going on since the Mahabharata period. In the medieval period, this city enjoyed eminence as a centre of power and this eminence endured for a long time. It is hardly surprising[Read More…]
UPHOLD THE RIGHT TO DISSENT OF THE STRUGGLING PEOPLE OF NIYAMGIRI!! BhubaneswarMarch 19, 2019: We the undersigned, with deep anger and profound sorrow, condemn the killing of the dalit activist Dani Batra at the gate of the Vedanta Alumina refinery plant at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district yesterday morning. Sujit Kumar Minj of the OISF has also been killed. Over 50[Read More…]
The U.S. government, determined to extradite and try Julian Assange for espionage, must find a way to separate what Assange and WikiLeaks did in publishing classified material leaked to them by Chelsea Manning from what The New York Times and The Washington Post did in publishing the same material. There is no federal law that prohibits the press from publishing government secrets. It is a crime,[Read More…]
Over 1.5 million young students across all continents took to the streets on Friday March 15th for the first ever global climate strike. Messages in more than 40 languages were loud and clear: world leaders must act now to address the climate crisis and save our future. The school strike was the largest climate action in history. Nevertheless it went[Read More…]
In Europe, Greta Thunberg has smashed all the memetic barriers succeeding in doing what nobody else had succeeded before: bringing the climate emergency within the horizon of the public and of the decision makers. In parallel, on the other side of the Atlantic, another young woman, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez has been doing something similar with her “Green New Deal.”These are[Read More…]
When Turkish vice-president Fuat Oktay and foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu became this weekend the first high-level foreign government delegation to travel to Christchurch they were doing more than expressing solidarity with New Zealand’s grieving Muslim community. Messrs. Oktay and Cavusoglu were planting Turkey’s flag far and wide in a global effort to expand beyond the Turkic and former Ottoman world[Read More…]
How many of us remember the post emergency era famous quote that “Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee can win election from any constituency in Pakistan”; whilst he was the foreign minister in Sri Morarji Bhai’s cabinet in 1977? Remember that India had just won a conclusive war in 1971 courtesy of Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s government. The wound of Bangladesh’s creation by[Read More…]
Israel is off-limits. The criminalisation of anti-Semitism means nothing short of this. In fact, France’s President Macron says anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism and both are now legally defined as “hate crimes”. Will this be a global precursor? Will the world uphold such a sweeping, broad legal definition that has the potential to embrace the inhumanity and egregious acts[Read More…]
“Sapiens. A brief history of humankind” by Jewish Israeli historian Dr Yuval Noah Harari from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Al Quds to Indigenous Arab Palestinians) is a well-written, interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking book that challenges and suggests many ideas. However for all its radical and progressive pretensions it involves a Eurocentric, Anglocentric, Zionocentric and neoliberal narrative that is most[Read More…]
Shadow Wars – The Secret Struggle for the Middle East by Christopher Davidson. Oneworld Publishing, U.K., 2016. Written in response to the ‘Arab Spring’ initiated in Tunisia in 2011, Shadow Wars – The Secret Struggle for the Middle East, is a powerful indictment of the western neoliberal economic/political order. Christopher Davidson has gathered a huge amount of information from many[Read More…]
18 March 2019 marks two years of the violent atrocious judgment sentencing 13 workers of Maruti Suzuki Workers Union to Life Imprisonment by the Sessions Court, Gurgaon. The 13 workers, the entire Union body of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union – who spearheaded resistance against contractualization, brutal working conditions and for Union formation – continue to languish in Gurgaon Central[Read More…]
The shocking context of the white supremacist hateful terror attack that killed 50 Muslims and injured as many as 34 others offering prayers at the Al Noor mosque, in Christchurch, New Zealand,cannot be seen in isolation from the ideological strands that get woven into the anti-migrant, anti-Muslim narrative that was primarily triggered by the publication of Samuel Huntington’s book, “Clash[Read More…]
Dictatorship Strange “dictatorship” in which the Parliament is controlled by the opposition. Strange “dictatorship” where elections are held all the time. Strange “dictatorship” in which “dictators” lose elections and respect the results. Strange “dictatorship” in which some can appeal, live on TV, to crimes against the president and the country, in total impunity. Strange “dictatorship” in which the “leader” of[Read More…]
Like Chris, a French writer and filmmaker, “What I’m passionate about is History; politics interests me only insofar as it is the cross-section of History in the present.” Looking, at the contemporary scenario at our own place, I was thinking how past three centuries have shaped our contemporary narrative, in this column I may not venture courage to write how[Read More…]
The coming 2019 may prove to be a watershed in India’s political history, as were the 1977 elections forty-two years ago. In 1977, elections were held after a declared Emergency, during which the Constitution was suspended, political activity disallowed and opposition leaders and activists imprisoned. The success of non-Congress parties in those elections strengthened the electoral system in Indian democracy.[Read More…]
Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers We are completing what became more than a week-long peace delegation to Venezuela organized by the US Peace Council and the Committee for International Solidarity in Venezuela (COSI). The trip was complicated by American Airlines cancelling all flights in and out of the country, leaving us scrambling for ways to get there and[Read More…]
“As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” Former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter. Venezuela has been under U.S.-enforced “medieval siege” designed to terrorise the population and bring Venezuela on its knees. It is a genocidal economic warfare targeting any independent nation that[Read More…]
Children’s crusades do not necessarily end well. During the years of armed missions to the Holy Land, when Jerusalem meant something to the sacredly inclined in Europe, children were encouraged to take to the rough and dangerous road as it wound its way towards Palestine. In 1212, a boy of 12 is said to have begun preaching at Saint-Denis in[Read More…]
Those who allow seriousness to get in the way of imagination, fail to discover what they need to free themselves from. For many decades I have been aware of knocking on the door of Western Imperialism from the inside in search of a universal perspective. Maybe it started 80 years ago when I first experienced authority (de jour)in the person[Read More…]
● Netanyahu: Those who criticise us are Anti-Semites, Self-Hating Jews. These traitors weaken Israel ànd play into the hands of our enemies. ■ Modi: Those that criticise us are Anti-National, Anti-Hindu. These traitors weaken India and play into the hands of our enemies. ● Netanyahu: Israel is under threat from Terror. I will destroy the terrorists in Gaza, bomb them[Read More…]
As the country is preparing for elections, all the politicians are trying to outsmart each other in promises and rhetoric. Amidst of the statements of leaders, some are really very disturbing. For instance, Sakshi Maharaj, MP, lok sabha said that the upcoming elections will be fought in the name of the country and there will be no elections after that.[Read More…]
An angry human being cannot think of anything sane and rational. He/She executes everything which ultimately leads to scattering off the foundation of humanity. Similarly, the India we’re living in is burning in anger. Anger over democracy and love for fascism. The citizens of this diverse nation today are cynic and ignores everything which can demolish diversity but concentrates on[Read More…]
The Socialist Party pays a humble tribute to 49 worshippers who have been killed by a white supremacist who opens indiscriminate firing on them while praying in two mosques at Christchurch city in New Zealand. The party expresses deep condolences towards their families and wishes a speedy recovery to the wounded. The party terms the killings a crime against humanity.[Read More…]
The Sikh congregation at a gurdwara in Surrey held prayers for the victims of Christchurch attacks by a neo Nazi. The Friday attacks on two mosques in New Zealand had left 50 people dead. On Sunday, the congregation at the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple, Surrey remembered the dead and prayed for the speedy recovery of those injured. What binds the[Read More…]
“Kingsmill Bond” certainly sounds like a proper name for a City of London financial analyst. He looks the part, too: gray hair expertly trimmed, well-cut suit. He’s lived in Moscow and Hong Kong and worked for Deutsche Bank, the Russian financial firm Troika Dialog, and Citibank. He’s currently “new energy strategist” for a small British think tank called Carbon Tracker,[Read More…]
China has yet again blocked the move at UN to designate Masood Azhar as a global terrorist. India is highly disappointed at China’s stand which had the support of other permanent members of security council- US, UK, France Russia and many other non-permanent members like Germany, Poland & Belgium etc. A security council diplomat, not happy with the Chinese[Read More…]
“Er! Ahem!! Excuse me, you may not have noticed but something is happening. My neighbor has imported a man-eating tiger to eat her mother-in-law. She wants her MIL to become a MEAL.” (Ugh! Bad pun – or whatever) “What after the tiger has finished the offending mother-in-law?” “Well, my neighbor hasn’t thought about it that far. Maybe she thinks the[Read More…]
Apparently, most of Western sheep-like humans are buying all the imperial propaganda against Venezuela. And the rest of Western human beings, the minority, they seem to have a lot of doubts about what’s going on in Venezuela, as if they were living in a Stone Age era without instant access to a titanic amount of information provided by an enormous variety of[Read More…]
The argument that the Christchurch shooter, suspect Brenton Tarrant, or the views of Australia’s Senator Fraser Anning, seemingly holding a lone torch, are somehow not representative of the broader whole, be it Australia or New Zealand, is a self-deflecting exercise. They are the uncomfortable mirrors of ruin, actual and perceived. They are the voices of people who can either be[Read More…]
Within hours of Australian White Supremacist Brenton Tarrant’s gunning down of forty-nine Muslims at two mosques at Christchurch during Juma prayer on 15th March, tens of thousands of short and long postings on the event came out in social media. In the following twenty-four hours, hundreds of op-eds came out in newspapers in so many languages across the world. As[Read More…]
Rt. Hon. Jacinda Ardern Prime Minister PO Box 18888 Parliament Buildings Wellington NEW ZEALAND Dear Madam Prime Minister, I’m William Gomes, Human rights defender and Freelance journalist based in York, United Kingdom. Like many other British round, the country, I had been appalled to wake up to news of the terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, that[Read More…]
Does anyone remember Nigel Farage? He led the UK Independence Party and the ‘leave’ EU vote — along with his last minute ally Boris Johnson who hoped to push himself up to prime minister. Farage is still around as a Member of the European Parliament representing south-east England, a job soon to be redundant when Britain leaves the EU. Boris[Read More…]
The expression “academic prostitution” appears abusive. It either conveys an apparently arbitrary disrespect to certain academics by comparing them to prostitutes, or conversely appears to equate sexual prostitution, – an honorable, if hazardous, occupation – with intellectual prostitution, a definitely dishonorable one. There is no dispute that even those who honestly earn their academic titles can produce shoddy scholarship, rely[Read More…]
The sediment of hatred and discrimination directed at Muslims slowly builds up over time and it is not only the most hateful and dark places online or in the world that lay the groundwork for explosions of hatred and violence such as this The Christchurch terrorists, who earlier today took the lives of nearly 50 people at two mosques, were[Read More…]
The seven-million strong American Muslim Community was alarmed at the White Supremacist terror attacks on two mosques in New Zealand where gunmen entered the mosques and began to shoot and kill Muslim parishioners indiscriminately during the Friday prayer services. At least 49 Muslims were killed and another 48 injured. New Zealand Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed children among shooting victims. An[Read More…]
This week’s attack on two mosques in New Zealand reflects a paradigm shift: the erosion of liberal values and the rise of civilisationalism at the expense of the nation state. So do broader phenomena like wide spread Islamophobia with the crackdown on Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang as its extreme, and growing ant-Semitism These phenomena are fuelled by increasing intolerance and[Read More…]
The Great Replacement”, stated that “the invaders must be removed from European soil, regardless from where they came or when they came. Roma, African, Indian, Turkish, Semitic or other. If they are not of our people, but live in our lands, they must be removed.” This is the statement by the white supremacist who along with other accomplished killed[Read More…]
According to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chief climate advisor to the European Union, “We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet”. As fascism and the horror of murderous hate crimes areon the rise, governments are presiding over runaway climate change leading toward mass extinctions of species, costing the lives of billions and the demise of much of[Read More…]
Does it pay ‘to be good’? Is it still possible to play by the rules in this mad world, governed by brigands? What if the rules are defined and ratified by all countries of the world, but a small group of the strongest (militarily) nations totally ignores them, while using its professional propagandists to reinterpret them in the most bizarre[Read More…]
It’s false because it is definitely untrue, and that’s not merely because America has a higher percentage of its residents in prison than does any other nation on this planet, but also because the only scientific studies that have been done of the matter show — they prove scientifically — that the U.S. is a dictatorship by its[Read More…]
Fresh off a strike in Erie, PA, the United Electrical Workers are a model of the working-class internationalism that can build a more just world. After nine days of picketing in below freezing temperatures, striking workers in Erie, Pennsylvania returned to work recently under a 90-day agreement. The 1,700 strong United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) strike[Read More…]
This is wonderful news… maybe the best news of the decade. Finally the truth about college admission scams has been exposed. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Corruption extends from K – 12 through Graduate School. I have waited since 1942 for this. In 1942 I was five years old living with my parents in Philadelphia. My Father[Read More…]
PUDR draws attention to the illegality behind the decision of the Central Government-ruled Jammu and Kashmir to ban Jamaat-e-Islami of Jammu and Kashmir on February 28, 2019. While attention has been focussed on the escalation and de-escalation of tension between India-Pakistan, the Central Government has intensified repression in the[Read More…]
Few days ago Bhima-Koregaon witnessed the progressive manifestation of the resistance against dominant Hindutva brahmanical cultural coercion on the vast mases of people in the country. The celebration at BhimaKoregaon brings into ashes the Hindutva political conspiracy of unifying India on the basis of brahmanical theological practices. BhimaKoregaon is a spatial manifestation of the resistance which the oppressed has presented[Read More…]
Infrastructure is the catchword of our politicians and bureaucrats. But they are obsessed with creating infrastructure for the upper class, not for common people. The pedestrian bridge collapse in Mumbai last Thursday killing six people and injuring several others underscores the extremely anti-people nature of the Indian State. But it is not likely to learn any lessons unless massive public[Read More…]
Co-Written by PunsaraAmarasinghe and Anastasia Glazova The fame of British Empire was once embellished around the corners of the world as the empire where sun never sets and its imperial majesty ruled the millions of lives regardless how they were brought under the colonial yoke. The end of two great wars saw eventually paved the path to dismantle British Empire[Read More…]
No powerful ruler transfers power unless his/her reign is threatened and he/she can no longer continue. Allama Mashriqi’s private army of Khaksars in British India was indeed instrumental in bringing about the end of the British Raj in the Indian sub-continent. On March 19, 1940, a large number of Khaksar freedom fighters were massacred while marching in protest of restrictions[Read More…]
Five weapons were said to have been used, all inscribed with symbols, numbers and insignia. The individual charged with the shootings at two Christchurch mosques that left 49 dead was an Australian with, it is alleged, a simple purpose: inflict death, and on specific communities in worship. Even as the carnage became clear, Christchurch was already the epicentre of twenty-four[Read More…]
A ghazal for Muslim victims of hatred in Christchurch, NZ, March 15, 2019 Each cosmic conflagration in the midnight sky Helps sketch a constellation in the midnight sky. Dim, bright, small points of light light years apart comprise Apparent aggregations in the midnight sky. Imagined beings, mythic heroes, mesmerize, Impart more fascination to the midnight sky. Far, far above[Read More…]
This morning, Friday the 15th March, we woke up to the horrendous news of the massacre of 49 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. A further 20 people are seriously injured. Just the name of the city – Christchurch – and the mention of two mosques being attacked with the innocent, Muslim worshippers being mowed[Read More…]
Forty Nine people have been shot dead and 20 injured. The tragedy in New Zealand invokes Muslims to follow the Prophet, Muhammad. The man was called a Mercy to humanity, and his words, deeds, actions, and prayers reflected his character; mercy. Many Muslims proudly keep the beard believing it was the tradition of the Prophet. Indeed, it was, now it[Read More…]
Dear friends, “Salam (peace)!” is how Afghans greet one another, some of them simultaneously placing a hand over their hearts. But, while everyone including Afghans wants peace, the Afghan Peace Volunteers and I have observed thatthe human species appears to be stuck onviolent peace. We think that this is because most of us are reared as armed doves, like the[Read More…]
On February 28 the Supreme Court (SC) put on hold its February 13 order directing states to evict tribals and other forest-dwellers whose claims for land titles under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA) have been rejected. The SC is hearing a batch of petitions filed eleven year ago by the forest conservation groups including Wildlife First, Nature Conservation Society[Read More…]
“We are unstoppable. Another world is possible.” That was the message of the youth-led School Strike for Climate movement on Friday as hundreds of thousands of students across the globe walked out of class and flooded the streets to demand immediate action against the ecological crisis, which threatens to render the planet uninhabitable for future generations. With events planned in over 130 countries on[Read More…]
Forty nine people have been killed and more than 20 others have been seriously injured in shootings at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch after one or more terrorists opened fire on worshipers. One terrorist, who identified himself as 28-year-old Australian-born Brenton Tarrant, filmed the attack on social media. Dressed in a military-style, camouflage outfit, and carrying[Read More…]
While Venezuela fully restored electricity supply and near-fully restored water supply, the country faces economic war by imperialism with increasing intensity. A Reuters report said: India’s Reliance Industries Ltd, operator of the world’s biggest refining complex, said on Wednesday it had halted supply of diluents to Venezuela’s national oil company PdVSA and would not resume such sales until sanctions were[Read More…]
More facts on imperialist aggression on Iraq have come out. The imperialists knew that the aggression would destabilize the entire region. Citing classified memo, media reports said: As U.S. president George W. Bush pressed the case for war in Iraq in the summer of 2002, top State Department officials warned that an invasion to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could[Read More…]
Donald Trump, the US president, has identified The New York Times as “A true enemy of the people”. (The New York Times, “Trump Attacks The Times, in a Week of Unease for the American Press”, February 20, 2019, by Michael M. Grynbaum and Eileen Sullivan; an article on the issue also appeared in print on February 21, 2019, on page[Read More…]
Regime changes in Iraq and Libya, Syria’s war, Venezuela’s crisis, sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Russia, and North Korea are reflections of a new global imperialism imposed by a core of capitalist nations in support of trillions of dollars of concentrated investment wealth. This new world order of mass capital has become a totalitarian empire of inequality and repression. The global[Read More…]
On March 5, I went to the Bekal police station in Kerala’s Kasaragod district to stand guarantor for one of my students. Avala Ramu from Andhra Pradesh is in the final semester of his MA in International Relations and Politics at the Central University of Kerala. He was charge-sheeted under IPC 124A, the Sedition clause. I had to pitch in[Read More…]
Efforts to live more sustainably have been popularized by individuals, leaders, and corporations across the globe. While reports seem to indicate that people are more socially aware, the widespread popularization of the term ‘sustainability’ falsely leads us to believe that we are doing much more than we actually are. In reality, we are on a path of pseudo-sustainability. Most of[Read More…]
In his 1978 book ‘India Mortgaged’, T.N. Reddy predicted the country would one day open all sectors to foreign direct investment and surrender economic sovereignty to imperialist powers. Today, the US and Europe cling to a moribund form of capitalism and have used various mechanisms to bolster the system in the face of economic stagnation and massive inequalities: the raiding of public budgets,[Read More…]
Kids are taking over the streets in other countries, rallying and chanting and refusing to go to school one day a week. Young people across the world are striking to draw attention to the ravages of climate change. They are demanding — with their bodies and their voices — that the catastrophe each of them will inherit be a priority for the grown-ups[Read More…]
The Green New Deal bill is an audacious 10-year mobilization plan to move the U.S. to a zero-carbon economy. Bold and ambitious interventions like it are necessary, in the U.S. and elsewhere, if we are to unsettle the current complacency with climate breakdown. Academics like economist Robert Pollin, who kept alive the idea of a Green New Deal in the past years and[Read More…]
Lobbies, powerful interests and financial matters are usually the first things that come to mind when the aircraft industry is considered. Safety, while deemed of foremost importance, is a superficial formality, sometimes observed in the breach. To see the camera footage of the wreckage from the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 was to be shocked by a certain irony:[Read More…]
When hate becomes institutionalized And love is forced to look for places to hide If such a scenario you encounter, is neutrality still desirable? With cries for war all around And the feeblest voice for peace also drowned If such a scenario you encounter, is neutrality still desirable? When lies are awarded generously And truth just looks on[Read More…]
Ever since out first ancestor lit a fire, humans have been pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Add to that the first herder because ruminants are another large emitter of greenhouse gas (GHG). Some people want to declare a national emergency and ban fossil fuels within ten years. How? I am for it and all ready to go. But please[Read More…]
Samir Amin (1931-2018) was one of the great organic intellectuals of our time. He synthesized theory and practice; Marxism and developmentalism; comradeship and critique, like no other. Only People Make Their Own History is the first ever posthumous publication of Amin’s work. It includes ten of Amin’s most important essays published in the 21st century, and an introduction by[Read More…]
This is an island surrounded by water, big water, ocean water — Donald Trump, INDEPENDENT, September 29, 2017 Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in September 2017. One and a half years later, many of the island’s more than 3 million U.S. citizens continue to be forgotten and ignored by the federal government. Earlier this year, Stan Cox and I stayed[Read More…]
The Oxford Dictionary defines shame as “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour”. It could be self-inflicted, or an act committed by others leading to a loss of self-respect or self-esteem. “Shame on you” is something no respectful human being wants to hear from anyone. Self-respecting victims of shame sometimes kill[Read More…]
Recent Chinese pressure on Myanmar to approve a controversial dam project and the arrest in recent days in Kazakhstan of a human rights activist suggest that China in a seemingly tone-deaf pursuit of its interests is forcing governments to choose between heeding increasingly anti-Chinese public sentiment and pleasing Beijing to ensure continued political and economic support. Apparent Chinese disregard of[Read More…]
The Supreme court had earlier in Oct 2018 closed down the firecracker industry to curb pollution. The court on March 12, 2019 took a relook into its order banning the existing firecrackers. A bench of Justices SA Bobde and S Abdul Nazeer asked the Centre whether any comparative study has been done to fairly establish that vehicles pollute more than[Read More…]
Health system in India has seen several incongruities since its independence. Public health expenditure, inspite of repeated promises in election manifestos as well as in policy documents towards raising it to 2.5 to 3 % of GDP, remains around 1 to 2 %. The the existing health care infrastructure is flawed and inadequate; the hospitals are under-staffed, under-financed compelling the[Read More…]
The uncertainty of the present physical link of the valley to the outside world shows the urgency of restoring other historical routes to prevent people from getting claustrophobic! The frequent closure of the National Highway NH-1A linking valley by surface to the outside world during the current winter has almost turned the local population claustrophobic. They feel to have been[Read More…]
Rahul Gandhi has declared that his party would reserve 33% seats for women in Parliament and State assemblies as their representation is very low. He went a step forward and suggested that they would also ensure that 33% women are taken into Union government’s various services. These announcement are great for many but they also sound an alarm bell. Congress[Read More…]
Juan Guaido, the self-proclaimed “interim president” of Venezuela, has offered to sell out Venezuela’s oil industry to foreign private companies, and the U.S. has expressed its willingness to buy. Guaido has proposed a “draft legislation” that will sell Venezuela’s oil reserves to private companies, a Reuters report said. The move would shrink the participation of state-run oil company PdVSA. Ricardo Hausmann, Guaido’s[Read More…]
Fomenting regime change—by a soft coup, by economic sabotage, by fostering a military revolt—is likely to lead to more violence and more suffering The United States is pushing for an overthrow of the government of Venezuela. The Trump administration has denounced Nicolas Maduro as a “dictator,” dismissing the 2018 election, which the opposition boycotted. Instead of a good neighbor policy[Read More…]
Declaration from the Third National Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress, the Indigenous Governing Council, and the EZLN To the peoples of the world: To those organizations and collectives acting in resistance and rebellion: To the national and international Sixth: To the media: As Ayuuk, Binizza, Chinanteco, Chol, Chontal, Guarijío, Maya, Mayo, Mazahua, Mazateco, Mixteco, Nahua, Nayeri, Otomí, Popoluca, Purépecha,[Read More…]
Can you relate to the feeling of being trapped in a world where your identity is in your enemy? Can you relate to anger the accompanies when the language you speak and choice of god you pray to determine whether you’ll be able to put food on the table? Can you relate to the feeling alienation when babus and netas[Read More…]
In 2011 Swami Nigmanand died on the 115th day of his fast against illegal mining in Haridwar. Matri Sadan, the ashram with which he was associated alleges that he was killed by poisoning in the hospital at the behest of a mining mafia. Swami Gokulanand, who sat on first fast organised by Matri Sadan along with Swami Nigmanand in 1998,[Read More…]
In the wake of the February 14, 2018, mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 students and staff members, a teacher said the school looked “like a war zone.” And to many young Americans, that’s exactly what it felt like. But this shooting was different. Refusing to be victims, Parkland survivors disrupted the “thoughts and[Read More…]
More US measures have been taken in recent weeks to further cement the Israeli position and isolate the Palestinian Authority (PA), before the official unveiling of President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘deal of the century’. But while attention is focused on spiteful US actions, little time has been spent discussing the PA’s own responses, options and strategies. The last of Washington’s[Read More…]
This essay was in part, inspired by — and written in memory of — William Blum (1932-2018). Blum was a comrade-in-arms, and himself one of the great keyboard warriors of his time. We all had much to learn from this man about courage, integrity, tenacity, and resilience in the service of truth. His trenchant opposition to the ruthless and relentless exploitation of other countries and their[Read More…]
“Trudeau came out and asked for strong women, and he got them.” Michelle Rempel, Conservative Party MP, The Atlantic, Mar 12, 2019 The gods have various roles, and most of them are intrusively irritating. They select humans, and drive them mad. They select them for special missions, praise them and drive them to death. They also select them to, if[Read More…]
On a recent delegation to Iran, we experienced first-hand the legendary Iranian hospitality. Iranians are particularly thrilled to meet Americans, but as we discovered, our government’s policies are hurting the very people who want to be our friends. As our 28-person delegation traveled through the country wearing messages on our jackets proclaiming “Peace with Iran” in English and Farsi, we were surrounded[Read More…]
Details of the Electricity War, part of a plan to incite unrest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the ruling party, have been exposed. President Maduro has presented details of the attacks on the country’s electricity supply system. The attacks were made through three phases. Maduro on March 11, 2019 described the sabotage as the cruelest blow in the history of[Read More…]
I am a citizen of India. I consider it my duty to abide by the 11 Fundamental Duties that are laid down in Part IV-A, Article 51-A of the Constitution of India, because India is a constitutional democracy, where the Constitution of our nation is the supreme authority and we, the people of India, have given to ourselves this[Read More…]
I have been coming to Australia, particularly to Perth, Western Australia, for the last 43 years. My wife, Sandra was born here and now our daughter and her family live here. When I first arrived in December 1976 Perth reminded me of Haifa, in Palestine. There are the eucalyptus trees dotted everywhere, there is the warm blue expanse of the[Read More…]
Once the all-encompassing chittering and chattering about tariffs on Chinese imports by the western corporate media subsided, Trump, egocentric businessman rather than the President of the Empire, “out of the blue”, one could almost say, under the pretext of ‘unfair’ Chinese trading, launches a new ferocious and as usual totally illegal campaign of aggression against China’s fast-growing economy. It’s[Read More…]
His visit struck a sour note. The Australian prime minister Scott Morrison was making an effort to show he cared: about those intangible things called borders, secure firm and shut to the unwanted human matter coming by sea. The distant Australian territory of Christmas Island was selected to assist in coping with arrivals from Manus and Nauru Island needing medical[Read More…]
George Friedman, the head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor, issued a report on March 5th, “After Hanoi: North Korea, the US and Japan”, and it said: The strategy since World War II, built on the assumption that U.S. conventional forces can defeat any foe and pacify the country, is being abandoned. And in the case of the Hanoi talks,[Read More…]
On a global scale, the current events within Canada’s Justin Trudeau cabinet are not much more than the proverbial tempest in a teapot. While receiving saturation coverage on Canada’s CBC and some national newspapers, it is not totally noteworthy with global significance, other than some slipping and tarnishing of Trudeau’s halo with foreign media. Having said that the problem’s within[Read More…]
The coming 2019 may prove to be a watershed in India’s political history, as were the 1977 elections forty-two years ago. In 1977, elections were held after a declared Emergency, during which the Constitution was suspended, political activity disallowed and opposition leaders and activists imprisoned. The success of non-Congress parties in those elections strengthened the electoral system in Indian democracy.[Read More…]
Even as I write, a new twitter trend #boycottSurfexcel is soaring. Depicting Hindu-Muslim unity-ish feeling the ad is now being trashed for its subservient Hindu sentiments as compared to those of Muslims; for promoting love-jihaad and being Hindu phobic. Coming in the backdrop of on-going strategic war with Pakistan, it is an understatement to say feelings of nationalism have touched[Read More…]
We entered the age of fake news long time ago and some intellectuals and scholars have started to call it an important branch of post truth. When did it started and when will it end, nobody has the accurate answers. There are different views about the beginning of the Post-Truth Age. Some say that it started with the[Read More…]
At this uncertain time of scarred historicity and the chaotic years I had followed from the beginning of my existence onto the world, memory of my past would often haunt me. I had seen the people of my age suffocated, caught in the hue and cry not finding any sight of peace dawning. I had heard houses have souls and[Read More…]
Imperialists are intensifying their economic war against the Bolivarian Venezuela. A Reuters report said: The U.S. is pressing India to stop buying oil from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government. The report referred to Washington’s top envoy for Venezuela. “We say you should not be helping this regime. You should be on the side of the Venezuelan people,” Elliott Abrams told[Read More…]
Nazareth: The United Nations postponed last week for the third time the publication of a blacklist of Israeli and international firms that profit directly from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied territories. The international body had come under enormous pressure to keep the database under wraps after lobbying behind the scenes from Israel, the United States and many of the[Read More…]
Decide to Network, use every letter you write, every conversation you have, every meeting you attend to express your fundamental beliefs and dreams, affirm to others the vision of the world you want. In a world of big powers, big media and monopolies, networking is a new freedom, the new democracy, a new form of happiness. Robert Muller Robert[Read More…]
To The Commissioner of Police Mumbai We the undersigned strongly condemn the way in which attempts were recently made to intimidate Prof Ram Puniyani by people supposedly belonging to CID. We fear that it is to silence his voice which has always remained critical of communal forces and has fought for peace and harmony. We are told that on 9[Read More…]
Ayodhya issue is an explosive mix of history, religion and politics. Can the Ayodhya land dispute mediation panel make any dent in crafting a compromise among the disputing parties is the fundamental question? This method of arbitration has made the case too simple, because if any such compromise has to have reached, it could have been done long ago, and[Read More…]
To, Shri Narendra Modi Prime Minister of India Dear Prime Minister, NREGA has been a lifeline for the poor, with one in every three rural households working in it. About 5 crore households access some employment under this Act every year. Even though most households are able to access their full guarantee to employment under NREGA, the programme has played[Read More…]
Thank God for the clouds of war that frighteningly hovered for a week have started waning from the skies of the Sub-Continent. In the seventy years, acrimonious history of India and Pakistan another terrifying date has been added to already existing long list of the dates reminiscent of awful tales of death and destruction. On Tuesday 26 February 2019, twenty[Read More…]
New environmental research continues to alarm as three studies published within the past week amply demonstrate. Danish scientists report a significant increase in winter rain over Greenland. The rain-induced melt refreezes forming a dark crusty layer which acts as a greater heat absorber than white fresh snow. After decades of more frequent winter rain, the snow-pack contains many such[Read More…]
“I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury.” So explained Chelsea Manning in justifying her refusal to answer questions and comply with a grand jury subpoena compelling her to testify on her knowledge of WikiLeaks. “Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly stated ethical obligations to the[Read More…]
The Trump Administration Is Reckless Enough to Turn the Cold War With Iran Into a Hot One Here’s the foreign policy question of questions in 2019: Are President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, all severely weakened at home and with few allies abroad, reckless enough to set off a war with[Read More…]
Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers One of the lessons from our recent visit to Iran as a Peace Delegation is that Iran is a mature country. It is 2,500 years old, ten times as old as the United States and one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilizations with settlements dating back to 7,000 BC. It was an empire that[Read More…]
The news that one’s compatriots have brought death to 85,000 darling Yemeni children being hard to stomach, the author wonders how other Americans feel or manage not do not feel. I looked down at the food on my plate, and wished I hadn’t just heard PBS’s News anchor Judy Woodruff report that the war in Yemen had already caused 85,000[Read More…]
In time its caws roused me from my ritual morning immersions: sipping coffee, lacing words together, drawing them like fingers Across the surfaces of life, Yet remaining untouched. How long it cried out for my attention Before I walked to the window to confront it, I do not know, but I knew it was me it had called. [Read More…]
A police raid on a Kazakh group documenting the plight of Kazakhs and Uyghurs caught in a brutal crackdown in China’s north-western province of Xinjiang is about more than a government seeking to please Beijing in the hope that it improves the lot of its ethnic kin while preserving diplomatic and economic relations. Amid suspicions that the raid on the[Read More…]
The members of Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI) held a demonstration in Surrey on Sunday, March 10 against the recent sentencing of three Sikh activists in Punjab, for merely keeping literature that was perceived as “anti-national” by the state police.Arwinder Singh, Surjit Singh and Ranjit Singh were criminally charged in 2016 under draconian laws. Last month, a Nawanshehar court[Read More…]
Venezuela’s electrical systems have been targeted by another cyber-attack. In the face of this imperialist sabotage, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said: “We have overcome so many challenges, we’ll overcome this one.” Venezuelan President was addressing a huge mass gathering in capital city Caracas on Sunday. During the speech, Maduro called on the people to stay true to Chavismo and the sovereignty of Venezuela as the 24-hour[Read More…]
We, the undersigned, Indonesian people and organizations who are profoundly concerned with various diabolical measures inflicted by the government of the United States of America and its allies upon Venezuela and its people, hereby express the following assertions : We denounce and condemn the hostile interventions of the USA against Maduro’s administration and the people of Venezuela, and strongly insist[Read More…]
Chelsea Manning, who bravely exposed atrocities committed by the U.S. military, is again imprisoned in a U.S. jail. On International Women’s Day, March 8, 2019, she was incarcerated in the Alexandria, VA federal detention center for refusing to testify in front of a secretive Grand Jury. Her imprisonment can extend through the term of the Grand Jury, possibly 18 months,[Read More…]
On February 28, 2019 the last financial wire transactions between the small socialist country of Eritrea and all the western countries were stopped with no further wire transfers in USD$ or Euros to or from Eritrea being allowed . UNjust and illegal UN sanctions against Eritrea were lifted recently but the damage being done continues. During the 9 year long[Read More…]
Fear them for their technology; fear them for their ideology and their authoritarianism. But embrace interference and involvement in the economy if it involves coal. This is the fancy hypocrisy of Australian politics, one driven to lunacy and inconsistency by that dark and dirty love. The contrast between a fear of Huawei, on the one hand, and an eager opening[Read More…]
A federal judge ordered Chelsea Manning to prison Friday morning for an indefinite period of time, after the former Army private, jailed for seven years for providing information to WikiLeaks exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, refused on principle to answer any questions before a secret grand jury investigating the media organization and its founder Julian Assange. “The[Read More…]
A simple but important study by Luciano Celi shows what is the real energy return that oil companies manage to attain. Much smaller than you would have believed, in several cases it is today well below 10. Which means that renewable energies already produce a larger EROI than oil and gas. No more excuses for not switching to renewables as fast[Read More…]
Donald J. Trump’s hitherto failed ‘maximum pressure’ approach to Iran, as well as for that matter North Korea, begs the question what the US president’s true objectives are and what options he is left with should the policy ultimately fail. In the case of North Korea, it remains to be seen whether the country’s reported rebuilding of a rocket launch[Read More…]
India has grown into a global powerhouse. Its economy is soaring but the picture on the ground is still quite arid. The green shoots that you see are only a patch of its landscape. Most Indians are hapless victims of inequity. India is one country where intense poverty abounds in the shadow of immense wealth. The Indian economy is projected to[Read More…]
As the month of march progresses, there is great pressure from the administration to intensify the works but does the government have money to make timely payments to the workers? Workers employed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) across India gathered at their nearest police stations to lodge complaints against the Prime Minister of India for irregularities and[Read More…]
The Chairperson National Human Rights Commission Manav Adhikar Bhawan Block-C, GPO Complex, INA New Delhi- 110023 Dear Chairperson, I am William Gomes, Human rights defender and Freelance journalist. According to the information received from Front Line Defenders, as of 4 March 2019, human rights defender Shanmugam Thangasamy, better known as RS Mugilan, remains missing. On 15 February 2019, RS Mugilan[Read More…]
On International Women’s Day (8 March) the Western-dominated celebrations have laudably used the occasion to praise women’s achievements and to press for women’s rights, a more gender-balanced world, equal pay, equal parliamentary representation, gender equality, “Me too” activism, and an end to sexism, discrimination and violence against women. However, palpably ignored in this praiseworthy activism are the horrible and massive[Read More…]
Impoverished people living in numerous countries today would stand a far better chance of survival, and risk far less trauma, if weapon manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon stopped manufacturing and selling death-dealing products. About three decades ago, I taught writing at one of Chicago’s alternative high schools. It’s easy to recall some of their stories—fast-paced,[Read More…]
It takes a lot of courage to be who and what you are when who or what you are contradicts the values of your society. Thus, even under the best of circumstances it takes a lot of courage to be out and gay. No matter what laws may exist on the books to protect your rights, there are narrow minded,[Read More…]
The Syrian National News Agency headlined on February 26th, “Gold deal between United States and Daesh” (Daesh is ISIS) and reported that, Information from local sources said that US army helicopters have already transported the gold bullions under cover of darkness on Sunday [February 24th], before transporting them to the United States. The sources said that tens of tons that[Read More…]
PUDR protests the illegal arrest of Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti member Lingaraj Azad, who has been at the forefront of the peoples struggle against bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri hills, and the continuing repression against the people through routine detention of NSS leaders, security camps, patrolling and raids on villages. Lingaraj Azad was detained and arrested on 6 March in Lanjigarh[Read More…]
Ever since the attack in Pulwama by a suicide bomber killing 42 of India’s security personnel, the country has been on the edge fearing an all-out war with Pakistan. Any civilized person could see the barbarity of this dastardly terrorist act only with disgust and rage. However, a confrontation between these two nuclear powers is neither in the interest of[Read More…]
It’s exam time in India. A time of deep tension for students and parents. All that you’ve learnt in a year will have to reproduced in a two hour written exam and the student will be assessed by what she has written in those two hours. If you fail to answer a few questions you’ll be at a loss and[Read More…]
In a heroic and principled stand in defence of fundamental democratic rights, former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning yesterday refused to answer questions before a grand jury in Virginia. Manning stood firm and refused to incriminate WikiLeaks and its publisher Julian Assange—or any other media organisation and individual—over her courageous 2010 disclosure of hundreds of thousands of documents that[Read More…]
“I believe that for a moment I thought the explosion might set fire to the atmosphere and thus finish the Earth, even though I knew that this was not possible.” These words of Manhattan Project physicist Emilio Segre, quoted by Richard Rhodes in his book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, refer to the Trinity blast on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo,[Read More…]
![At the 2018 International Summit for Women in the Struggle called by the Zapatistas. The mural reads: “Capitalism converts everything, absolute everything into commodities. For it [capitalism] we women are propaganda, decorations…Down with this capitalist system!” Photo credit: Global Justice Now/Flickr/CC 2.0](https://cdn.countercurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/zaptistas-200x150.jpg "Embracing Grassroots Feminism 579")
Women’s rights are at a tipping point. Rural and urban women workers on the frontlines of climate chaos experience the most acute violations of their rights to land, food, and territory at this time of escalating hunger and malnutrition, and steady erosion of democracies.Around the world, these women are taking the patriarchy to task, while healing the environment – all[Read More…]
Where politicians of all hues vie with each other, but the BJP’s shenanigans ‘stand apart’! In its insatiable lust and a desperate bid for power, the BJP government is pulling no punches to use all the tricks in the trade to fleece masses so as to get back to the hot seat in Delhi in 2019. The latest one pertains[Read More…]
Venezuela experienced an electricity war machinated by imperialism and its proxies – the rightists, the reactionaries. Electricity War Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused the US of waging an “electricity war” against the country, as Caracas and other cities plunged into darkness Thursday night. Electricity supply to many parts of Venezuela snapped for a few hours. Venezuela’s 18 states reported electricity[Read More…]
Text and photos: Andre Vltchek For a while, all the guns have fallen silent. I am near Idlib, the last stronghold of the terrorists in Syria. The area where the deadliest anti-government fighters, most of them injected into Syria from Turkey, with Saudi, Qatari and Western ‘help’, are literally holed up, ready for the final showdown. Just yesterday, mortars were[Read More…]
Chief Election Commissioner of India, Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi – 110001 Sub : Stop Politicization of Armed Forces by Political Parties Dear Sir, On behalf of a number of my colleagues from the armed forces veterans, this is Admiral L Ramdas – a former Chief of the Naval Staff – writing to share some of my concerns regarding[Read More…]
I recently had the opportunity to interview Masahiko Yamada, formerly Japan´s Minister of Agriculture and now one of the country´s foremost food sovereignty activists. We met at an international Economics of Happiness Conference in Prato, Italy, where Yamada delivered a keynote speech about the birth of a new citizens’ movement to protect Japan´s food-crop heritage from corporate take-over. Keen to learn more,[Read More…]
Here will be yet another current example to demonstrate that all U.S. mainstream ’news’ media hide from their respective publics that the U.S. Government is lying, when the U.S. Government lies — i.e., that all of the mainstream ’news’ media in America hide the truth, when the Government itself is lying. In other words: the U.S. mainstream ’news’ media are[Read More…]
No book of history or literature of any credence on Kashmir has anywhere used the term “Kashmiriyat” in its references to socio-cultural values of its inhabitants: Kashmiris. I. However, the term “did not emerge ex-nihilo from the soil of Kashmir. II. It has a clear background more political than pretended or projected socio-religious that gave birth to it. In a desperate[Read More…]
A dark and menacing cloud of a possible war that had been hanging over India and Pakistan in the last few days was leading to despair and fatalism not only in India and Pakistan but almost all over the world due to the nuclear arsenal the two countries possess. Ian Helfand, a US physician associated with the International Physicians for[Read More…]
Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand who earlier served as Professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and was the first member-secretary of Central Pollution Control Board began a fast unto death on 22 June, 2018 demanding a law for conservation of Ganga. After 112 days of fasting he died at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh because of alleged cardiac[Read More…]
Jesus came to me I did not recognise him Marx came to me I did not recognise him Ambedkar came to me I did not recognise him Gandhi came to me I did not recognise him Buddha came to me I did not recognise him Then, I came to me `Who are you?’ I asked ‘I am you…!’ He said[Read More…]
The current comprehensive crackdown on Jama’at-e-Islami though not unprecedented is unique at the same in many respects.In the past whenever there was a ban placed on it, it was on the instigation of local political players. It is interesting to note that when emergency was declared in India in 1975 by Mrs Gandhi, Jam’at was left out of its purview.[Read More…]
Is the situation dismal? In a survey of experts done in 2018, India ranks as the world’s most dangerous country for women. It had ranked 4th in the same survey done 7 years ago. The Global Gender Gap Index 2017 by the World Economic Forum placed India at 108 position out of 144 countries benchmarked on the basis of gender[Read More…]
The powerful have always had defenders. Power seeps into the system, corrupts, controls and, ultimately, assumes an authority that does wonders to destroy an appraisal of fairness. To be there is to assume that matters are natural, a habit. As David Hume made clear, such an instance creates the basis of error: because it has been accepted for generations and[Read More…]
The Kazakh government, in defense of Kazakh and by implication Central Asian behind-closed-doors diplomacy towards China in the face of mounting domestic pressure, has offered a rare public account of its ability to improve conditions for its ethnic kin caught in a crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Kazakhstan’s detailing of its ability to reduce[Read More…]
Education has almost everything to do with changing, modifying, and improving the levels of people’s culture (although “improving the cultural level” is a loaded and controversial expression). To remain politically correct, we may assert that education helps us broaden our world view, liberate ourselves from age-old, prejudicial ideas and practices promoted and nurtured by pre-modern feudalism, colonialism, and stagnating postcolonial[Read More…]
A WhatsApp-sponsored report, prepared in partnership with Queen Mary University, has raised the alarm that the 2019 elections in India, which already has cleavages on lines of caste, race, gender, religion, would be a fertile ground for damaging fake news. There was a time when ‘Good Morning’ messages were causing much “pain” to internet giants? It was the beginning of[Read More…]
(People raising a pitch for going to War probably forget that any conflict now in the sub-continent would be the last War for this entire region!) It is an established fact of the world history that wars have never solved any problems but have on the contrary destroyed civilisations. The sub-continent has witnessed three major wars in last 70 years[Read More…]
The British government has rejected both the ICJ’s order and its unanimous ruling that its jurisdiction relates to a UN process of decolonization, not a dispute between two states. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Britain to hand back the Chagos Islands, including Diego Garcia, to Mauritius “as rapidly as possible.” This follows its landmark ruling that the[Read More…]
Corporate media have always attacked leftists for their positions on Venezuela, a country consistently demonized and misrepresented in the US press (FAIR.org, 6/1/02, 11/1/05, 4/1/13, 2/22/19). But with President Donald Trump’s latest tightening of sanctions, and signs of a build-up to a long-rumored invasion (Fox News, 2/27/19), the media’s Venezuela-baiting has been turned up to 11. The political right is uniting with establishment Democrats in[Read More…]
The following open letter, signed by 124 academics from around the globe, is addressed to the Washington Office on Latin America and voices serious concerns over WOLA’s support for various components of the Trump administration’s policy towards Venezuela. We write out of concern for the direction that WOLA has taken with regard to a matter of life and death, and[Read More…]
Delhi, March 6: NAPM (National Alliance of Peoples’s Movements) condemns the illegal and deceitful arrest of Lingraj Azad today by Odisha police. He is the leader of Niyamgiri Suraksha Parishad, who successfully fought the valiant struggle against Vedanta corporation along with Dongria Kondh. Initially it was reported that he has been arrested in an old case but just now we[Read More…]
There is an immense amount of criticism of Putin, especially coming from America, most of it empty criticism which ignores realities and genuine analysis. For the more thoughtful, it represents only the stink and noise of propaganda, and not honest criticism in its true sense at all. In politics, and especially in the direction of a country’s foreign affairs, there[Read More…]
It is 5.30 am. We have just finished Subh (Fajr as it is called in Sri Lanka and most Shafi countries including Kerala). And he walks in. The human conducting tower. His hair has the benefit of what I believe must be at least half a tube of gel, jet black, thick and all standing on end pointing in more[Read More…]
Assassinating Berta Cáceres, a Maya-Lenka Women from Honduras in 2016, shows in a brutal way, that the recognition of indigenous religions in AbiaYala-Latin America is not only an interreligious, but also an economic and political challenge. Where do we go after death, Dady? We come from the earth. We return to the earth. That is all. Valentin Quispe[2] In[Read More…]
Tax havens are locations around the world where wealthy individuals, criminals and terrorists, as well as governments and government agencies (such as the CIA), banks, corporations, hedge funds, international organizations (such as the Vatican)and crime syndicates (such as the Mafia), can stash their money so that they can avoid regulation and oversight and, very often, evade tax. According to Nicholas[Read More…]
Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of Edward W. Said’s pioneering book, Orientalism, as well as fifteen years since the Palestinian-American intellectual’s passing. To bid farewell to such an important scholar shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Said fiercely criticized until his dying breath before succumbing to leukemia, made an already tremendous loss that much[Read More…]
Immediately after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forged an alliance with the fringe political group, Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a widespread outrage ensued. The anger did not emanate only from the Center, Left and Arab parties, but from some in the Right as well. Even the pro-Israel lobby in the US, known for its hawkish political views, spoke out against[Read More…]
Think charity, think vulnerability and its endless well of opportunistic exploitation. Over the years, international charity organisations have been found with employees keen to take advantage of their station. That advantage has been sexual, financial and, in the case of allegations being made about the World Wild Life Fund for Nature, in the nature of inflicting torture on those accused[Read More…]
‘Khuda-e-Bartar teri zameen par zameen ki khatir yeh jung kyoon hai? Har ek fatah-o-zafar ke daaman pe khoon-e-insaan ka rang kyon hai? O Lord Almighty, on your land, why is this war raging to win a land? Why has every conqueror’s victory always been tainted with stains of human blood?) From lyrics of the film ‘ Taj Mahal(1963) Even after[Read More…]
Self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó returned to Venezuela after an 11-day absence Monday, escorted into the country by a phalanx of Western diplomats, including the ambassadors of the US, Germany, France, Canada, Brazil and several other countries. In advance of his return, Washington issued threats of retaliation against any attempt by Venezuelan authorities to apprehend Guaidó, who violated an order[Read More…]
The most dangerous foreign policy decision of the Trump administration—and I know this is saying a lot—is its decision to share sensitive nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia and authorize U.S. companies to build nuclear reactors in that country. I spent seven years in the Middle East. I covered the despotic, repressive kingdom as the Middle East bureau chief for The[Read More…]
Next to Hyderabad, Warangal is the second biggest city of the Telangana state. Most of the present Telangana state’s heritage symbols, Kakatiya Gate, and its tank based irrigation system go back to the history of Warangal, which, in the medieval and pre-medieval Telugu, was known as Orugallu. After this town became the capital of the famous Kakatiya dynasty in the[Read More…]
In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder, but is in fact the very purpose of its existence. — Jamshedji Tata When we flip back through the business history of the world, we find that all large mercantile communities were great patrons of the art of philanthropy. They regarded it a divine tradition. The world is witnessing[Read More…]
So Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir has been declared an ‘unlawful association’ and banned for five years on the grounds of what the notification says ‘Indulging in subversive activities’ and all the manufactured tosh the document is crammed with. it should not come as a calamitous shock, especially to those who have understood or experienced the petty machinations the present regime has churned[Read More…]
1. The modern industrial civilization has witnessed two World Wars. The researchers of war have yet not been able to estimate the magnitude of casualties/deaths – both military and civilian – which occurred in these two World Wars. The estimated figure of people killed in both World Wars is between 10 to 15 crores. World Wars I and II were[Read More…]
The Plot to Attack Iran – How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Iran. Dan Kovalik. Skyhorse Publishing, New York, 2018. Western mainstream media (MSM) typically present Iran as a degenerate and impoverished society under the sway of Islamic terrorist fundamentalists. Alternate media and seriously investigated works present a much different picture. Dan Kovalik’s The Plot[Read More…]
For four million people living in an area of 85,805.8 square milesin the bosom of mighty Himalayas,Saturday ‘12 March 1932’ was a momentous day.On this day after years of struggle and sacrifices, ‘Maharaja Hari Singh, the autocratic ruler of Kashmir on the recommendations of the Glancy Commission Report announced the grant of the rights to freedom of press and platform[Read More…]
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education” ~ Martin Luther King A notification released by the Ministry of human affairs on 28th February has imposed[Read More…]
UDALGURI,Assam,Mar 5: The updating of the National Register of Citizenship for Assam has ostensibly triggered a rash of suicides, suggesting that it has become a source of tremendous stress and anxiety for segments of the state’s population. These emotions do not necessarily arise from paranoia — after all, exclusion from the National Register of Citizenship (NRC) implies revocation or denial[Read More…]
Speech by John Pilger, March 3, 2019 Whenever I visit Julian Assange, we meet in a room he knows too well. There is a bare table and pictures of Ecuador on the walls. There is a bookcase where the books never change. The curtains are always drawn and there is no natural light. The air is still and foetid. This[Read More…]
The idea that a collapse is awaiting our civilization seems to be gaining ground, although it has not reached the mainstream debate. But no civilization before ours escaped collapse, so it makes sense to think that the entity we call “The West” is going to crash down, badly, in the future. Then, just as it happened to the Romans long[Read More…]
The Pulwama attack, the aerial strike in response to it, the capture of an Indian Airforce Pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman and the aftermath of his return have evoked strong responses from the Indian public. While the patriotic quotient of such responses is justified yet it is necessary to highlight a problematic tendency inherent in them. For a large part of these[Read More…]
Since the 2000s, a large section of the rural population has been migrating to the urban centres in pursuit of employment and survival from life-threatening poverty& drought, as happiness is a long way to go. Rural Reporter P. Sainath warned that the migration from a rural economy to urban is “…perhaps the greatest distress-driven migrations we’ve seen in independent India”.[Read More…]
All lives have equal value. No matter where they live on the planet. No matter what state, city, and country you’re born in, whether you are male, female. – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation The Gate s Foundation captures in it mission goal the true spiritual concept of human creation. But today we know that not all lives have[Read More…]
A Turkish-Chinese spat as a result of Turkish criticism of China’s crackdown on Turkic Muslims in its strategic but troubled north-western province of Xinjiang complicates efforts by Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states to at best deal quietly behind closed doors with the plight of their citizens and ethnic kin in the People’s Republic. China’s threat that the Turkish criticism[Read More…]
They could not hold on. A small – and in the scheme of things negligible group – split from the British Labour mothership last month in an effort to salvage some self-described form of credibility. In truth, they were the original sceptics of Jeremy Corbyn, the pro-New Labour grouping indifferent, even disbelieving, about the predations made by Tony Blair during[Read More…]
Or How to Solve the Border and China Problems in One Swell Foop Call me crazy, if you want, but I think I see how to do it! We have two intractable issues, one intractable president, and an intractable world, but what if it weren’t so? What if those two intractable problems could be swept off the table by a[Read More…]
Jiddu Krishnamurti is unquestionably one of the greatest and the most influential philosophers of our times. He is extensively regarded as a radical and insightful thinker who lived through the most tumultuous part of the twentieth century that witnessed not only the phenomenal growth of science and technology but also saw the two World Wars, the crumple of traditions and[Read More…]
Political atmosphere in the country rapidly changed after 14th Feb Pulwama terror incident. Warlike situation emerged and war mongers had a field day. War hysteria was created in Pakistan as well as India. There was air strike on terrorist training centre of Jaish-e-Muhammad at Balakot by Indian Air Force. Next day, Pakistan too launched air strike crossing Indian territory. Indian Air Force[Read More…]
In the 46th session of the OIC, external affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was invited and despite Pakistan protest and boycott, the invitation was not retracted. The speech on ‘pluralism’ by Sushma Swaraj was published and BJP’s ministers were quick to jump that this was a big turn around and successful foreign policy initiative by the Prime Minister. They gave example[Read More…]
One can say that America’s pythonic grip on the sovereign nation of Venezuela is motivated by a desire to possess its oil or its gold, but that statement would only be partially true. America wants to destroy Venezuela because it has been for some time a socialist country. The annihilation of socialists and socialism is the sine qua non[Read More…]
Gallup issued on February 28th its “2019 Rating World Leaders” report, subtitled “The U.S. vs. Germany, China and Russia,” and said that “The world still frowned on U.S. leadership more than the leadership of any other country asked about in 2018.” All four of the countries’ leaderships received approval-ratings from people worldwide in only the 30-39% range, and this low[Read More…]
Miscalculation and a bit of overreach on both sides and we have a regrettable end to the North Korea Summit. Each party thought the other was desperate for a deal: the North Koreans aware of President Trump’s troubles with Congress and the Oversight Committee hearings; Donald Trump misunderstanding the letters from Kim Jong Un. His promises of denuclearization are old,[Read More…]
The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) notes with grave concern the ongoing conflicts between neighboring India and Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons together with all the three delivery platforms ensuring a “second strike” capability in case of being hit by a “first strike”. To recall, the present phase was triggered by an abominable suicide blast – following[Read More…]
The role of Pakistan and Afghanistan in the region has become more important with the announcement of CPEC. The upcoming hub of Gwadar is all set to change the shape of international trade in South Asia. In order to resolve key issues and to bring peace in Afghanistan, Pakistan consistently been holding dialogues with Taliban on the request of Trump.[Read More…]
Everybody knows that Article 35-A is sub judice before the Apex Court of India. The petitioners who challenged the Article are proxy of the ruling class of India who want the Article to be declared unconstitutional in total disregard of the conditions under which it was incorporated in the Constitution by the First President of Free India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad,[Read More…]
While waiting without even a glimmer of hope for the Trump ‘deal of the century’ the Palestinian ordeal unfolds day by day. Many Israelis would like us to believe that the Palestinian struggle to achieve self-determination has been defeated, and that it is time to admit that Israel is the victor and Palestine the loser. All that needs to be[Read More…]
This month the Green New Deal was introduced in the U.S. Congress with much fanfare, and its opponents quickly mobilized. The resolution is more than a set of specific legislative proposals. It is a framework for an ambitious commitment to address climate change through eliminating fossil fuels and reducing agricultural emissions while also reducing inequality, creating well-paying green jobs, and[Read More…]
I first started reading Andre Vltchek on the website CounterPunch, which is a truly great leftist website… even though I will probably never get published on there, even if I was relaying the cure for cancer: CounterPunch appears totally opposed to working with any state media, and I work for Iran’s PressTV. Rather anarchist and ivory-tower, but… whatever. Reporters have[Read More…]
India and Pakistan seem to have just got over playing “War War” on the February 26 and 27, 2019 testing aerial capabilities of each other and in the end declaring victory. In the absence of hard evidences and credible sources, both the sides have sold their own version of the story to save their faces and let the people make[Read More…]
Arnab Goswami of Times Now/ Republic Tv needs no introduction. He is notoriously famous for his jingoistic temperament and equally known for building opinions of elite figures or so-called bigwigs on his show—that paddles noise than message. His problem roots in rigidity: That only his is gospel of truth. He loves to hear it from his con artists who keep[Read More…]
Whole thing started with Pulwama in Kashmir in Indian Kashmir where a suicide bomber attacked an Indian army convoy and killed 40 soldiers. The incident has happened in the wake of upcoming general election in India which also coincides with Modi’s plummeting popularity that have made some people looking at this sad incident beyond the obvious. There is nothing more[Read More…]
In the wake of climate-fueled disasters and several alarming reports on climate change, a gap is evident — a gap between how the world is responding to the climate crisis and how it should. A new study appearing in Nature Climate Change (Feb. 25, 2019) examined three sets of satellite data using three teams of scientists. The scientists’ findings now[Read More…]
Co-Written by Gary Null and Richard Gale The recent release of the proposed Green New Deal is a template, an outline identifying some of the most crucial issues facing the nation regarding climate change and a wish list of measures to address those issues. It contains a variety of inspired agenda items, many of which have been voiced by the[Read More…]
Malaysia, on 12 January, one of the international hosts of the 2019 World Para Swimming Championships ethically boycotted Israel as a competitor. Malaysia’s principled boycott was not directed against the athletes but against the Jewish state of Israel in protest of decades of Israel’s brutal illegal occupation, its 12 year illegal siege of Gaza and its months of recent sustained[Read More…]
It’s ironic that I found out about India’s air strikes across the line of control, inside Pakistani territory, from a friend in New Delhi. Surbhi Dewan and I were texting each other, late at night on Monday, February 25, about the passing of her grandmother, Leela Dewan, one of the beautiful women who shared their testimony about the partition of[Read More…]
I’m living with war in my heart/ I’m living with war in my heart and my mind/ I’m living with war right now/And when the dawn breaks I see my fellow man/ And on the flat-screen we kill and we’re killed again/ And when the night falls I pray for Peace/ Try to remember Peace/ I join the multitudes/ I[Read More…]
Early morning on Friday, I was eagerly waiting to read ‘Dastavez’ published in “Roznama Rashtriya Sahara”, Urdu. I was shocked to find a sentence added to my original draft in the published copy, calling surgical strike ” necessary” Dastavez is published every week on Friday in almost all editions of Roznama Rashtriya Sahara. For last one year, I have quite[Read More…]
Dear Gowher: In hindsight, I think I should have written this letter ten years back, days after you became the International Affairs Adviser to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. I am sorry, I failed miserably to perform my duty as a friend towards a very good old friend on time. I should have advised you what I thought and still[Read More…]
As per the report titled Crimes in India 2016, published by the National Crime Record Bureau of India, death of 7621 women is registered as dowry death under Section 304B of the Indian Penal Code. This implies that more than 21 women die every day because they could not fulfill dowry demands made by their husbands or in-laws. Also, 1,10,378[Read More…]
A year after Cobrapost did a sting operation on the premier media houses of the country and showed how they were willing to act as propaganda machines and even go to the extent of communal polarisation in exchange of money, it came out with Operation Karaoke, another sting operation which exposed some three dozen Bollywood actors as well as TV[Read More…]
The Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps) is a magnificent ground bird with a height of about one metre. It is unmistakable, as it sports a black cap of feathers which contrast with a pale head and neck. The entire body is a tan colour, with a black patch which is spotted with white. The Great Indian Bustard according to the[Read More…]
Sirhama, one of the most promising village in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, is located in the lap of beautiful mountains. It is located on the eastern side of the mountain ( Khareewan) which demarcated the Srigufwara tehsil of Anantnag district from the Tral tehsil of the Pulwama district. It is positioned in the Dochnipora bloc that[Read More…]
Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced on Thursday his decision to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in connection with three separate cases on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, pending a hearing at which Netanyahu can challenge the charges. The indictment announcement, following three years of deliberations over recommendations to prosecute by numerous authorities, comes just 40 days[Read More…]
“McCarthyism” is a word thrown around a lot nowadays, and in the process its true meaning – and horror – has been increasingly obscured. McCarthyism is not just the hounding of someone because their views are unpopular. It is the creation by the powerful of a perfect, self-rationalising system of incrimination – denying the victim a voice, even in their[Read More…]
We are shocked and appalled by the Supreme Court order dated 20/2/2019 for eviction of Adivasis and other Traditional Forest dwellers from their Traditional habitats, thus depriving them their right to life and livelihood guaranteed by Article 21 enshrined in Indian constitution. We unequivocally appeal to the Supreme Court to reevaluate this retrograde anti people order which will throw Millions[Read More…]
Further to the recent tensions between India and Pakistan, the appeal below is being released today on behalf of more than 500 Indian signatories from many different walks of life – students, teachers, economists, journalists, lawyers, industrialists, writers, actors, choreographers, photographers, physicists, homemakers, retired bureaucrats, diplomats, judges, the armed forces. This flood of endorsements was received within less than 24[Read More…]
“Sometimes you have to walk and this was one of those times.” That was US President Donald Trump’s remark about something he has been doing a lot of lately: walking away from agreements or understandings in the hope of reaching the ultimate deal. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un had been pressing his advantage in Hanoi with an attempt to convince Trump[Read More…]
Once upon a time in America, we could all argue about whether or not U.S. global power was declining. Now, most observers have little doubt that the end is just a matter of timing and circumstance. Ten years ago, I predictedthat, by 2025, it would be all over for American power, a then-controversial comment that’s commonplace today. Under President Donald Trump,[Read More…]
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything” (Attributed to Gilbert Keith Chesterton) The dramatic turn for the worse in the evolution of humanism and in the dizzying advances in science and technology has triggered heated debate among great thinkers and writers of the[Read More…]
On 26 February, Stephen Hickey, UK political coordinator at the United Nations, delivered a statement at the Security Council briefing on Venezuela that put the blame for the situation in that country on its government. He said that years of misrule and corruption have wrecked the Venezuelan economy and that the actions of the “Maduro regime” have led to economic[Read More…]
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3.5 Million March Across France Opposing Macron’s Pension Reform 
Election Commission of India must question the presence political nominees on BEL’s and ECIL’s Boards 
Ihan Omar Introduces Legislation to Combat Islamophobia 
Narendra Modi’s Cricket Coup 
The Big Picture And The Small 
Prophesies, Then and Now – My Life at World’s End 
How the Cuban Government and Its People Collaborated on the Family Code 
Stop Criminalizing Journalism and Human Rights Activism: Release Irfan Mehraj and Parvez Khurram 
Politics of Bhagat Singh’s trial 
The Tragedy of Footpaths: Impressions of a Pedestrian in Bangalore 
Altruism exists in nature, Reciprocal altruism in humans 
U.S. Trying To Cover Up Its Role In Nord Stream Sabotage, Says Seymour Hersh 
Open Letter To Rahul Gandhi, Indian National Congress Party 
Future Scenarios in Ukraine 
West Sends Depleted Uranium Weapons to Ukraine: MEP to Warmongers – “You Make Me Sick!” 
Sri Lanka’s unconvincing response to Universal Periodic Review’s forthright findings 
Kisan Mahapanchayat stages massive rally in Delhi 
The betrayers of Julian Assange 
The Truth About Our Failure to Curb Carbon Emissions 
They’re liars, Mexico’s President on U.S. 
Grameena Pedala Sangham, Telangana State conference, is an important mile-stone 
Imperial Visits: US Emissaries in the Pacific Enough is enough. Restore parliament 
Disgrace at the New York Times 
‘Israel is (Not) Back to Africa’: How African Countries are Challenging Israeli Plot on the Continent 
A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell? The Vast Power of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex 
Accelerating Change on United Nations World Water Day 2023 
Defence Daredevilry 
Selling One’s Soul – The betrayal of Christ and Constitution 
Climate Crisis Has Caused Increasingly Irreversible Losses, Says UN Report 
Yarrow Mamout Masjid Dedicated at Georgetown University 
Adolf Hitler, Carl Orff & Sophie Scholl 
Algeria’s Gas vs. Rightwing Ideology: Will Italy Change Its Position on Jerusalem? 
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In memory of 20th anniversary of the Iraq War 
CBI investigation against Harsh Mandar’s NGO is nothing but travesty of justice 
Concept of Gram Swaraj (‘Village Self-Reliance’) and Its Increasing Relevance for Our Times Indian Democracy & Chaos in Parliament! 
Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
