For 500’000 years before 1958 around 100 Gigatonnes of carbon (around 360 Gt of carbon dioxide) were fixed in the biosphere through photosynthesis every year. Carbon dioxide fixation equalled carbon dioxide production by organic decomposition: the biosphere’s natural entropy turnover from the late Pleistocene till 1958 was around 100 Gigatonnes carbon per year. There was a perfect correlation between carbon[Read More…]
No one is talking about it openly, but, let us face it: those U.S.-made planes are crashing;the performance of Apple phones and computers is falling far behind those made by Huawei and other Chinese companies. Lenovo took over IBM and is doing extremely well. NASA is absolutely incapable of building decent rockets that would be able to deliver people or[Read More…]
“Civilizations as yet have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction.” — Gustave Le Bon “Mass politics occurs when large numbers of people engage in political activity outside of the procedures and rules instituted by a society to govern political action. Mass politics in democratic society therefore is[Read More…]
There is one way- and one way only- to read Robert Caro’s books. Of this, I am certain. For best results, gather provisions, find a nice room, lock yourself in, and turn off your cell phone. You must take all of these steps, not just a few. The reasons are: You must honor Caro’s dedication to political biography and investigative[Read More…]
Congress leader Pawan Khera says that ‘liberals’ abused the Congress party the most and at the same point of time, ‘expect’ it do the miracle. I dont claim to be one such person and nor am I in the category of the brahmanical liberals who wish to see things from their own ‘chashma’ but at the same point of time,[Read More…]
After detailed discussions among various people’s organisations, we the following organisations express our deep concern on the attempts of the Government to dilute and violate the Forest Rights Act 2006. We are extremely concerned about the dilution and violation of the Forest Rights Act through the notification on the Compensatory Afforestation Act, which seeks to dilute the purpose of Compensatory[Read More…]
Well it’s happened. It’s real. Mr Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and Senior Advisor of President Trump has delivered 136 pages of lies, suppositions and conjuring tricks to seduce or compel us Palestinians to accept our fate and surrender our rights. What rights? As far as this document is concerned Palestinians have no rights whatsoever and as for a Palestinian perspective,[Read More…]
On Friday, diplomats from Germany, Britain, France, the European Union, China, Russia and Iran met in Vienna for talks on the 2015 Iranian nuclear treaty, a year after Washington unilaterally scrapped the agreement. No agreement emerged from the meeting on the central issue: the growing danger of a US war against Iran. Last week, amid an ongoing US military build-up[Read More…]
The lynching of Tabrez Ansari was by means of threat and violence perpetrated with utter impunity for hours at end, nay, for days together. This is the darkest hour in the history of India which marks a departure of Narendra Modi from the first term as PM since he remained silent in most of such cases instead of condemning. It[Read More…]
On the last day of the UN Climate Change (June 17-27, 2019) meeting in Bonn the key IPCC report on 1.5 C was blocked from further discussion by Saudi Arabia and an unlikely set of allies: the US, Iran and Russia. The report as the saying goes has been deep-sixed meriting only a five-para watered down waffle at the end[Read More…]
The love of money is a sin…the root of all evil. Judeo-Christian biblical tradition – O believers Do not devour one another’s wealth by evil means except through trading by mutual consent. Islamic tradition – Sharing wealth is a divine duty, but wealth gained and spent for one’s behalf is evil. Hindu tradition – Is our toleration of the dominating[Read More…]
Three manual scavangers died in Coimbatore while cleaning sewer at pig farm. The three dead are identified as Rajappan and two others both named Vediappan. The incident happened on Thursday morning. They were cleaning the septic tanks filled with the faeces of 30 pigs in a farm. According to a police report on the incident, Rajappan first succumbed to poisonous[Read More…]
The All India Forest Front for Rights Struggles, a national forum comprising of adivasi organisations, NGOs and concerned individuals, met recently in Delhi to discuss the challenges adivasis , forest rights and bio diversity. There were more than 37 representatives from different parts of the country. The main focus of the meeting was on the following issues: The Forest Rights[Read More…]
Dehko, o deewano, yeah kaamnakaro, Ram kanaambadnaamna karo… The plaintive song from the past runs through my head as one reads the news reports of the competitive slogan mongering that rang through the hallowed portals.of.the Parliament ad the fresh lot of MPs were sworn in. It doesn’t augur well for the monsoon session, that MPs are heckled by their colleagues[Read More…]
A searing heat wave continues to scorch parts of Western Europe. Intense heat wave has hit northern Europe. A wildfire has broken out in northeastern Spain. France measured its highest-ever June temperature. This was much of Europe’s temperature-map of Thursday. Record temperatures have begun in northern Europe this week. Experts have said heat waves are on the increase worldwide, further[Read More…]
There is a growing clamour against Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) in India, after the 2019 general elections. Countries like Germany, Holland and Ireland have banned EVM. Japan and Singapore subscribe to ballot boxes, but EVM is gospel for Election Commission of India (ECI), hence EVM is now to stay. The entire opposition against BJP has been drubbed and BJP led NDA has[Read More…]
James Lovelock theorized Gaia while working for NASA in the 1960s when he was hired to determine if there was “life on Mars.” Gaia may be younger but James Lovelock, Mr. Gaia himself, turns 100 on his upcoming birthday, July 26th. For over 50 years, he has been Britain’s leading independent scientist. His independence from a formal relationship with an[Read More…]
Praise from US President Donald Trump has a tendency of tarnishing gold and ungilding matters, and there was something of the muck in his tweet praising Australia for its sadistic approach to refugee arrivals. Operation Sovereign Borders, which commenced in 2013, was the high water mark in an experiment of glacial cruelty: to treat refugee arrivals – those specifically taking[Read More…]
TRIPOLI, Libya — Sometimes war sounds like the harsh crack of gunfire and sometimes like the whisper of the wind. This early morning — in al-Yarmouk on the southern edge of Libya’s capital, Tripoli — it was a mix of both. All around, shops were shuttered and homes emptied, except for those in the hands of the militiamen who make[Read More…]
Another failed coup The coup that never was On April 30th, 2019, we were all invited to witness more of the same. Or so thought the US administration after having prepared the stage and the lights, and called the MSM to broadcast it. The real US intentions in Venezuela are not a mystery and can be found in the 2002 coup[Read More…]
‘Back to village’, the programme launched by the government for the villagers to end their miseries has brought no cheer among the dwellers of hamlets in the Valley as the Gram Sabhas and other awareness campaigns organized in last few days witnessed less participation of people. The programme aimed to provide facilities to people at their door step had less[Read More…]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his latest Parliament speech on June 25 recalled it was the day Emergency was proclaimed by the Congress government led by Indira Gandhi. PM Modi’s first address to Parliament after being voted to power came on the 44th anniversary of the Emergency declared by then prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975. He repeated some points[Read More…]
An Ola cab driver was forced to chant “Jai Sri Ram” in Mumbai when his vehicle broke down in the middle of the road. The incident took place on Sunday, when the Ola cab driver Faisal Usman (25), a resident of Mumbra was travelling with passengers and his car broke down. After picking up passengers from Agusan road in Diva[Read More…]
The photo of a young Salvadoran worker and his 23-month-old daughter washed up on the shore of the Rio Grande has gone viral on social media and sparked world-wide outrage against the sadistic assault on immigrants being carried out by Trump, with the full assistance of the Democratic Party. The photo of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his daughter Angie[Read More…]
Does Nietzsche have anything important to say to us, we the current inhabitants of a global age? Nietzsche speaks of spiritual health as a result of the superabundance of the life force, of a Dionysian affirmation of ones existence of ones process of becoming what one is. The courage of laughter is called for. A profound laughter that is in[Read More…]
Co-Written by Sandeep Pandey and B. Ramakrishna Raju It appears that finally it is here. Soon after Union Minister for Railways Piyush Goyal said in a press conference that there are no plans to privatise railways, either now or ever, it has been revealed that government is thinking of inviting private operators to run passenger trains on low congestion and[Read More…]
In December 2018, the National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI) across the globe pledge to bolster their support for human rights defenders amidst a growing climate of threats and reprisals. While adopting the Marrakech Declaration and reaffirming the principles of Paris Declaration, NHRIs recognized that “Human rights defenders have a positive, important and legitimate role in contributing to the realisation of[Read More…]
“Medicine is a social science and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale”. Rudolf Virchow, 1821-1902 In recent days India’s health system – never the world’s best – has been getting really bad press. First it was negative publicity was over a week of agitation by thousands of doctors in Bengal after violence against them by families[Read More…]
In 1948, my grandfather, along with thousands of Badrasawis, was expelled by Israeli military forces from our ancestral village of Beit Daras in Palestine. Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from over 500 other villages, my grandfather assumed he would be back home in a few weeks. “Why bother to haul the good blankets on the back of a donkey,[Read More…]
This week Australians watched on TV a ‘story about fear, hate, blood and hope’ in Tod Sampson’s Body Hack documentary on extraordinary people under extreme conditions that was filmed in Gaza over 3 days from the 25th February 2019. It opens in the midst of the Great March of Return with Israeli bullets whizzing past Sampson’s and protestors’ heads. Nevertheless[Read More…]
There was a plot to assassinate Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and to stage a coup. The plot has been foiled. The Latin American country’s intelligence agency has made the claim. The foiled plot envisioned a group of rogue officers storming the presidential palace and installing an imprisoned general in his stead. The plot by current and former military officers involved[Read More…]
The New York Times has publicly acknowledged that it sends some of its stories to the U.S. government for approval from “national security officials” before publication. This confirms what veteran New York Times correspondents like James Risen have said: The American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US government, suppressing reporting that top officials don’t want made public. On June[Read More…]
Immediately after Dr Mohammed Morsi’s death on the 17th of June 2019, a number of organisations and individuals had called for a thorough, independent investigation into the cause of his death while on trial in a Cairo court for espionage charges. The United Nations was one of the organisations that demanded an independent investigation. There is no indication that any[Read More…]
“Becoming” by Michelle Obama is an inspiring, feel-good story of how a working class African-American woman became a Harvard graduate, corporate lawyer, perfect mother and thence First Lady of the US. However “Becoming” has numerous extraordinary absences e.g. the Harvard Law School years, Black felony laws, the Israel Lobby, 130,000 US veteran suicides and 30 million preventable US deaths since[Read More…]
Diplomacy has been seen historically as a practitioner’s art, nurtured in schools of learning, tested and tried in the boardrooms of mild mannered summitry. Klemens von Metternich and Otto von Bismarck practiced it with varying degrees of ruthlessness and skill; the man who thought himself a modern incarnation of the Austrian statesman, Henry Kissinger, dedicated a text to the subject[Read More…]
Another failed coup General Figuera, double agent or traitor? Between April 30th and May 1st, Venezuela suffered a poorly attempted coup that could only fail miserably. Although counting only with a general and a bunch of low-ranked officials chaotically organized, for those watching Western Lying Media, the attempted coup had immense support from numerous high-ranked officials that were very well organized and were about[Read More…]
In his response to President’s speech in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Modi didn’t forget to refer to Sardar Sarovar, the pet project of himself and his own state, Gujarat. He has boasted of the Gigantic Dam which is no doubt standing like a statue but neither has it served the real purpose of satiating the thirst of the drought[Read More…]
We, the undersigned concerned citizens, are extremely perturbed at the increasing tendency of the Government, through its agencies, to use excessive power to curb the voice of the people, which is the very essence of democracy. The work of Lawyer’s Collective in general and Indira Jaising and Anand Grover, in particular, have contributed to changing the lives not[Read More…]
(One of the main causes for drastic climate change in the valley has been the indiscriminate felling of trees and the conversion of agricultural land!) The most extensively used words these days are the “Climate Change”! The weather in most parts of the world has been behaving in a strange way. Some places are getting extremely hot while as in[Read More…]
Horrific atrocities against Dalits continue. An upper caste youth ran his speeding vehicle over a dalit family killing twowomen of the family and injuring two others. The incident happened Bulandshahr near Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. The incident happened after the youth tried to molest one of the girls in the family. Frustrated at the failed attempt, the youth left the[Read More…]
In future we need politicians who have moral fibre and large hearts. We need politicians who are honest, generous to a fault, and, not greedy; with absolutely no aspirations for wealth and power for themselves and who are not richer than the poorest in their constituencies. We would want politicians that are open books, and, who are above political games[Read More…]
Much have been said and written about the so-called “Deal of the Century”, also called by different names depending on the perspective of different parties. The deal has been in development for two years and is eventually being unveiled this week in Manama, Bahrain after long periods of postponement. It was headed by Trump’s son-in-law; Jared Kushner, with the assistance[Read More…]
The greatest outlier in terms of possessing nuclear weapons is the U.S. Last week, Elham Pourtaher, an Iranian graduate student at the State University of New York in Albany, wrote about how U.S. policies cause suffering and trauma far beyond U.S. borders. Her diabetic father, for example, is in danger of losing access to medicines because sanctions against Iranian banks[Read More…]
(Part 2 of Will American Belligerence Against Iran Lead to War?) After reading my article “Will American Belligerence Against Iran Lead to War?” https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/will-american-belligerence-against-iran-lead-to-war published in countercurrents, a colleague called me. He wanted to know if America will seriously attack Iran and if so when and the consequences for America, Iran and the region. History is what is past, but[Read More…]
Children who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop. Their immune systems are so weak they are more prone to infections with some too frail to even cry. Parents are having to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it.—Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s Country Director in Yemen.[Read More…]
In an unexpected move, the Arab governments, headed by those with close ties to the US, announced a new plan: The Salvation of The Century to end the century long destruction of Palestine and Palestinians and to end the instability which ruined the lives of millions of people in the Middle East since Balfour Declaration. The Plan was endorsed secretly[Read More…]
Former President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, had finished his 15-minute discourse in a courtroom, while being locked inside a sound-proofed cage. He read a poem about his love for Egypt, and then collapsed, and died. His demise sent shock-waves all over Egypt, the region and the Muslim world. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to accept the official story, claiming[Read More…]
The facts that the recently released 2019 ITUC Global Rights Index by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) again exposes the bourgeois democracy. Advanced/matured bourgeois democracies are denying bourgeois democratic rights. Labor is the main victim of this denial. The 2019 ITUC Global Rights Index (Brussels, Belgium; henceforth Index) presents much significant information on workers’ rights in countries from both[Read More…]
” People have always been the foolish victims of deception and self deception in politics , and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interest of some class or other behind all moral, religious,political and social phrases , declarations and promises . V. I. Lenin – ‘The Three Sources and Three Components Parts of Marxism’[Read More…]
New Delhi: The “Campaign Against Torture in India” while releasing “India: Annual Report on Torture 2018” on the United Nations Day Against Torture stated that during 2018, a total of 1,966 custodial deaths were reported to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) including 147 deaths in police custody and 1,819 deaths in judicial custody. These figures do not reflect the extent and actual[Read More…]
“Calcutta University worshipping the Chandal” was the vicious campaigns when Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee had, in the University appointed Mukund Behari Mallick a Pali teacher in 1921. The news of victimization of a tribal lady, university teacher in the faculty of Geography, targeting her birth, complexion and gender furnished the latest illustration of deep-rooted caste-based prejudice and discrimination prevalent in[Read More…]
It is good to remember things which had historical impact on our political life. The emergency imposed on intervening night of 25th-26th June, 1975 by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi showed how dictatorial minds work on the ‘popularity’ and megalomania. Mrs Gandhi was a staunch nationalist though tilted towards a bit of left in the 1970s, suppressed media and[Read More…]
(A) Right to property: First, in his article “Article 35 A: Myth or Reality” , published in GK on 03-04-2019, Mr. Drabu has written: “In 1950, when the J&K government initiated ‘land to tiller’, it was not legally possible to do so under the Indian Constitution. Till 1978, Right to Property under Article 19 was a fundamental right. It was[Read More…]
Emergency was declared by PM Indira Gandhi this day 44 years back when the citizen’s fundamental rights of life, liberty and expression were abrogated. Thousands were jailed, Press freedom was scuttled, hundreds were killed by the State in fake encounters and people, particularly the poor minorities, were forcibly sterilised. It lasted 19 months and when elections were held, Mrs. Gandhi’s[Read More…]
Democracy in crisis as brutal repression used to silence age of anger: 2019 ITUC Global Rights Index finds 10 worst countries for workers’ rights The systematic dismantling of the foundations of workplace democracy and the violent repression of strikes and protests put peace and stability at risk, says a new report – 2019 ITUC Global Rights Index – on workers’[Read More…]
On June 16 China announced that it had reached a “broad consensus” about counter-terror work with United Nations, after UN’s chief for Counter-terrorism, Russian diplomat Vladimir Voronkov made a visit to Xinjiang from June 13-15. China’s handling of so called terror threat posed by Uighur extremists has been much talked about by western media and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres[Read More…]
The world’s tallest statue the ‘Statue of Unity’ was inaugurated by Prime Minister nearly sometimes back with huge publicity in Kevadiya, near Sardar Sarovar Dam in Narmada District. In the same day hundreds of villagers of 73 tribal villages in and around Narmada district did not cook as protest and bandh was also observed in many villages in the region.[Read More…]
PUDR expresses shock and concern at the manner in which the Office of the Superintendent of Police, Kalahandi in Odisha is issuing threats and intimidation of encounter deaths to public spirited individuals and professionals in the Niyamgiri region in the course of their regular discharge of duty. A forty-year old journalist, Padmanabha Choudhury has been threatened to be killed in[Read More…]
Nishrin Jafri Hussain, the daughter of Ehsan Jafri, who was burnt alive in Ahmedabad during post-Godhra riots by a mob has written an open letter , to Shweta Sanjiv Bhatt. the wife of the IPS officer, sentenced to life imprisonment last week in a 30-year old case of alleged custodial death. In the letter Nishrin says she should not expect[Read More…]
As we make an attempt to discuss the India of the future, a severe water crisis is threatening the nation. One of the metro cities – Chennai – has been reeling under this crisis for months now and the situation there has reached alarming proportions. According to the ‘Composite Water Management Index’ (CWMI) report, released by NITI Aayog on June[Read More…]
In such troubled times More so than at any time in the past The Constitution of India shall be our shield Against all oppressive/repressive acts Of communal/caste/racial hatred or bias On religious minorities/ subordinate castes/tribals On women/LGBTQIA community/differently abled And on workers/farmers/toiling masses I shall stand up for my constitutional rights And of those less privileged And shall[Read More…]
Subordinates rarely have a good time of dictating matters to their superiors. In the webbed power relations that pass as realpolitik, Australia is the well behaved child in the front of the room, yearning to be caned and spoilt in equal measure. Ever since Australia’s Prime Minister John Curtin cast his eye to Washington in an act of desperation during[Read More…]
Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers The recent escalation of conflict between the United States and Iran threatens another US military quagmire that would create crisis and chaos in Iran, the region and perhaps globally as well as costing the US trillions of dollars. The US needs to change course — a deeply wrong course it has been on[Read More…]
The Middle East is barrelling towards a nuclear and ballistic missiles arms race. The race is being aided and abetted by a US policy that views the region through the dual prism of the need to stop in its tracks an aggressive, expansionary, and destabilizing Islamic republic that seeks to dominate and as a lucrative market for the US defense[Read More…]
Calls for the annexation of the Occupied West Bank are gaining momentum in both Tel Aviv and Washington. But Israel and its American allies should be careful what they wish for. Annexing the Occupied Palestinian Territories will only reinforce the current rethink of the Palestinian strategy, as opposed to solving Israel’s self-induced problems. Encouraged by the Donald Trump administration’s decision[Read More…]
Upon hearing the news that Palestinian diplomat Dr. Hanan Ashrawi had been denied entry to the United States on a speaking engagement, my husband wrote an e-mail to Indiana Senator Mike Braun titled, ‘Tell State Dept & Trump to give Ashrawi a visa now!’ His letter was brief and to the point: Dear Senator Braun: The State Department under[Read More…]
“It’s all about the Benjamins [$100 bills], baby,” Tweeted Congresswoman Ilhan Omar in February. She was accusing super-wealthy AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) of bribing Congress into supporting Israel. AIPAC, ADL (Anti-Defamation League), AJC (American Jewish Committee), B’nai B’rith, and Congress condemned Omar as anti-Jewish. 2,153 persons at JewsWithIlhan.org, though, defended her. AIPAC can’t legally donate to politicians.[Read More…]
Co-Written by Santu Das & Kamalesh Roy By the year 2011-2012, the National Sample Survey (NSS) conducted a survey across the country to map the scenario of daily expenditure of Indian population and later in the year 2014 it was published as a complete report. In that report, the people of our country were divided into 12 categories based on[Read More…]
Tabrez Ansari, a young man of 24 years, accused of theft was killed by a blood thirsty mob in Jharkhand. It is deeply painful and shocking how as a society this feeling of we verses them has penetrated among us. How as a system is encouraging such violence and refuses to act. Even if Tabrez was an accused, who gave[Read More…]
Today marks 34 years of the Air India Flight 182 bombing that left 329 people dead. The suitcase bomb used in the crime that is widely blamed on Sikh separatists seeking revenge from the Indian government originated from Vancouver. The incident was the worst attack in the history of aviation terror before 9/11. Investigators believe that the episode was in[Read More…]
On 10 April 2019, Prakash Lakda, a 50-year old Adivasi of Jurmu village of Gumla’s Dumri block, was lynched to death by a mob of men from the neighbouring Jairagi village. Three other victims from Jurmu – Peter Kerketta, Belarius Minj and Janerius Minj – sustained severe injuries due to the beating by the mob. On 31 may 2019, Kendriya[Read More…]
Last Thursday, lawyers for the courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning issued a legal challenge to punitive fines that were imposed upon her by a federal district court judge last month. Her legal team has warned that the unprecedented financial penalties threaten her with imminent bankruptcy. Manning has been imprisoned by the Trump administration since May 16 for refusing to give perjured testimony[Read More…]
Films from the Global South (such as that of Latin America, Asia and Africa) seldom receive the kind of acceptance the Anglo-American English movies get across the world. The international film festivals may be an exception where the ‘best’ from such countries is recognised, and it is here that some enthusiastic cinephiles get an opportunity to experience these movies. But[Read More…]
In a hate crime in Kolkotta, the capitala city of West Bengal, a madrasa teacher, Twenty-year-old Mohammad Shahrukh Haldar was thrashed by a mob for not chanting Jai Shri Ram. Haldar a resident of Canning, a town in south 24 Parganas was travelling to Hoogly on Thursday afternoon. A group of people, assaulted and bullied him for sporting a beard[Read More…]
Dangers facing the world today Today, at the start of the 21st century, human civilization and the biosphere face two existential threats: the danger of uncontrollable catastrophic climate change, and the danger of an all-destroying thermonuclear war. We must also be aware that population growth, climate change, and the end of the fossil fuel era may lead to a very[Read More…]
The empire is at its old game of aggression again and the stakes have been getting higher since the JCPOA was shredded by Donald Trump in 2018 and a lot more higher since the US led Warsaw Conference was held in February 2019 in Warsaw, Poland in which US secretary of state and Iran hawk Mike Pompeo said that the[Read More…]
Water scarcity-scene in Chennai has not eased much. A June 22, 2019 report said: Heavy rainfall in several parts of Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu state, has brought some relief for the city. The Met Department had predicted rain across the city for the next 48 hours. Citing an announcement from Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami[Read More…]
Surveillance is merely a variant of violent voyeurism, the human behind the camera or visual apparatus observing behaviour in a setting, often private. Its premise is privacy’s violation; its working assumption is privacy’s irrelevance; officially tolerated such a concept is unofficially repudiated. Studies on surveillance do as much to reveal its problems as accommodate them: the great, all seeing commissar[Read More…]
Union steward and amateur sleuth Lenny Moss is back with a vengeance in One Foot in the Grave, the eighth novel in a series by Timothy Sheard (Hard Ball Press, 2019). This time, anti-worker technology takes center stage in a murder story set at the fictional James Madison Hospital of Philadelphia. But the real drama pits employer surveillance gadgets versus[Read More…]
When Donald Trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017, Americans took to the streets all across the country to protest their instantly endangered rights. Conspicuously absent from the newfound civic engagement, despite more than a decade and a half of this country’s fruitless, destructive wars across the Greater Middle East and northern Africa, was antiwar sentiment, much less an[Read More…]
The correction of this injustice has been achieved through a long drawn fight, somewhat of a David and Goliath contest. The outcome, culminating in a spectacular opinion and vote, has a number of consequences that can impact a rules-based international order, a commitment promoted by the UN Charter which specifically seeks to ‘establish conditions under which justice and respect[Read More…]
A June 16th article in the New York Times headlined “Wall Street Donors Are Swooning for Mayor Pete. (They Like Biden and Harris, Too.)”. It noted that “Two candidates in the top tier of polls, Mr. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have railed against the financial industry and opted against the kind of fancy fund-raisers with catering and[Read More…]
Parts of the documentary Modified are spent at the kitchen table. But it’s not really a tale about wonderful recipes or the preparation of food. Ultimately, it’s a story of capitalism, money and power and how our most basic rights are being eroded by unscrupulous commercial interests. The film centres on its maker, Aube Giroux, who resides in Nova Scotia, Canada.[Read More…]
A major international agreement banning violence and harassment in the workplace has been adopted by the International Labour Organization’s Centenary Conference in Geneva. This has been hailed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his address at the Conference. Guterres congratulated Member States on “building upon a legacy of achievement, guided by that age-old vision of social justice through social dialogue[Read More…]
[ABOVE: Simon Bolivar, El Libertador, Early 19th century South American who, along with Jose de San Martin, led Latin America in the war of independence from The Spanish Empire. Bolivar is the symbol of Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution of the 21st century. Photo Wikipedia.] The US and Canada are not supporting “the return of democracy” in Venezuela as they claim.[Read More…]
In another case of hate crime a 24-year-old Muslim man Tabrez Ansari was beaten to death. He was attacked by a mob in Jhankhand’s Kharsawan district and beaten up on the suspicion of theft on June 18, died in a local hospital on June 22. The incident took place in Dhatkidih, roughly 10 kilometres from where he lived. A number[Read More…]
Walking down the high street of a place described as one of the UK’s most ethical towns, the first thing you notice is the absence of national chain stores and fast food outlets. Instead, you find a diverse mix of independent shops selling organic food, clothes, art, antiques and furniture, as well as cafes and restaurants and an abundance of charity[Read More…]
In Modi 2.0 India is liable to be transformed from a secular republic to Hindu India. The opportunity of an enhanced mandate is likely to be put to good use in furthering the Hindutva project. The ruling party will prefer to view its renewed lease on power with a larger vote share as voter endorsement for the project. A strategically[Read More…]
Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek You will never read about it, but Dayak people, the “First Nation” of the enormous island of Borneo, are broken, robbed and brainwashed. “Unity in diversity” it says; the motto of Indonesia. But it could be argued that the opposite is true. There is very little unity, and less and less diversity, as the country[Read More…]
June 23, 2019, marks the 262nd anniversary of the Battle of Plassey (1757). It was a short battle on a long solstice day. A small group of 3000 soldiers defeated a large army of 50,000, using bribes.With that, the private sector East India Company took over the government of Bengal, making the day a turning point in what would, within[Read More…]
Venezuelan Embassy Assaulted After having recognized a guy (who was even not a candidate during the last election) as President of Venezuela, and while watching its dumb plans against Venezuela falling apart, one by one, the US administration decided to play a very dangerous card: to pressure Venezuelan diplomats to leave the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington and give room to[Read More…]
War is a failure of reason, it has been said, and war with Iran makes little sense after they have faithfully complied with their nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), endorsed as it has been by the Security Council. It was the US, and the US alone, choosing to abrogate the deal that has resulted in the current[Read More…]
Madame Angela Merkel – the head of Europe’s strongest economy, of the leader of the European Union, said that there was strong evidence that Iran attacked the two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Ten days ago, German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, travelled to Tehran, officially to “save” the Nuclear Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPoA), but in[Read More…]
A newly adopted Saudi law on public decency helps define Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s vague notion of ‘moderate Islam.’ It also lays bare the pitfalls of his social reforms as well as his preference for hyper-nationalism rather than religion as the legitimizing ideology of his rule and his quest for control of every aspect of Saudi life. In an[Read More…]
The Islamic State group in Afghanistan is a “very worrisome” threat to the United States, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, said. He also added “ISIS in Afghanistan certainly has aspirations to attack the United States.” On 13th of June, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device near a police vehicle in the capital of eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, killing at least[Read More…]
The US State Department in its annual 2018 International Religious Freedom Report says Mob attacks by violent extremist Hindu groups against the minority communities, particularly Muslims, continued in India in 2018, amid rumors that victims had traded or killed cows for beef and the authorities often protected perpetrators from prosecution. The US report also said that some senior officials of[Read More…]
There is no one poster child who embodies the struggle of the Palestinian people living in the shadow of Israeli settlers and military occupation. Every Palestinian child, woman, and man will tell you intricate stories of what life and death is like under the perennial burden of occupation, and what that means for the land beneath their feet, their usurped[Read More…]
India has recently voted in support of Israel at the United Nations (UN) for the first time in its post-independence history. At the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on June 6 she voted with Israel to deny a Palestinian non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Shahed, an observer status. To many this may appear innocuous. Israel has persuaded India that Shahed[Read More…]
The government of Pakistan on Friday (June 21) appointed an 11-member Commission of Inquiry to determine if increase in external debt between 2008 and 2018 was justified by infrastructure development program or misused by public office-holders of the last two governments of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. Headed by Deputy Chairman of the National Accountability Bureau[Read More…]
Fasten your seat belt! Global warming is on a rampage. As a consequence, many ecosystems may be on the verge of total collapse. In fact, recent activity in the hinterlands surely looks that way.Over time, the backlash for civilized society, where people live in comfort, could be severe, meaning extreme discomfort. But still, nobody knows when or how bad[Read More…]
“War in the name of morality provides as many reasons for historical shudders as war in the name of self-interest, for at least the latter may be easier to call off when self-interest calls for compromise.” Lawrence Freedman, Review of International Studies, July, 2000 The Balkans has often been prone to seizures of mysticism, glum prediction and predation. But one[Read More…]
The international left has lost one of its most lucid intellectual, pedagogical educators and determined activists with the passing of Marta Harnecker on June 14, aged 82. Marta will forever be remembered as one of the most influential and prolific writers on the Latin American left, having written almost 90 books covering a wide array of topics and debates on[Read More…]
In spite of the “writ” not having been “dropped” Canada is already in full election mode. Of course politicians are always electioneering as their main purpose once in power is to stay in power in order to reap its rewards and benefits. Otherwise, instead of politicians running the country we could simply let the bureaucrats do their uncelebrated mundane work[Read More…]
“He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it.” – George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” The lobby of the temple of time travel called the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington, Massachusetts was suffused with a nostalgic vibe tinged with the whiff of encroaching death when I walked in for The Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story. I[Read More…]
As the world’s largest democracy but not the oldest India is a young nation where 60% of its population are below 35 years of age. With a solid mandate encapsulated in the slogan: Sab ka Sath, Sab ka Vikas, Sab ka Vishwas, the central task before the new Government, then, will be to build capacity in more and more people[Read More…]
Co-Written by Dr. Chandra Muzaffar & Tan Sri Norian Mai The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) and the Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF) share Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s skepticism about Russia’s culpability in the shooting down of MH17 on the 17th of July 2014. The Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT) has not produced any solid evidence[Read More…]
“Water is Sacred. It’s the Essence of life. It’s The Only Thing That Sustains Us All As We Briefly Travel Together Through Time & Space Together on Our Tiny, Resilent Blue Orb Through a Hostile Universe!” This should be the mantra the people of Canada and everywhere else in the world repeat to themselves as they awaken each morning to[Read More…]
Tamils have little interest in reconciliation without resolution of the political issues. Proper reconciliation can come only after a political solution is found… With successive Governments refusing to acknowledge, let alone address the political issues that lie at the core of the conflict, the alienation of Tamils will remain high. In the circumstances, reconciliation remains a distant dream. An internationally[Read More…]
“Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now appears as good because it serves the cohesion of the whole on the road to affluence or more affluence…In a democracy with totalitarian organization, objectivity may fulfill a very different function, namely to foster a mental attitude which tends to obliterate the difference between true and false, information and indoctrination, right and[Read More…]
Millions of people are running out of usable water in Chennai, India’s sixth biggest city. The water crisis has turned into a political issue. The state opposition party has called a statewide protest on June 22. Media reports said: Chennai, capital city of the southern Indian state, is experiencing major droughts and a rapidly worsening water crisis as the city[Read More…]
Failure of Government Programme (Marketing Centre) for Promoting Traditional Handloom Weaving in Eastern Uttar Pradesh Since India got its independence,tradition weaving craft has been the second largest informal sector after agriculture which serves as viable source of economy. Indeed, such traditional occupation by enlarge is recognised as an important additional emolument for educationally and economically backward household women. Since 1985,[Read More…]
Abstract As the world keeps increasing its carbon emissions and exports,rising in 2018 to a record 33.1 billion ton per year, the atmospheric greenhouse gas level has now exceeded 560 ppm CO2–equivalent when methane and nitrous oxide are included, intersecting the stability threshold of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The term “climate change“ is no longer appropriate since, what[Read More…]
Sabotaged electric grid On March 7th, 2019, an alleged cyber attack against Simon Bolivar Hydroelectric Plant (Guris Dam) resulted in a general outage affecting more than 2/3 of Venezuela, mostly in the Western and Central provinces. Without a single piece of evidence, Western MSM immediately started accusing socialism in general, and Maduro’s government in particular, of not “being able to manage a[Read More…]
21 Jun 2019: Celebrating World Music Day These days internet can open up fascinating treasure-troves from the half-forgotten past. In a French archive one can watch a short documentary- “Nous Sommes Deux”, made almost 50 years ago by Robert Manthoulis for the French television. The title – “We are two” (in Greek, “Imaste dio”) is the first line of a[Read More…]
The East Siberian Arctic Shelf (“ESAS”) is the epicenter of a methane-rich zone that could turn the world upside down. Still, the ESAS is not on the radar of mainstream science,and not included in calculations by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and generally not well understood. It is one of the biggest mysteries of the world’s climate puzzle,[Read More…]
Nazareth: When Israeli prime ministers are in trouble, facing difficult elections or a corruption scandal, the temptation has typically been for them to unleash a military operation to bolster their standing. In recent years, Gaza has served as a favourite punching bag. Benjamin Netanyahu is confronting both difficulties at once: a second round of elections in September that he may[Read More…]
Nicolas Maduro, the President of Venezuelan, said foreign backers financed the failed attempt on his life last summer to the tune of $20 million. Maduro said the money was distributed to opposition members in neighboring Colombia. “The plan to kill me that was executed in August cost several million, there is talk of 20 million dollars, said Maduro. The Venezuelan[Read More…]
Undoubtedly, agriculture is a power intensive sector. Farmers predominantly rely on diesel and electric pumps for irrigation. However, the scale of use of diesel and electric pumps in the sector contribute to severe environmental problems. Diesel pumps depend on exploitation of fossil fuel resources, increase fuel cost for farmers and emit toxic fumes that pollute the environment and affect human[Read More…]
How best to describe the recently completed allied commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France? Two words come immediately to mind: heartfelt and poignant. The aged D-Day veterans gathering for what was probably the last time richly deserved every bit of praise bestowed on them. Yet one particular refrain that has become commonplace in this age[Read More…]
“Obey me or die!” the orange-haired man threatens the world. “My drones know you’re home, and my missiles don’t miss. I’m Commander in Chief, CinC for short. I’ll sink you into the sea, fry you crisp, burn you to dust with the push of a button. I’ll overthrow your governments, strangle your economies, jail your refugees. I’m the trumpet of[Read More…]
Writing `herstory’ has never been an easy process in a male-dominated world where sexism, bigotry racism, casteism and fascism all have been used in an unimaginative way by the free market economy in congruence with the fascists forces to undermine democratic processes. The trio of totalitarian state, free market and increasing fundamentalism is giving new reasons to dissent every day.[Read More…]
The United Nations’ World Refugee Day, observed annually on June 20, should not merely represent a reminder of “the courage, strength and determination of women, men and children who are forced to flee their homeland under threat of persecution, conflict and violence.” It should also be an opportunity for the international community to truly understand and actively work towards finding[Read More…]
Any sentient being should be offended. Eventually, the casualisation of the academic workforce was bound to find lazy enthusiasts who neither teach, nor understand the value of a tenured position dedicated to that musty, soon-to-be-forgotten vocation of the pedagogue. It shows in the designs of certain universities who confuse frothy trendiness with tangible depth: the pedagogue banished from the podium,[Read More…]
“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you…if they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you…But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him Who sent me.” (The Bible: John: 15: 18-21) My Profile and implications of “Terrorism” – Criminal Charges As a[Read More…]
On this Juneteenth, we must confront the impacts of racism dating back to the founding of the United States with the slave trade of Black people brought from Africa, Jim Crow segregation, and policies that continue to this day that cause wealth inequality, disinvestment in Black communities, police violence, mass incarceration, and white nationalist violence. A pre-eminent African historian, Basil[Read More…]
The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a conglomerate of major American Muslim civil advocacy groups, Tuesday (June 18) joined international calls for an investigation into the death of the former President Mohammed Morsi in Cairo’s Kangaroo court. In a statement, the USCMO said the “public” collapse and death of President Morsi in court in his soundproofed cage warrant suspicion[Read More…]
Although 193 governments adopted UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which warrant an integrated and multisectoral response to deliver on those promises, the progress has been lackadaisical in the past four years. A recent UN report has set an alarm on uneven progress on some SDGs and slipping on a few of the Global Goals in Asia Pacific region. Coordinated multisectoral[Read More…]
By Richard Gale and Gary Null About a decade ago, my late colleague Dr. Martin Feldman and I were invited to be keynote speakers at a conference on anti-aging and alternative medicine in Chicago. The hall was packed with several thousand clinicians, physicians, medical professors, scientific researchers and doctors of non-conventional medical disciplines who were interested in the latest anti-aging[Read More…]
On the evening of January 30, 1948, as he walked to his regular interfaith prayer meeting, Mahatma Gandhi was shot and killed. The assassin Nathuram Godse was a Hindu nationalist who opposed Gandhi’s inclusiveness towards those of other faiths, particularly Muslims. Manifested in its worst form in the assassination of a revered figure, this conflict between liberal and nationalist Hindus[Read More…]
The structural politics that was once characterised by the back-to-back struggles that the toiling masses were forced to undertake has now considerably declined, or is being completely replaced by electoral politics. Arguably, electoral politics has taken a new turn in that everyone, including the leaders of the vulnerable sections, wants to be a part of the ruling power which is[Read More…]
All Adventure Sports activities are hazardous by nature and need an efficient rescue service to avoid fatal accidents Adventure Sports were introduced in Kashmir on a regular basis as an “Active Tourism” activity in early seventies of the last century by establshing an Adventure Tourism Wing in the Directorate of Tourism. The seven Ski and Mountaineering Instructors trained by the[Read More…]
All it would have taken was to ensure that the children had a meal at night Along with my colleagues, I had investigated the so-called mystery disease in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, during its outbreak in 2012, 2013 and 2014. The local name for it was acute encephalitis syndrome, but we found that the disease was not encephalitis but encephalopathy. This distinction[Read More…]
How many wickets- asked Mangal Pandey, Health Minister of Bihar during a press conference to know the current status of India Pakistan clash in the ongoing Cricket World Cup. It is just that he asked the question in the middle of a meeting of health department to tackle the outbreak of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in the state which has[Read More…]
In India, the yields from grains such as millet, sorghum, and maize are more resilient to extreme weather; their yields vary significantly less due to year-to-year changes in climate and generally experience smaller declines during droughts; but yields from rice experience larger declines during extreme weather conditions, finds a new study. In a paper – “Sensitivity of grain yields to[Read More…]
Only an Economic Social Political Philosophical Religious Mind-Change of Shattering Proportion Can Save Us There is a material/non-material cosmic inner/outer dimensionality to this planet and within an enfolding/unfolding order. Our Homo sapiens civilization in its present form socially, politically, philosophically, religiously and economically is not meeting the test of being a part of that order. How can we become[Read More…]
He is all about being the romantic saboteur. He is destructive, hates the business of a steady vocation, and the idea of being desk bound. Little details trouble him; an indignant bigger picture is enthralling. Bomb throwers tend to be of such ilk, taking shots at the establishment, courting potential voters over a pint, and railing against non-representative elements in[Read More…]
Although the Trump administration has given many reasons for its aggressive attitude toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, the more prominent reasons emerge from Iran failure to assure (1) it will never pursue nuclear weapons, (2) will not supply weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas, and, (3) will not threaten Israel. Only Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons can affect the security of the[Read More…]
![Fire and smoke billowing from Norwegian-owned Front Altair tanker said to have been attacked in the waters of the Sea of Oman on June 13, 2019 [Credit: ISNA]](https://cdn.countercurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Front-Altair-tanker-200x150.jpg "The War of Oil Tankers 316")
The economic war waged by Trump’s administration against Iran seems to have been escalated to involve false flag attacks against oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz. Within a one-month period two terrorist attacks; Emirati Al Fujairah attack in May 12th and the Gulf of Oman attack in June 13th, were perpetrated[Read More…]
Moscow, June 18, 2019 (AFP) Russia on Tuesday called for restraint to avoid escalation in the Middle East after the US said it was deploying additional troops due to heightened tensions with Iran. “We are urging all the sides to show restraint,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in response to a question on the deployment. “We would[Read More…]
At the start of 2019, the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea had a total of some 13,865 nuclear weapons, according to a new report by the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). That represents a decrease of 600 nuclear weapons compared to the start of 2018 but all nuclear weapon-possessing countries are modernizing[Read More…]
Immigration divides the left – but a party that champions working class interests would embrace it. Left-wing scepticism about open borders and migration may not be rooted in racism and xenophobia, but it takes the same troubling form as its right-wing counterpart. The left-wing case against immigration hinges on both a pragmatic and a principled argument. The former appeals to the[Read More…]
Ch. Kondeswara Rao was an active leader of Andhra Pradesh Teachers’ Federation (APTF), one of the oldest and leading organizations of teachers, with a progressive outlook, and worked in it in several capacities for decades. For several years, he was the AP State President, before bifurcation of the State. And he was, for several years, the Editor of Upadhyaaya Pragati[Read More…]
The one nation one poll slogan is nothing but attempt to homogenise the diversity of the country and win elections through a ‘national narrative’ which has made the current dispensation successful. India is huge, a continent and if we see the preparedness of the Election Commission, then we can say, the first thing Narendra Modi and his advisers can do[Read More…]
Muzaffarpur, Bihar is in focus. 109 deaths of young children within a span of days cannot be ignored by even the most apathetic systems. There are plenty of discussions, articles, speculations, accusations and counter-accusations…..even as precious lives are being lost. In an attempt to stay focused on the core issue, preventing more deaths of young children, and saving lives, if[Read More…]
New Delhi, June 18 : As the number of children dying from Encephalitis in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar continues to rise, there is a national outrage against the lackadaisical attitude and complete collapse of the health system in Bihar. Several social movements, community organisations, children’s and women groups, students gathered at Bihar Bhawan on June 17th afternoon condemning the inaction[Read More…]
The global population will add 2 billion in the next three decades, closing in on the 10-billion milestone by 2050, said the United Nations. And, India, projected to overtake China, will lead the charge. A newly released report – The World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights – by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)[Read More…]
Egypt’s former President Mohamed Morsi died in a kangaroo court Monday (June 17). The public prosecutor said the 67-year-old Morsi collapsed in a defendants’ cage in the courtroom and was pronounced dead in hospital. Morsi had a history of health issues, including diabetes and liver and kidney disease. He had suffered from medical neglect during his imprisonment, compounded by[Read More…]
“Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him information or a confession, punishing him for an act he has committed or is suspected of having committed,“ (https://www.apt.ch/en/what-is-torture/) Couple of years ago, India’s Attorney General had said at the UN that “Ours (India) is[Read More…]
On Friday morning I was in a small courtroom at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London. Julian Assange, held in Belmarsh Prison and dressed in a pale-blue prison shirt, appeared on a video screen directly in front of me. Assange, his gray hair and beard neatly trimmed, slipped on heavy, dark-frame glasses at the start of the proceedings. He listened intently[Read More…]
Scientists studying climate change expected layers of permafrost in the Canadian Arctic to melt by the year 2090. Instead, it’s happening now. A new study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters revealed that unusually warm summers in the Canadian High Arctic between 2003 and 2016 resulted in permafrost melt up to 240% higher than previous years. Louise Farquharson, a[Read More…]
“The collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” – David Attenborough Today’s economics, especially Economics 101, is a major source of humankind’s denial of the possibility of the calamity of all calamities, which our economy is engineering. Annually, millions of students around the world are forced to study textbooks that indoctrinate[Read More…]
The Management of Savagery – How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump. Max Blumenthal. Verso, London/New York, 2019. Even though the ending is known, Max Blumenthal’s book The Management of Savagery draws the reader through an intriguing tale of media management, political management, financial management all with the goal of achieving the management[Read More…]
Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies While the mystery of who is responsible for sabotaging the two tankers in the Gulf of Oman remains unsolved, it is clear that the Trump administration has been sabotaging Iranian oil shipments since May 2, when it announced its intention to “bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its[Read More…]
It has been a history of turns and the occasional betrayal, but Hong Kong’s experiment with democracy, incubated within the Special Administrative Region, was always going to be contingent on some level. Its colonial past is a poke, a reminder of British bullying, the corruptions of opium and a time when Qing China was torn and a compulsive signer of[Read More…]
Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers In the last week, the realities of US foreign policy have been exposed by a leaked audio tape, a leak about a US attack on the Russian electrical grid, and US attempts to extradite Julian Assange. All the information points to a foreign policy that violates international law and standards, perpetrates wars and[Read More…]
Juan Guaidó, The Puppet Guaidó according to the Venezuelan people First of all, a US puppet with no real career in real politics (violent uprising against a democratic system does not qualify as “doing politics”) can’t possibly be taken seriously. And so he was not taken seriously by the Venezuelan population. Worse. At the moment he self-proclaimed his person “president of[Read More…]
As I glanced through the doom and gloom of the daily news one morning I came upon a dire new report on climate change, which predicts the human species may disappear by the year 2050, as the planet becomes much hotter and unlivable. Very bad news indeed, but something about that year ‘2050’ rang a bell in my head –[Read More…]
Over one hundred children have died in Bihar due to Encephalitis or what they term locally as Chamaki Bukhar. The season is just beginning and you will hear stories from neighboring Uttar Pradesh where Poorvanchal region, dominated by Gorakhpur, will face it again unless a drastic change is done. Japanese encephalitis comes in the form of massive epidemic. While Bihar[Read More…]
(CNS): More and more children around the world are now benefitting from fixed dose combination (FDC) of child-friendly medicines to treat drug-sensitive TB, thanks to the untiring efforts of TB Alliance (Global Alliance for TB Drug Development) and its partners including World Health Organization (WHO), for making these drugs go from development to delivery stage. TB Alliance proudly announced at[Read More…]
Domestic workers are the most underrepresented occupational identities in the informal sector. As compared with the western evidences, Indian domestic workers have to bear the brunt of being from lower caste. The present article reflects upon these workers’ social identity dynamics and positioning their selves in the domestic work context.The intrinsic values attached to any job denotes the attractiveness for[Read More…]
All of us in India, including the BJP, have been stunned by the unprecedented and unanticipated landslide victory of Modi who like a juggernaut swept across the electoral landscape smashing everything standing in its way. The Opposition has been traumatized and there are feeble signs of the defeated parties endeavoring to recover. The civil society has shown more resilience. Obviously,[Read More…]
If our urban transport crisis is getting worse it is not difficult to see why. Look what is happening in Varanasi town in Prime Minister Modi’s constituency. A move is a foot at a high level to introduce ropeways in the ancient town in collaboration with an Austrian company. An absurdly expensive and technologically inappropriate solution when all you need[Read More…]
Very rarely one has the privilege and opportunity to see and observe a golden age. Mostly one reads about past golden ages in the history books…. The era of Ashoka, Akbar, etc … All in the past… in modern times, the era of Nehru…. There I have displayed by ideological biases, but I was around in the last years of[Read More…]
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday continued the Trump administration’s belligerent threats against Iran, declaring in an interview on CBS “Face the Nation” that the US was “considering a full range of options.” Asked if that included “a military response,” he declared “of course.” Pompeo blustered his way through the interview, dismissing any suggestion that the US had no[Read More…]
On April 30, 1975, the United States learned an important lesson. The capture of Saigon by the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) would mark the defeat of the world’s most powerful military force by an army of guerrilla fighters. No matter the scale of its military, or the weight of the iron fist it used to maintain its power, brute[Read More…]
Don’t try to deny it! The political temperature of this country is rising fast. Call it Trump change or Trump warming, if you want, but grasp one thing: increasingly, you’re in a different land and, whatever happens to Donald Trump, the results down the line are likely to be ever less pretty. Trump change isn’t just an American phenomenon, it’s[Read More…]
“When a company wields such power that it can cause a Minister to rush an approval process, cut corners and make significant errors, it is cause for serious concern.” Kelly O’Shanassy, Australian Conservation Foundation, June 12, 2019 While the proposal is of a diminished monster, the travails over Adani’s efforts to open up the Galilee Basin in Queensland to mining[Read More…]
Several Southeast Asian governments and social movements are seeking to counter mounting polarization and inter-communal strife across the globe fuelled by the rise of civilizationalist leaders who think in exclusionary rather than inclusionary terms. In the most high-brow of various initiatives, King Abdullah of Jordan is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the inaugural International Conference on Cohesive Societies[Read More…]
Comrade Marta Harnecker has passed away. Comrade Marta died on June 15, 2019, of cancer in Canada. A relentless fighter, comrade Marta Harnecker (1937 – 2019) made valuable contributions in the areas of theory related to revolution for socialism in the broader Latin American perspective. Her struggle was for a humane world. Marta Hernecker’s was not an adventurist-head and not[Read More…]
Cultural worlds are fluid, and so are humans. Assimilation and migration are intrinsic to any society. Thus Assam is not an aberration. Anyone studying Assam knows how complex and layered its history is. So it is obvious that the articulation of Assamese identity has also undergone multiple changes. The Assam Movement was primarily a cultural movement. It defined the measurements of the “son[Read More…]
I never thought that the face of a broken justice system would be made visible to the nation through a bunch of doctors. As I write, a junior doctor’s strike which initially began in West Bengal, but gradually garnering support enters its second week. Instigated by the assault of two junior doctors by a mob that assembled after a patient[Read More…]
In the Indian context, history stands witness that Indian voters are habitually slackers. They take a long time to observe things very slowly. According to media reports, 2019 Lok Sabha elections was the most expensive election in the history of Indian democracy. To win 303 seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) spent more 27,000 crore and the majority of the funds[Read More…]
Dozens of political activists came together to raise their voices for jailed Delhi University Professor G.N. Saibaba at a rally held in Surrey on Sunday, June 16. Organized by Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI), the rally was aimed at drawing international attention to the deteriorating health of physically challenged Prof. Saibaba who is being incarcerated under inhuman conditions by[Read More…]
After the massive mandate in 2019 General Elections, Narendra Modi Government is in the firm saddle. Now Mr. Amit Shah, who seems to be the most powerful person after Modi is the Home Minster. It is expected that he will pay special attention to the nagging Kashmir issue. Different social groups, the victims of the turmoil in Kashmir, are also[Read More…]
Sanjay Tula and his wife Tula Sanjay are products of Jayaprakash Narayan’s total revolution movement in the ‘70s. They live in Mehsana, Gujarat and run a small organization called Vishwagram which hosts less than 20 children picked up from railway platforms. However, Sanjay is leading a silent peace initiative in Jammu and Kashmir which may never produce any macro level[Read More…]
Farmers in India do a lot of talking about the weather—especially, it seems, when there is no weather in sight. when the land heats up like a furnace and most fields lie fallow, when wells have run dry and the sun taunts from its broiling perch in a cloudless sky, there is no topic more consuming—or less certain—than when and[Read More…]
The death toll of children due to suspected Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in Muzaffarpur area of Bihar on Friday went up to 77. Ten more deaths were reported on Saturday, taking the toll to 77. Most of the casualties are between the age group of 1-10. Doctors claim that the deaths, due to Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), are being caused[Read More…]
At some point in the distant future, when alien lifeforms visit Planet Earth and find proof of its original race of humanoid inhabitants, who by then will have long since disappeared, the discovery will go some thing like this: Whether the cosmic event of all the “OMG’s” and “WTF” will be a colossal meteor strike, some sudden thermonuclear holocaust or[Read More…]
Taiwan has become a new “eastern pivot” for Donald Trump. Against all international laws and UN charters, he is approaching Taiwan, as indicating to the world that regardless of the established world rules which make Beijing, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), the official and legitimate Authority of China, with Taiwan being a part of China – the self-styled emperor,[Read More…]
“I was the CIA director. We lied, We Cheated, We Stole”. – Mike Pompeo It appears that Mike Pompeo has a hard time kicking his old habits. He appears to be as smug about lying as a CIA operative as he is as Secretary of State. Categorically blaming the Iranians for the recent oil attack tankers has left allies scratching[Read More…]
The smearing of George Galloway and widely reported false disinformation that there was no evidence to support the claim that Viva Palestina delivered aid, raises serious concerns, not just in this case, but far beyond. It is seriously disturbing how disinformation and lazy ‘cut and paste’ journalism has become common place within the mainstream media of the UK. One wonders[Read More…]
In analyzing economic data, various sectors like industry, agriculture, services, etc are taken into account. But domestic work done by women is rarely ‘measured’ by analysts. A woman getting up early to make ready food for working husbands is very valuable but it does not figure in the estimates relating to economic figures. Some estimates In an article ( Women’s[Read More…]
The fight against Hindutva cannot be from the outside, it has to be from within. It has to get to the core structure of how it oscillates between the real and the unreal. Hindutva is a strange animal, quasi-real, and quasi-manufactured. Part of it is optics and part of it is organic. At one level it connects the social and[Read More…]
Chief judge Emma Arbuthnot ruled that WikiLeaks founder and journalist Julian Assange will face a trial in February 25 next year to determine whether he is extradited to the United States. As far as Britain’s government and judiciary are concerned, the verdict is a forgone conclusion. Assange will be railroaded to Washington, where his persecutors will try him on 18[Read More…]
US President Donald Trump escalated the war threats against Iran Friday, insisting that Tehran was responsible for the damage done to two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman the previous day and vowing US retaliation for any Iranian action to shut the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Trump based his ignorant and belligerent remarks on a grainy, black-and-white video released[Read More…]
The climate crisis is rapidly warming the Arctic, and the effects are being felt from Alaska to Greenland. The northernmost point on the planet is heating up more quickly than any other region in the world. The reason for this warming is ice–albedo feedback: as ice melts it opens up land and sea to the sun, which then absorb more[Read More…]
Intro The 7-phase 17th LokSabha poll had commenced on this April 11th and concluded on May 19th, covering 542 of the total 543 constituencies. Polling in the remaining constituency, in Tamil Nadu, stands deferred. The counting commenced on May 23rd and concluded the next day. The broad outlines of the outcomes were, however, available on the first day of the[Read More…]
Recent Australian Federal Police (AFP) raids on News Corp and the taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) over leaks from Government about spying plans and Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, respectively, has led to legitimate expressions of outrage in Australia and around the world on this blatant attack on press freedom, truth-telling and freedom of speech. However this huge Mainstream media,[Read More…]
The study done by HelpAge India titled, “Elder Abuse in India: Role of family in care giving – challenges and responses” brings about some glaring facts about the state of care to the elderly in our society. The study, among other things, found out that 35% of the caregivers never felt happy looking after the elderly. Caregivers here mean mainly[Read More…]
The 100 years old mosque in village Hedon Bet, Machhiwara Tehsil in Ludhiana still stands tall, despite zero Muslim population in the village. The Mosque that was built in 1920 lies abandoned for want of worshipers. Thanks to village elders the mosque has not been demolished or being encroached upon by the land grabbers. The elders of the village refuse[Read More…]
Seven people, including four sanitation workers, died of suffocation while cleaning a hotel sewer in Gujarat. The men had entered the septic tank without any safety gear, news agency AFP reported. The incident took place at Darshan Hotel in Fartikui village of Dabhoi tehsil, about 35 km from Vadodara city. The four sanitation workers were identified as Mahesh Patanwadiya, Ashok[Read More…]
Like a true statesman, the PM Modi on 25 May, after being re-elected as the leader of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, claimed that “Minorities have been deceived in the country through an imaginary fear created for the purpose of vote bank politics. We have to pierce through this deception. We have to gain trust.” The statement of the PM[Read More…]
I dont have much understanding of films these days as I dont watch them but yes sometime I read about them. Indian cinema whether in Bollywood or elsewhere has been dominated by the dominated caste groups and defended the existing caste supremacy and promoted gender segregation or division of labour. The cinema rarely showed support for the cause of people[Read More…]
Indian Medical Association has over 325,000 doctors as its members. As with everything in India including the Republic itself, the upper castes inherited whatever the Brits left behind. There was no revolution to democratise society after Independence. Instead the ideology of this ruling upper class that took over was nothing other than the ideology of various professional associations be they[Read More…]
The Shramajibi Swasthya Udyog (SSU)strongly condemn attempts by some political parties in West Bengal to give a communal colour to the agitation of doctors demanding an end to violence against them and stringent punishment for the perpetrators. SSU is a constituent of the Joint Platform of Doctors, West Bengal currently leading the struggle for justice. The leaders of the BJP[Read More…]
There is an easy way of denying rights or declaring a rightful tribal an encroacher : Just deny him the information within time. There is an easy way of denying rights or declaring a rightful tribal an encroacher. Just deny him the information within time. He is evicted from the forest where he was dwelling for generations. Delay the order[Read More…]
Dominant social groups need to make the necessary distinction between legitimate anger to set right history and illegitimate hatred to push back history. For, anger is organic while hatred is manufactured. The last five years had witnessed an explosion of anger and hatred that got manifested in protests and street violence. If we are to go by even the first[Read More…]
The Trump administration’s thuggish secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, made a presentation to the media Thursday afternoon in which he asserted that Iran was responsible for suspected attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. These charges carry with them the threat of a war that would transform much of the Eurasian[Read More…]
In a press conference that immediately evoked memories of the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday claimed Iran was behind alleged attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman without presenting one single shred of evidence. “This assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute[Read More…]
Nearly a billion people are facing climate change hazards globally, with the Asia-Pacific region housing twice as many people living in areas with high exposure than all other regions combined, says the new annual Global Peace Index (GPI) released on Wednesday by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). Another new study finds: Intensifying climate change is estimated to increase[Read More…]
A convention organzed by EVM Virodhi Rashtriya Jan Andolan in Mumbai has called upon political parties and the people to boycott the forthcoming elections in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Haryana and Sikkim if they are not conducted using ballot papers. An eight-point resolution passed by convention said the people of India have very little faith in the outcome of the recently-held general[Read More…]
The Home Secretary of the United Kingdom did his thing, which was little in the way of disagreement. The superpower has issued a request; the retainer would comply. This week, the US Department Justice Department formally sought the extradition of Julian Assange. The process was certified by Sajid Javid, a man rather distracted of late. He is, after all, seeking[Read More…]
In February 2010, the Indian government placed an indefinite moratorium on the commercial release of Bt brinjal. Prior to this decision, numerous independent scientific experts from India and abroad had pointed out safety concerns regarding Bt (insecticidal) brinjal based on data and reports in the biosafety dossier that Mahyco, the crop developer, had submitted to the regulators. The then Minister of[Read More…]
The British Home Secretary has signed a request for the extradition of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange to the US, where he is accused of violating the Espionage Act. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today program, Sajid Javid said that he signed and certified the papers on Wednesday, with the order going before the UK courts on Friday. Javid said, he’s[Read More…]
The U.S. military is the single largest producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world, says a new study report. The report – “Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War” – by Neta C. Crawford, Professor of Political Science at Boston University and Co-Director of the Costs of War project, has been prepared under Brown University’s Costs[Read More…]
Trump and his party must be defeated There are so many things wrong with Donald Trump that one hardly knows where to begin. He is a racist, habitual liar, tax evader, cruel cager of infants, misogynist, narcissist, bully, violator of numerous laws, both national and international, a friend of rich oligarchs and enemy of the poor, to mention only a[Read More…]
While the United States has been intimidating dozens of countries all over the world, two cuddly Chinese giant pandas – a three year old male called Ru Yi, and a female one year younger, named Ding Ding – were settling down in their new home, inside the legendary Moscow Zoo. Chewing bamboo shoots, and obviously enjoying the unprecedented attention, two[Read More…]
After withdrawing from the nuclear deal with Iran last year and resuming sanctions last November, the White House in April announced that its goal was to “drive Iranian exports to zero.” To make this drive happen, the White House stopped allowing (my emphasis) countries like India, China, Japan, Turkey, and South Korea to import Iranian oil: dictating to sovereign countries[Read More…]
Note: On 6 June 2019 India voted with Israel in the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to prevent a Palestinian “human rights” organisation called Shahed, which Jerusalem insists is linked to Hamas, from getting observer status in UN institutions.This is the first time India has voted with Israel on a resolution initiated by Jerusalem at the UN. On[Read More…]
How many birds flying into buildings die, Thinking the glass reflection is the sky. — with a nod to Kansas poet Madeleine Aaron Bird migration is a wondrous and majestic phenomenon. One may witness flocks of colorful songbirds sweeping the skies, geese gliding in a V-shape of beautiful symmetry, or a great hawk soaring above and diving for prey[Read More…]
The international definition of right to food means right to culturally accepted food for the people. It means that the government and authorities can not impose a particular kind of food habit alien to the culture of that particular state. The controversy around Akshay Patra Foundation’s mid day meal programme raises various question about the intention of the organisation which[Read More…]
A new study says the world’s oceans will likely lose about one-sixth of its fish and other marine life by the end of the century if climate change continues on its current path. Much of the world relies on the oceans for food or livelihood, scientists say. The comprehensive computer-based study by an international team of marine biologists found that[Read More…]
First came the abuses. Then, the allegations. Then, the tardy response, with lacings of apologia. The UK Charity Commission could not have been harsher about the conduct of Oxfam, which is a charity fallen most foul. The inquiry into its past misdeeds, triggered by a February 2018 report by the Sunday Times, resembled the more baroque features of a child[Read More…]
Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha condemns repeated raids on Stan Swamy and arrests of other human rights activists Today, at around 7:15 am, an eight-member team of the Maharashtra police once again raided the Bagaicha campus in Namkum near Ranchi, the residence of 83-year old Stan Swamy, a well-known activist of Jharkhand. The police searched Stan Swamy’s belongings for about 3.5 hours.[Read More…]
In a TV interview on June 2, on the news docuseries “Axios” on the HBO channel, Jared Kushner opened up regarding many issues, in which his ‘Deal of the Century’ was a prime focus. The major revelation made by Kushner, President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, was least surprising. Kushner believes that Palestinians are not capable of governing themselves. Not[Read More…]
In the 17th Chapter of the Bible – Saint Luke: it is written: The kingdom of God is within man Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people. In Al-Qur’an, the Divine revelations make the point: Your Lord is One….You are a community of nations (Ummah)…. killing one person unjustifiably is equal[Read More…]
Pakistan’s self-exiled leader Altaf Hussain was arrested on Tuesday (June 11) from his residence in London. He was arrested in an early morning raid by a team of the Scotland Yard. The arrest has sent shockwaves across Pakistan as Hussain once ruled Karachi, the country’s commercial capital, with an iron fist, shutting down the entire city in mere seconds with[Read More…]
While summer is uncomfortable to most of middle class people, it takes heavy toll of the daily laborers, marginalised casual workers and industrial manual employees. The rich and most government employees take some shelter under air conditioners or coolers but large number of ‘fourth -class’ employees, the street hawkers, peddlers, beggars and daily wagers are forced to work in scorching[Read More…]
A journalist friend yesterday asked me about India’s status in the World Freedom Index. I said, there are three kind of them in India at the moment. One who are cheerleaders of the ruling establishment, who bark day and night, and are ready to ‘create’ a new story about the ‘enemies’ in their studios. They are happier lot and do[Read More…]
Following the lead of the late Ulrich Beck in works such as Risk Society and Power in the Modern Age the time has now come to ask ourselves whether or not the Green party is already or is about to become a global political party. First a little background in theory. Beck was, of course, famous for introducing the idea[Read More…]
International Community How many times a day is the expression “international community” pronounced on Western Mainstream Media in a dishonest manner? How many times is this expression used by Western MSM to refer only to the US and its Western client states? Too many times. Too often. If one takes the time to compare enough Western news and reports, the conclusion[Read More…]
More and more, we look into our screens and gizmos. And this helps us — almost as if they were made for that purpose — not to think about the weather outside. Kept busy “curating” our own lives, we are regularly spared evidence of the coming catastrophe. Long ago, in a memorable poem, Robert Frost guessed that there was a human[Read More…]
In the years immediately preceding World War II, Winston Churchill is quoted as having said: “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing expedients, of delays, is coming to its close … … in its place we are entering a period of consequences”. World War II, purported to be a war to end all wars, ended in 1945 after USA[Read More…]
June 10 was a great day for those who have been fighting for justice to an eight-year-old victim of rape and murder. This is especially true for the courageous Human Rights Lawyer, Deepika Singh Rajawat who stepped forward at personal risk to defend the family of Asifa Bano, a Muslim nomad girl who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and killed by[Read More…]
The Washington Post reported today that officials from the US Justice Department issued a formal request to British authorities last Thursday for the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The document has not been made public. The US government had 60 days from Assange’s arrest by British police on April 11 to deliver a complete extradition application to the UK. The first[Read More…]
With Israel set to host an unprecedented meeting of the national security advisors of the United States, Russia and Israel, this week’s efforts by German foreign minister Heiko Maas and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe to mediate between the US and Iran could prove to be a sideshow. The meeting of the national security advisors, against the backdrop of[Read More…]
Unemployment and Privatisation are the two biggest scandals that are glued with the present right wing government and still the government does not even care to erase the scandals because it gets benefit from these scandals. In an agricultural country, workers should be on the throne, and government should work on how to protect and secure the throne. Just like[Read More…]
Bangladeshi film star Anju Ghosh has recently joined BJP in Kolkata. Nobody raised any objection to her being part of the BJP family. When Anju Ghosh was being greeted for membership of the BJP, an army veteran who fought at the Kargil war was arrested on May 29th when he was ‘declared’ ‘illigal immigrant’ by the ‘Foreigners Tribunal’ in Assam.[Read More…]
Delimitation of Assembly constituencies in J&K is the new war cry let loose by Sangh Parivar & its drooling followers. Columns , opinions & views have started appearing in print & social media exhorting the new Govt. in New-Delhi to initiate such an action so as to show People of Kashmir their political worth as it has shown to Muslims[Read More…]
Right to worship is an exclusive fundamental right. It is also part of freedom of expression, to praise anybody or criticise. Citizens have every right to point out defects of Gandhi and endorse reasons given by Godse for his act of elimination of Gandhi. We, the people are variety of desh bhakths. We love and worship, whomever we like. Perhaps,[Read More…]
Millions of people in Sudan have joined a general strike called by pro-reform groups, shutting down the centre of cities across the country despite a wave of arrests and intimidation. The civil disobedience campaign aimed at forcing the ruling military junta to accept civilian rule entered a second day on Monday amidst reports of military killing at least 120 and[Read More…]
Former president of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari was arrested Monday (June 10) by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in mega money laundering case. Asif Zardari was taken to NAB office in Rawalpindi where he was shifted to cell no 2. The former president will be presented before the accountability court on Tuesday where the NAB will appeal for his remand.[Read More…]
A 30th consecutive weekend of yellow vest protests across France saw minor clashes. Citing French government sources a number of media reports said: The number of protesters was well below peaks seen compared to earlier this year. Some 10,300 people demonstrated across the country on Saturday, up from 9,500 last weekend. The numbers were well below the peaks seen in[Read More…]
Girish Karnad did not die. Standing as a tall pipal tree kissing the sky, he was an inspiration for many. He lost his breath now. The bodily departure has taken place. But a tradition that he got involved with in Karnataka is still alive even with his absence. And playwrights of the future in Karnataka cannot avoid the smell of[Read More…]
Permafrost covers 25% of the Northern Hemisphere. It is the world’s largest icebox, and its landmass is 4.5xs larger than Antarctica, 6.5xs larger than the United States. It is stuffed full of carbon locked in frozen ground accumulated overeons, which, by way of contrast, makescoal power plant emissions lookbush-league. Most notably, permafrost has an image of permanence and slow/gradual change,[Read More…]
“Tales Of A City By The Sea” by Gaza-born, Palestinian Australian playwright and poet, Samah Sabawi, is a simple but powerful play about the realities of life and love in the Gaza Concentration Camp that is ruled with an iron fist by Apartheid Israel. However fundamentally the play is about those who have choices and those who do not. Specifically[Read More…]
Stripping the altars, burning the heretics and cleansing the stables are the usual fare of a morally crazed order. The engaged agents think they have found the reason for existence and need to bother everybody else about it. Some of this can be a very dangerous thing indeed – at least historically. Those who claim to know the truth are[Read More…]
Eid, 5 June 2019- The Day of Breaking Fast Scene 1 In Communist ruled Kerala, a young Christian man, Sajan Abraham, gets charged with the crime of promoting enmity between different groups under Section 153A. “Don’t you drink cow’s milk?” Sajan asked in the middle of an argument with a Hindu Nazi. The stupidity of Sajan for debating with a[Read More…]
A child is a miniature of an adult. A child has an individual existence like any adult in a country. Now, we , in India, successfully marked our unique toned voice for the treatment of rights of children at least above animal rights. Kashmiri 8- year old Asifa was sedated for days together, then raped by a group of “Adults[Read More…]
A protest rally was held at the Press Club of India, New Delhi from 1 p.m. onwards today i.e. 10 June, 2019. About 200 journalists and supporters attended the protest against arrest of journalists Prashant Kanojia, Ishika Singh & Anuj Shukla. A round of Press Club of India was taken by way of rally. Slogans like “yogi sarkar hosh mein[Read More…]
Today in India the fascist BJP Government at the Centre announced that henceforth all District magistrates in all States of India have the power and are encouraged to track and investigate putative foreigners. Despite the fightback by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee against the Muslim-hating Hindu Nazis who today are in power at the Centre and in most States,[Read More…]
This vile ultimatum that’s been the undercurrent of the so very well touted ‘Deal Of The Century’ has a touch of the deja vu for me. Obviously I’ve seen it before. To be exact, over 71 years ago when the Hagganah Zionist terrorist organisation, after committing massacre after massacre in Palestine in 1948, pursued the fleeing Palestinians who were advancing[Read More…]
I had not intended to watch this program, a CBC special documentary hosted/narrated by Peter Mansbridge, the CBC’s retired chief correspondent and national news anchor. However, as it came on during prime pre-dinner time viewing I thought that I should watch it in order to find out some of the current political spin within Canada’s establishment. It was rather underwhelming[Read More…]
The great centrist European tradition of social democracy has been receiving a rattle for the last few decades. The European Parliament elections were a reminder how much their appeal has diminished. In Denmark, by way of contrast, they have established something of a bridgehead, defeating the centre-right coalition led by the Venstre party’s Lars Løkke Rasmussen in Wednesday’s election. The[Read More…]
A public apology by a prominent Salafi scholar sheds a light on Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s version of ‘moderate Islam,’ his effort to shape the Middle East and North Africa in his mould, and the replacement of religion with hyper-nationalism as the source of his legitimacy. Claiming to speak in the name of the Sahwa or Awakening movement,[Read More…]
In war the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces[Read More…]
Is opposition becoming extinct in India? With the kind of politics we are witnessing, one wonders whether the Opposition will be ‘extinct’ from the field of political bio-diversity? While decisive results ensured the YSR Congress Party in Andhra Pradesh and BJP (NDA) at the Centre steer the destiny of people for the coming five years, we find the Opposition in[Read More…]
“We received information that 100 to 150 Naxals had gathered deep in the forest and constituted a search party of 100 and went in search of them. When we found the armed and uniformed Naxals in equal or more numbers than us, we shouted for them to drop their weapons and surrender. But not heeding our appeals they fired, intending[Read More…]
We are living in times where the social norms, the values of Constitution have been violated times and over again. The increasing atrocities on dalits, the lynchings of minorities in the name of Cow-Beef have changed the social equations in a drastic way during last few years. This in a way is part of the ascendance of a politics of[Read More…]
“So, how did things get so bad?” I am sure you must have heard, asked or thought about this yourself. So have I. Many times, over the years whenever I saw a badly-behaved child being fed with the help of an iPad, a spaced-out teenager who seems lost in his electronic world where Facebook friends are more real to her[Read More…]
To, The Director General of Police, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh Email: dgpcontrol-up@nic.in Respected Sir, The murder of two and a half years old girl 6 days ago by some goons in Aligarh has shaken us all. It’s one of the heinous crimes of humanity. We commend the Police of Aligarh in acting swiftly and arresting the culprits. We hope that all[Read More…]
The completion of a year since the arrest of academics, activists, artists and lawyers; Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson, Shoma Sen, Sudhir Dhawale and Surendra Gadling, framed for violence caused by right wing elements at Bhima Koregoan on 1 January 2018 was successfully marked by a Jan Sabha and Cultural Programme held in Jantar Mantar, New Delhi at 11 am on[Read More…]
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. I circle around God, around the primordial tower. I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? —Rainer Maria Rilke, Book[Read More…]
It is time Mumbai’s new municipal commissioner Pravin Pardeshi convenes a meeting of citizens to discuss ways to take the city out of the mess it has landed in. This was the view at a meeting of citizens including structural engineers, architects, planners and activists at Moneylife Foundation in Dadar. The point made by prominent structural engineer Alpa Sheth that[Read More…]
The damage-related cost of carbon pollution has been variously estimated at $US200 per tonne CO2, this enabling calculation of the inescapable Carbon Debt we are leaving to be paid by future generations. A climate criminal Australia is among world leaders in 14 key areas relating to greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution, and with a population (25 million) that is only 0.3%[Read More…]
World Citizens Call for Renewed Efforts to Resolve Asian Maritime Delimitations Dispute 8 June has been designated by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Day of the Oceans to highlight the important role that the United Nations has played in creating the Law of the Sea Convention. Nevertheless there are maritime delimitation disputes that are currently dangerous and[Read More…]
Turkey will start getting S-400 Russian anti-missile systems within two months amid escalating dispute between Ankara and Washington over the purchase of Russian anti-missile system. “We will begin delivery of the S-400s to Turkey within two months,” Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov announced on Friday (June 7) during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). He noted that the agreement was already[Read More…]
On the 2nd of May 2019, the Trump Administration decided to enforce Title 111 of the Helms-Burton Act. Title 111 authorises US nationals with claims to confiscated properties in Cuba to file suits in US courts against persons that may be “trafficking “in that property. Title 111 of the Helms-Burton Act has not been enforced before though the Act was[Read More…]
Mette Frederiksen of the five-party Social Democrat bloc won 91 of the 169 seats in the Danish parliament ending the rule of the right-wing Liberal Party group that had governed for 14 of the last 18 years. The election issues centered on climate change, immigration and Denmark’s generous social welfare policies. All parties favored tighter immigration rules thereby taking away[Read More…]
Dr Ram Puniyani is one of the most prolific authors of our time writing on communalism particular that of the Sangh Parivar variety. At the time, when most of the ‘liberals’ of the ‘khan market’ variety have either surrendered or have become part of the Maharna Pratap society, of ‘new India’, he continue to write with amazing strength and capacity.[Read More…]
A visiting journalist who shot into prominence after throwing a shoe at India’s Home Minister in protest against attempts to hush up investigations of the 1984 Sikh massacre was honoured by Radical Desi on Thursday, June 6. Jarnail Singh, who once worked with Dainik Jagran, a national Hindi daily, is here in connection with special events being organized in commemoration[Read More…]
The head of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde has repeated earlier warnings that the trade war between US and China threatens to result in a cut to global growth and has called on Washington and Beijing to pull back. In a report published earlier this week, the IMF estimated that the latest round of tariffs could see a reduction[Read More…]
Sanctions imperialism has imposed on Venezuela are illegal. The UN and Organization of American States (OAS) charters, and U.S. laws find this illegal action. Media reports said: The unilateral economic sanctions is an explicit violation of international law protected under the UN, OAS charters, human rights stipulations, and even U.S. law. Despite the fact, sanctions have turned as imperialism’s preferred[Read More…]
The Bharatiya Janata party has returned to power with a thumping majority. The party had won 303 Loksabha seats on it’s own while the National Democratic Alliance( NDA) managed to bag 353 seats in all. The United Progressive Alliance(UPA) could manage only 85 seats while the congress party is reduced to 52 seats; 8 more than what it achieved in[Read More…]
Memorial Day has come and gone and President Trump did not issue his pardons after all. There was substantial evidence that he was planning to use the yearly moment honoring the country’s war dead to grant executive clemency to several U.S. soldiers and at least one military contractor. All have been accused, and one already convicted, of crimes in the never-ending war on[Read More…]
It was on the soccer pitch that 2022 World Cup host Qatar definitively shrugged off the UAE-Saudi-led economic and diplomatic boycott of the Gulf state as the crisis entered its third year with no prospect of resolution. World soccer body FIFA’s abandonment of Saudi-United Arab Emirates-backed plans to expand the 2022 World Cup from 32 to 48 teams just days[Read More…]
First, the force that is ending freedom will be identified and described; and, then, the force that they fear and hate the most (and are trying to destroy) will be identified and described. THE FORCE THAT IS ENDING FREEDOM Every empire is a dictatorship. No nation can be a democracy that’s either heading an empire, or a vassal-state of one.[Read More…]
The secular minded academics and civil society have reminded us once again that Nehru’s secular legacy needs to be remembered in a given political context, on the occasion of his 55th death anniversary on 27 May, 2019. It is not wrong to say that Nehru’s ‘National Philosophy’- which broadly emphasis on values and principles like secularism, socialism, scientific educations, inclusive[Read More…]
Ms Kamla Harris, democratic party Senator from California who is also planning to contest the Presidential position in the United States has demanded that US should immediately switch to Paper Ballet so that people’s mandate cant be hacked by the enemies of the nation. I think this point is as important for India as for US as democracy is endangered[Read More…]
In a June 1 interview with ABC Radio Adelaide, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer warned that Julian Assange could die in prison if his persecution is not stopped immediately. Last week, Melzer issued a scathing denunciation of Assange’s persecution, calling it “psychological torture.” Reporter Philip Williams asked Melzer, “If your calls are ignored, do you fear that he[Read More…]
The all-powerful U.S. Dollar is not that lovely thing now-a-days. Significant moves are on to dump the U.S. Dollar. Media reports said: Russia and China took another step away from the U.S. Dollar after the two countries agreed to develop bilateral trade using the Ruble and the Yuan. It was one of the major deals reached after Vladimir Putin and[Read More…]
When the President of Israel and the Jewish son-in-law of the President of the United States make surprisingly thoughtless statements about Palestine, they show us just how deliberately ignorant of history they are — and how uncaring they are for Palestinian suffering at a deeply subconscious level. Hatim Kanaaneh, Palestinian doctor and author of A Doctor in Galilee: The Life and Struggle[Read More…]
Year after year, month after month, I see two sides of the world; two extremes which are getting more and more disconnected: I see great cities like Homs in Syria, reduced to horrifying ruins. I see Kabul and Jalalabad in Afghanistan, fragmented by enormous concrete wallsintended to protect NATO occupation armies and their local puppets. I see monstrous environmental[Read More…]
Dr. Mirandi, Professor Extraordinaire of Iran, said it best when asked on Al Jazeera if the USA was going to attack Iran. He stated something so obvious that you would think western journalists would have already come to this realization, that “as long as the USA is sending its military to the Persian Gulf they are not about to attack[Read More…]
What Will Happen When Threats Are Met with Reason, When Cruelty is Met by Kindness, When the Call for Humanity Confronts the Reality of Inhumanity?How Will Trump Respond to Mexican President Lopez Obrador’s Letter? We very often speak of “speaking truth to power.” It is both a powerful and a dangerous thing to do. Julian Assange is suffering both physically[Read More…]
Violence 2 While in the parallel reality made up by Western MSM “people are oppressed by Maduro’s dictatorship”, in the real world politicians, police forces, military forces and humble civilians (often dark-skinned) who voted for the democratically elected President Maduro are systematically purged. The assassinations and lynchings of pro-Chavistas are continuously committed in pure mafia style. But let the US-sponsored[Read More…]
In the Pali district of Rajasthan a Dalit boy was thrashed by a group of saffron clad men after he allegedly tried to enter a local temple. A preliminary investigation has revealed that the incident took place in Dhaneriya village of Pali district on June 1. Reports suggest that the victim’s uncle filed a complaint with the police two days[Read More…]
He may not be popular in Britain, but he still has shavings of appeal. For a country that has time for Nigel Farage, pro-Brexit enthusiast and full-time hypocrite (he is a member of the European Parliament, the very same institution he detests), President Donald Trump will garner a gaggle of fans. One of them was not the London Mayor, Sadiq[Read More…]
“Chernobyl”—the five-part miniseries—has created sensation across the world, with a record number of viewers. It was screened on HBO and Sky Atlantic in May-June, and the last episode was on 3 June. It is also available on Hotstar. It is really an amazing experience to spend five hours before the screen (which, in fact, offer a lot of lessons for[Read More…]
The sixty or seventy million men, women and children didn’t die because of Adolph Hitler, they perished because the wealthy in the US and Western Europe empowered Adolph Hitler to make war. IF there were public awareness of this incontrovertible truth, how would activists within he hundreds of millions of good people who lost loved ones during the Second[Read More…]
The Chief Military Advocate General of the Israeli army, Sharon Afek, and the US Department of Defense General Counsel, Paul Ney, shared a platform at the ‘International Conference on the Law of Armed Conflict’, which took place in Herzliya, Israel between May 28-30. Their panel witnessed some of the most misconstrued interpretations of international law ever recorded. It was as[Read More…]
Demonstrators in Sudan, Algeria and nations beyond the Middle East such as Pakistan and Russia are applying lessons learnt from the 2011 popular Arab revolts as the Sudanese military uses an apparent Saudi-United Arab Emirates template to crack down. This week’s crackdown in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, in which reportedly some 100 people were killed as of this[Read More…]
Does it help if readers don’t have time to think over the articles they come across? The mainstream media (MSM) continuously bombard its audience with stories. It’s its 24/7 business. The MSM continue telling one type of stories while continue hiding another type. It continues, and gives no respite to the brains of its audience. Does the style, or tact,[Read More…]
On the night of 22nd May, I was talking to a good friend, a sensible academic deeply committed to his students. We were anxious. Millions were desperately waiting for the results to be declared the next day. Perhaps we (and many others I am sure) were not waiting on the same lines. We were not keen on waiting because deep[Read More…]
Mayawati, President of Bhujan Samaj Party (BSP), is known unreliable, unpredictable woman politician in India. After the death of Kanshi Ram on 9Ocotober, 2006, her political mentor, Mayawati was supposed to run the BSP as Kanshi Ram wanted her to run but it did not happen. Although Kanshi Ram joined hands with the BJP to make Mayawati the first time[Read More…]
The ‘reason’ for Ms Mayawati’s desertion from the alliance in Uttar Pradesh are superfluous and show that without working on a grand visionary document, she is continuously focusing on the ‘caste’ ‘arithmetic’ at the ground which was forged by the BJP and Sangh Parivar in a much better way than her. However, in the entire exercise of Uttar Pradesh, she[Read More…]
The French railway workers are striking. The workers are rejecting “the new railway pact” that plans to split up the public railway company. Demonstrations also took place in many areas including Lyon. Rail traffic has been sporadic since Monday in Valence and Lyon since Monday. There were irregular transportation services in Saint, Bel, Saint-Paul, Brignais, Lozanne, Puy, Saint Etienne, West Lyonnais and Montlucon-Bourges. Media reports said: Most of the[Read More…]
Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek It truly looked grand, impressive– the fourth most populous country on earth voted in general elections, which were held on 17 April 2019. Hundreds of positions were for grab:that of the president, the vice president, members of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), and members of local legislative bodies.There were 190 million eligible voters in the country,and sixteen parties, including four[Read More…]
Ever since the ‘germ theory of disease’ was propounded by Louis Pasteur two hundred years ago, the world has understood bacteria as the cause of numerous infections, many of them deadly. The insight led to the advent of antibiotics, hailed as ‘magic bullets’ for their ability to treat infectious diseases effectively, and it was believed pathogenic bacteria had been conquered[Read More…]
“What’s gone on this morning sends clear and dangerous signals to journalists and newsrooms across Australia. This will chill public interest reporting.” News Corp Australia spokesperson, The West Australian, June 4, 2019 These are dark times for journalists and publishers. It did not seem coincidental that Annika Smethurst, a News Corp journalist and political affairs editor, would be a target[Read More…]
Co-Written by Delia D. Aguilar & E, San Juan, Jr. Manipulating the mid-term May 13, 2019 elections, Philippine strong-man Rodrigo Duterte has finally seized full control of the State apparatus. He captured the last institution, the Senate, to guarantee absolute power (after removing an independent chief justice of the Supreme Court), with the election of his candidates to confirm his[Read More…]
There once was a world where state actors operated in an anarchic international environment, where maximizing their overall power was their goal, and war was their means of achieving it. That world is now dead. In its place we have the current spectacle of what were known as the “great powers” who are now, at least, formally if by no[Read More…]
Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written to the Editor-in-Chief of the British Medical Journal and the British Medical Association Council Chairman, Chaand Nagpaul. Her purpose is to not only draw attention to the impact of biocides, not least that of glyphosate, on health and the environment but also to bring attention to the corruption that allows this to continue.[Read More…]
Decades of our work at ABVA, AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (AIDS Anti-Discrimination Movement of India) was sought to be subverted and our reputation tarnished through an article published in The Hindu. We decided to fight back and filed a complaint at the Press Council of India (PCI). The decision on our complaint was passed on 29.05.2019 by the PCI whose[Read More…]
(The language-question is again under discussion spotlight after the publication of the draft of National Education Policy (NEP) 2018. In the context, l recollect the day when of one of my articles titled ‘Official Language Vs Social Justice’, originally written in Hindi on the same subject, was to be presented at a five-day conference on ‘Indian Constitution and Social Justice’.[Read More…]
Alleppey, a coastal district of Kerala, doesn’t have any natural forest land. Still, its sandy white soil and harsh environment didn’t stop Mrs. Devaki Amma Kollakal Thapovanam from cultivating her four-odd acres of property in Kandalloor (a small panchayat in the taluk ofKarthikapally) with greenery.When I visited Mrs. Devaki Amma’s patch of forest in 2013, I was amazed by the[Read More…]
The massive verdict of 2019 in favour of muscular nationalism and for a brave ‘chappan-inch-chatti’ – 56-inch broad chest thumping ‘roaring lion son of Bharat Mata’ in the shape of celibate Narendra Modi, compared to an emasculated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2014 and a toffee faced privileged dynast Rahul Gandhi in 2019, is overwhelming. The fact that economic factors[Read More…]
Eid Mubarak! I’m writing this article on the eve of Eid. Two weeks after the Modi 2.0 government was installed in India. When the election results came out on May 23 I was baffled. How come a government which put India through enormous pain through its anti-people policies like Demonetisation which killed over 200 people and destroying small scale industries[Read More…]
Thirty years are not a big time gap in the history of a country but it has potential to cause a big impact on the lives of common people. Today on 4th June world revisits to the fateful but to cruel memories of Tiananmen Square incident which affected millions of people’s lives in the sphere of personal freedom, decent and[Read More…]
WE DEMAND THAT ELECTIONS BE HELD ONLY BY BALLOT PAPER!! The Peoples’ Movement against the EVMS has gained great momentum across the country. Never before have the masses been so clear and determined to get rid of the EVMs, which clearly can be hacked and manipulated. Fewer people trust the results of the recently held elections and thus there is[Read More…]
The Uppsala District Court yesterday ruled against a bid by Swedish state prosecutors for the country to formally detain WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in absentia, which would have set in motion a request for his extradition from Britain. Assange’s lawyers have described the judgement as a legal “victory.” It is a blow to the attempts by Swedish prosecutors to secure[Read More…]
Julian Assange is being slowly murdered by “Her Majesty’s Prison Service” at Belmarsh prison in the south-east of London. The prison is notorious for holding people who have never been charged with a crime indefinitely. It is also called the British version of Guantanamo, and, typically used to detain so-called terrorists, thus called by the British police and secret[Read More…]
Sudan’s troops stormed the main camp of pro-democracy protestors in the capital Khartoum Monday and killed at least 35 people in a crackdown, which has drawn international condemnation. Hundreds were injured in the armed assault as the Islamists-backed military tried to break up the opposition sit-in, according to the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors, which is close to the protestors.[Read More…]
Nazareth: In a sign of how politically vulnerable he has rapidly become, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu plunged Israel into new elections last week – less than two months after his far-right bloc appeared to win at the ballot box. Netanyahu was forced to dissolve the 120-member parliament to block his chief rival, Benny Gantz, from getting a chance to assemble[Read More…]
Much of my creative work these days (and indeed for decades before) is to address the mounting and sometimes engulfing Earth Crisis within which we are all entangled; which threatens us daily and overshadows the future. Earth Crisis is not only Climate Change, although climate change is a major component of Earth Crisis. Other components of the ongoing global condition[Read More…]
The British and Australian governments have blithely dismissed a May 31 report by United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, which established that WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange has been the victim of a protracted campaign of “psychological torture.” The brazen responses demonstrate the criminality of the US-led vendetta against Assange, which is proceeding in violation of due[Read More…]
In the May 16th edition of Countercurrents, I argued that the United States was not going to go to war with Iran. I cited several reasons why it would not. First was the revolution in the technology of military weapons such that troops can be struck with smaller, more efficient weapons that could be launched across great distances. In this[Read More…]
Since 1990, Manipur decided to celebrate Loktak Day under the motto of ‘Save Loktak Lake’. Loktak Lake which is one of the primary tourist attractions is consistently turning into a political discourse. It has become not only a dialogue of climate change, development, livelihood, tourism, but also of identity and struggle. This dialogue exploded into a singular event on November[Read More…]
General Wei Fenghe, China’s defense minister, warned June 2, 2019 that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would not “yield a single inch of the country’s sacred land.” Wei said China’s military will “resolutely take action” to defend China’s claims over self-ruled Taiwan and disputed South China Sea waters. Wei was addressing defense chiefs, officials and academics at the Shangri-La Dialogue[Read More…]
Is the world economy poised to enter the phase of what the Dutch trend-watcher Adjiedj Bakas called ‘Slowbalisation’? The trend forecasts say that the world will soon witness another spell of ‘financial crisis’ with Donald Trump unleashing a trade war on emerging economies like China, India etc and with the worsening conditions in European Union. During the past three decades,[Read More…]
It is a giddy intoxicant, and making all who partake fall over in puddling nonsense. The Mueller Report is not turning out to be the cleansing agent any of its readers were hoping for. Originally encouraged to identify the cause behind Trumpland and its dark side, the agent of disaffection, the root of madness, it has done as much to[Read More…]
The recent White House decision to speed the deployment of an aircraft carrier battle group and other military assets to the Persian Gulf has led many in Washington and elsewhere to assume that the U.S. is gearing up for war with Iran. As in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials have cited suspect intelligence data to justify elaborate[Read More…]
Hobsbawms’s posthumous collection of essays, ‘Fractured Times- Culture and Society in the Twentieth Century’(2013), is a tour de force of cultural history Eric Hobsbawm ( 9 June, 1917 – 1 October, 2012) In the preface to Fractured Times he wrote just days before his death, Eric Hobsbawm put his future reader on notice that it was going to be[Read More…]
The Judaization of Jerusalem. It used to work under cover of darkness, at least in the mainstream media, but now it’s out in the open with official recognition of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem from the United States. Israel implements its judaization of Jerusalem by directly undermining the sanctity of both Muslim (the Haram al Sharif) and Christian (the Via Dolorosa)[Read More…]
The 14th Islamic Summit Conference ended Friday Night (May 31) in Mecca. A final statement accused Iran of supporting Yemen’s Houthi rebel group; illegally occupying three islands in the Persian Gulf; and “interfering” in the domestic affairs of both Syria and Bahrain. Not surprisingly, the Mecca summit reiterated support for Saudi/western-backed Yemeni government of President Abdu Rabuh Mansour Hadi which[Read More…]
They all called him Chotu. How and why the name came to stick, even he didn’t know. He wasn’t short. As an Indian, he was average in height. But he wasn’t an Indian, or was he? Well, even that wasn’t clear to him. The other day, the fat clerk at the aadhar office had refused to give a form because[Read More…]
Around last one month, Ishar Saini’s life has not been normal. He has been in limelight from the day activists group alleged chances of Bt-brinjal being grown on his farm. Samples were tested and have been found to be positive. Activists have mounted pressure over the government and local administration to check for Bt-brinjal in the state and ensure GM[Read More…]
The 2019 parliamentary election mandate is shrouded in suspense, mystery, uneasiness and unhappiness among large section of the people in the country. The clean sweep by the BJP is not accepted by many people and there is a clamor all around, that the BJP has won the polls through EVM manipulation calling the new government as EVM Sarkar . The needle of[Read More…]
A massive victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) in 2019 Lok Sabha elections results have proved that Indian voters can be easily fooled. It also proves that rural as well as urban voters demonstrated no wisdom while exercising their ballot. In addition to that, the duo Modi -Shah enormously succeeded in twisting the historical facts in the election campaigns to[Read More…]
Prime Minister, Narender Modi, in his victory speech delivered on 23.5.2019, made a remarkable statement on Secularism. He said in this election not a single party could dare to wear the mask of Secularism. In fact, what he meant by saying this is that he and his party succeeded in making all other parties bow down before their agenda of[Read More…]
In yet another case of mob violence in Bareilly of Uttar Pradesh four daily wage labourers were mercilessly thrashed by unidentified assailants allegedly after they were seen eating meat near a makeshift temple. The matter came to light earlier this week when a video of the assault began circulating on social media. A preliminary investigation has led police officials to[Read More…]
Co-Written by Dr. P.S. Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal As part of worldwide demonstrations for freedom of Palestinians over a thousand Muslims assembled at JantarMantar, New Delhi, India on 31 May, 2019 in solidarity with and support of the struggling people of Palestine. It was a two hour long protest dharna (sit-in) from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. under scorching heat[Read More…]
After 2014 victory Modi, Prime Minister of India had promised that he will implement Sabka Sath; Sabka Vikas (Taking everybody along, development for all). To this slogan he has now added Sabka Vishwas (Every body’s Trust) Many prominent writers and activists from Muslim community in particular are trying to reassure themselves that he will keep his promise and not intimidate[Read More…]
Co-Written by Dr. Kiran Modi, LaxmiMadhwan & Leena Prasad Decades of research has clearly proved the harms of ‘institutionalised’ care onOHC (Out of Home) children. There are several studies that have showed the systemic inadequacies observed across institutions the world over, thus sparking a global call for care reformation; one towards family strengthening, deinstitutionalisation and finding alternative family and community-based[Read More…]
History is recorded in writing for enabling people know their past & the events that took place in the past. Sometimes, however, need is felt to rewrite it, also, but strictly subject to revelation of new “evidence” about the recorded events coming to the knowledge of a rewriter during his “objective investigation” of the historical events. “Genuine” revisionist, as he[Read More…]
Another crude and sad chapter, yet more evidence of a system’s vengeance against its challengers. Julian Assange, like they dying Roman emperor Vespasian, may be transforming into a god of sorts, but the suffering of his mortal physical is finding its mark. While some in the cynical, narcissistic press corps still find little to commend his case, the movement to[Read More…]
Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek Europe, an “old” colonialist continent, is decaying, and in some places even collapsing. It senses how bad things are going. But it never thinks that it is its own fault. North America is decaying as well, but there, people are not even used to comparing. They only “feel that things are not going well”. If[Read More…]
Robert Mueller let loose a thunderbolt midweek. Donald Trump had not been charged, he said, because it was Department of Justice policy not to charge a sitting president. Dumping the issue firmly into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lap, he reminded us of the purpose of the impeachment process. According to Mueller there are ten instances where there are serious issues with[Read More…]
Pakistan’s Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa has signed death warrants for two army and one civil officer on charges of espionage and leakage of sensitive information to foreign agencies prejudicial to the national security, the army announced Thursday (May 30). Lieutenant General (retd) Javed Iqbal Awan was awarded 14 years rigorous imprisonment by the Field[Read More…]
Sliding through my pocket As I find a coin of Medieval India Nothing is needed from the present Decades of tradition built in one circle If you, wonder whether the time was perfect! I would say, no! Not because of its age But for the ‘too aged’ seeds not germinating Times after it treated it, with some messiahs And then[Read More…]
On 10 April 2019, Prakash Lakda, a 50-year old Adivasi of Jurmu village of Gumla’s Dumri block, was lynched to death by a mob of men from the neighbouring Jairagi village. Three other victims from Jurmu – Peter Kerketta, Belarius Minj and Janerius Minj – sustained severe injuries due to the beating by the mob. On 31 may 2019, Kendriya[Read More…]
Living with deformity is very difficult. The degree of difficulty varies with the intensity of disability and its impact on people. One of the vital parts of human body is the eye. So, a disease or injury to the eye or eyes has a significant impact on lives of people. The use of pellets in Kashmir has caused loss of[Read More…]
Steaming Ahead: Sikkim’s First Rail Project to Boost Connectivity by 2024 
Five years behind bars for five activists 
Five Years Since The First Arrests In Bhima-Koregaon Case 
Diluted Sovereignty: A Very Australian Example 
Conflict, Migration, and Demography in Russia and Its Border Regions 
Railway Safety Has Been Short of Funds, Needs Early Increase 
Notes on two recent sensations 
A shocking picture of health apathy….. 
Railway accident in Odisha- Are the Railways ready for high-speed trains? Who is to be blamed? 
Teaser of Film on Savarkar: Lies Galore 
Preserving India’s Heritage: The Power of International Collaboration for Natural and Cultural Conservation 
Looking for Home in an Overheating World – If Emissions Continue, Will We All Be Migrants Someday? 
From Ploughshares to Swords—Sudden Militarism of Those Who Once Stood for Peace 
Transreality 
Australia stands to benefit from India only if Indian democracy survives, not from rallies 
Whether Rhetoric or Serious, Arab Diplomacy Can’t Be Ignored! 
Unleashing the Power of Sports: How Sporting Events Drive Tourism Growth 
Black Panther and the need to dream for a better world 
Mexico’s Zapatistas Warn Chiapas Is on “the Verge of Civil War” 
Why distress from railway accidents may be much higher than is commonly believed 
Stop Plastic Pollution as We Commemorate 50th World Environment Day 2023 
Modi Regime should be Called to Account for the Deadliest Triple Train Collision at Balasore 
Thoughts on World Environment Day 
Nuclear Fusion: Eternal Energy = Eternal Damnation 
Why There Should Be A Treaty Against the Use of Weaponized Drones 
Protests in Germany after Anti-fascists sent to five years in prison 
Women Wrestler’s Protests: Exposing Beti Bachao Slogan 
Inauguration of Parliament Building: Coronation Ceremony? 
FBI appears to be continuing investigation of Julian Assange 
And We Are Much More Than Our Uterus. (In Solidarity With the protesting wrestlers) 
Strike ends in Belsonika with reinstatement of 10 suspended workers 
A Man Without a Strategy: How Netanyahu Is Provoking Armed Intifada in the West Bank 
The Ancient Patterns of Migration 
Seven Reasons Why the Present Phase of Imperialism is the Most Dangerous Ever 
Unmasking Tourism’s Roadblocks 
Metro authorities humiliating ordinary commuters 
PLI Scheme- Do subsidies to profit-earning private manufacturers yield commensurate societal benefits? World Environment Day in India: Doing Justice with the Day 
Ben Roberts-Smith: The Breaking of a Plaster Saint 
Do we All need Religion? An Introspection 
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…]
