First law of humanity – don’t kill your children(Hans Joachim Schellnhuber) It is not an accident that fascist philosophies and movements willfully ignore human-induced global warmingleading to the Sixth mass extinction of species, the largest since 56 million years ago. The nature of denialists is manifest in their venting of hate on the 16 years-old Gerta Thunberg, the voice of[Read More…]
by Phil Rockstroh and Kenn Orphan PR: Kenn, recently, this observation of mine provoked a measure of ire: Street demonstrations, even large ones, are apropos of nothing as long as they are manifested as de facto state sanctioned protests. A march proceeds, chants are cast into indifferent air, speechifying comes to pass by the usual gasbags then the assembled head[Read More…]
For the last two or three months, I have been following the news on the school strike movement of teenagers, the purpose of which is to urge the grown-ups, particularly the politicians, to immediately do what is necessary to solve the problem of global warming, which is resulting in what has been summarized in the term “climate crisis”. As Greta[Read More…]
Climate News Network: A stark warning that the exposure of more and more people to water scarcity, hunger and outright starvation may lead to the “failure of fragile states and regional conflicts” has been given by the United Nations as it attempts to galvanize governments into halting the spread of deserts before more cropland is lost. The climate summit in[Read More…]
Impeachment finally under way The long-delayed impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump are finally starting, but at present the focus is on a relatively minor crime – the Ukrane-Biden scandal. However, Trump has committed (and is still committing) major crimes, and these ought to be in the spotlight. Let us look at a few of them. Let’s look at his major[Read More…]
The entire Trump presidency has been a sequence of “watch this space” moments. Dismissals and political executions; attacks and distractions; gestures of deal making and promises of apocalypse. Perhaps it was high time for another bit of material to be added to this sprawling tapestry of mayhem. The elements seemed to form the basis of a badly told joke: a[Read More…]
by Punsara Amarasinghe & Anastasia Glazova The recent statement of Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Israeldescribingitas a Russian speaking country has gained an enormous attention from world media. few days after making such an audacious statement Russia allowed Syrian forces to activate their aircraft missiles against Israeli airstrike which simply shows the paradoxical nature of Russian-Israeli relations since the inception[Read More…]
Comparing Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s speech with that of President Trump’s at the 74th United Nations General Assembly Session this week one cannot but notice the stark differences between their tones, their goals and their contents. In his deliberately monotonous speech Trump expressed delusional elitist self-grandeur and righteousness as the leader of the global mightiest military power, portraying it as[Read More…]
Amruta Fadnavis – wife of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis – found herself at the centre of controversy two weeks back. Her birthday greetings to PM Modi – whom she wished ‘Father of Our Country @narendramodiji a very Happy Birthday -…’ – on her twitter evoked reaction from twitterati. Her ‘height of ignorance’, was pointed out and her attempt was[Read More…]
by Zia Mian, Abdul H. Nayyar, Sandeep Pandey, M. V. Ramana On September 27, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York. This appearance will come at a time of great concern about the increasingly hostile relationship between their two countries. At the heart of[Read More…]
Look what Greta started and what she did to me! I took part in the recent climate-strike march in New York City — one of a quarter-million people (or maybe 60,000) who turned out there, along with four million others across all seven continents. Then I came home and promptly collapsed. Which tells you one thing: I’m not 16 years old like Greta Thunberg, the[Read More…]
When the former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah was absent in Parliament on the day when the state’s fate was being decided on 5 August, 2019, the Home Minister Amit Shah informed the Parliament that he had chosen on his own will not to come to the Parliament. He even went to the extent of saying that[Read More…]
On 7th September, thousands of people gathered at the Raj Mahal square in Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha and protested against the implementation of the newly amended Motor Vehicle Act, 2019. Under the amended law, implemented from September 1, the police are collecting hefty penalties from common people for the violation of traffic rules e.g. not wearing helmets, not[Read More…]
“My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth ….” — The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol. 90 Eighty kilometres to the east of Nagpur[Read More…]
(Pt. 1 – The Crushing of Organized Labor) Beginning with the statement that “Technological change has been reshaping human life and work for centuries”, The MIT report goes on to present a cogent analysis of the state of the American working class from the multifaceted perspectives of race, gender, educational levels, demographics and geography. However, however true its initial assumption,[Read More…]
What Greta Thunberg did is to mobilise the children who live in the Empire, the most powerful, the only, international Empire. The leaders of the Empire sit in Washington, in control of the most powerful military in the world, that controls its area of influence through its capital and post-truth politics. It is inevitable that their campaign, Greta Thunberg’s campaign,[Read More…]
Australia’s attempt to match US Trump and UK Johnson buffoonery, Coalition PM Scott Morrison, sabotaged and boycotted the UN Climate Action Summit in New York but later addressed the UN General Assembly (UNGA) with a rambling and outrageously dishonest speech that attempted to white-wash Australia’s continuing and appalling war criminal and climate criminal record, dishonestly slagging world heroine and climate[Read More…]
I would like to announce the publication of a book, which reviews the history of medicine through the lives and thoughts of some of the women and men who have contributed importantly to the field.. The book covers developments from ancient times to the present, and modern topics, such as biosemiotics, cloning and theories of the origin of life are[Read More…]
The tributes have been dripping in heavy praise: former French president Jacques Chirac and mayor of Paris, the great statesman; the man who said no to the US-led war juggernaut into Iraq; the man loved for being loved. Many of these should have raised the odd eyebrow here and there. “We French have lost a statesman whom we loved as[Read More…]
Zionism succeeded as a mission and failed as a concept. Starting with false premises, Zionism fulfilled promises to its followers, enabled some Jews to obtain a better life, and added little to what the established Jewish community had already achieved and was continuing to achieve. It traded destruction, oppression, and decades of suffering of the Palestinian community for a contrived[Read More…]
‘No matter what views one may hold, the 21st century shall belong only to a people of ‘vision’ and those who care for future,’ wrote Satish Chandra Seth, (1932-2009) the futurist and former civil servant. A science education administrator, Satish is internationally known for inventing a method of assessing the futurist thinking, called Satish-Harva method of scenario building. He was[Read More…]
Indian judiciary, once known for its independence and integrity, had been the last hope of the dispossessed. Where do they turn for justice if this last resort is snatched from them? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards themselves, as Roman poet Juvenal would ask. Following the stunning UK Supreme Court ruling this week, rebuking Prime Minister Boris[Read More…]
The cult of Modi has already been made by the people of India through extravagant, turgid glorification & fawning praise of Modi. Above that, Indian Diaspora through sponsored events in the USA has given Rock Star welcome to Modi. No doubt, Modi is a fantastic orator, foppish, relentlessly self-important, monologue who can move the audience and stir the minds and[Read More…]
[On Bhagat Singh’s 112th birth anniversary, this article, 1st part of a series, introduces Bhagat Singh Reader by Professor Chaman Lal] The Tribune’s lead informs execution of Bhagat Singh, and Rajguru and Sukhdev, his comrades. Bhagat Singh. The revolutionary. The visionary. The ideological warrior. The organizer. The voice of the exploited. The perspective was this sub-continent, brutalized, tormented, muzzled, appropriated[Read More…]
A few weeks ago, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) came frightfully close to witnessing their lunar lander Vikram autonomously descend onto the surface of the Moon. It has been suggested that a malfunctioning thruster was responsible for the failure to land as originally planned. Despite the disappointment, the moment has succeeded in capturing the imagination of many, in no small[Read More…]
The article below is a reflection on the perfect world, on perfection and ways we perceive perfection. It also directs on how one should move towards the perfect world one desires. Today, I remembered that negative strokes create more impact than positive strokes. This thought itself made me to dwell in fathomless inquiries. People forget what good you do as[Read More…]
No one could fail to be touched by the fear (for the future) and urgency in Greta Thunberg’s young voice as she broke down while addressing world leaders on the last day of the UN Climate Summit. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Special Report on the oceans showed a worse prognosis, the patient is clearly worse. Sad to[Read More…]
Recovering from a broken hip, peace activist Kathy Kelly reflects on her experiences with people disabled and traumatized by war. Its economy gutted by war, Afghanistan’s largest cash crop remains opium. Yet farmers there do grow other crops for export. Villagers in the Wazir Tangi area of Nangarhar province, for example, cultivate pine nuts. As a precaution, this year at[Read More…]
Dr Kafeel Khan is exonerated by a report prepared by a senior IAS officer who was asked to investigate the matter. The Allahabad High Court had already granted him the bail last year. The Indian Medical Council too came in his support though too late yet the it was good to see that it woke up. The thing is that[Read More…]
After an extended period of darkening storm clouds, there are signs of hope for tension reduction in two separate but related Persian Guld conflicts: Yemen and Syria. On 20 September 2019, the representatives of the Yemen Ansar Allah Movement (often called al-Houthi) proposed a peace initiative to hold off all their drone and missile attacks on Saudi Arabia in[Read More…]
It has been more than a month since the Indian government decided to abrogate the article 370 and bifurcate Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories. Since then the valley has been under a curfew and a communication blockade.On the one hand, the Indian media claims everything to be normal in Kashmir, but on the other international media has brought[Read More…]
Revelations about the machinations of the so-called “deep state’s” conspiracies often conceal deeper truths that go unmentioned. This is quite common, whether it is done intentionally or not. Sometimes it is intentional and is directed by the intelligence agencies themselves or their accomplices in the media, who operate a vast propaganda network. In that case, it is because the secret[Read More…]
What are the signs of war? A screeching halt of normal life. The doldrums of the quotidian shaken by a new arbitrary order. Schools shut. Children rounded up, beaten, detained, tear-gas-blood-vomit. Hospitals slowed down. Deliveries disrupted. New lives asked to wait before coming into this world; ordered to line up in queues. Terror ringing through deserted streets.Deaths. These are the[Read More…]
Art is the intellectual foundation of social change. Artists not only document social change; they promote, inform and shape it. Whether through music, plays, photography, paintings, films, poetry, sculpture, or hip-hop, art is powerful. Music is one of the most popular mediums of arts. We have seen Pete Seeger who has always used his songs as a language of protest.[Read More…]
A new report – Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, – warns: failure to fight out climate crisis will mean devastation for coastal cities, Arctic communities, small island states, anyone who relies on glaciers for water, and virtually all sea creatures. To put it simply, it would be the end of life on Earth, as[Read More…]
In 2017 my Countercurrents article, “Any White Cop Can Kill a Black Man at Any Time,” told how St. Louis cop Jason Stockley killed a 24-year-old black man, Anthony Lamar Smith. Though Stockley claimed he had fired in self defense when Smith pulled a gun on him, evidence showed that he had planted the gun after the killing. When[Read More…]
China has rattled Western observers for centuries, and the idea that it might be approaching a level of formidable heft is troubling to those who, condescendingly, see it as a naughty child who aspired to economic growth but could only do so as long as it behaved. In other words, they achieved success because we let them, and profited from[Read More…]
By the law of unintended consequences, US President Donald J. Trump’s mix of uncritical and cynical embrace of Saudi Arabia and transactional approach towards relations with the kingdom may be producing results. Saudi Arabia appears to be backing away from its largely disastrous assertive and robust go-it alone foreign and defense policy posture and reverting to a more cautious approach[Read More…]
Two kids who happened to born in the Valmiki community became the victim of deep rooted caste hatred which the caste Hindus have been nurturing since centuries. What was the fault of these kids. The fault is their being Dalits and that too of the community which is ‘supposed’ to keep the street, houses, ‘clean’. A community which has kept[Read More…]
Tamils in Sri Lanka have undergone grave injustice, Pogroms, Torture, War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, Forced Disappearances and Genocide. Tamil mothers in Sri Lanka fight daily to learn what happened to their missing loved ones, even a decade after the conflict and at the risk of rape, Tamil students, journalists and activists continue to speak truth to power despite the[Read More…]
The environmental justice movement that is surging globally is intentionally intersectional, showing how global warming is connected to issues such as race, poverty, migration and public health. One area intimately linked to the climate crisis that gets little attention, however, is militarism. Here are some of the ways these issues–and their solutions–are intertwined. 1. The US military protects Big[Read More…]
Co-Written by William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger For the Pentagon, happy days are here again (if they ever left). With a budget totaling more than $1.4 trillion for the next two years, the department is riding high, even as it attempts to set the stage for yet more spending increases in the years to come. With such enormous sums now locked[Read More…]
Poverty is in human discourse for long. From Aristotle to St. Thomas Aquinas to Machiavelli to David Hume to Hernando de Soto to the World Bank to local level NGOs, poverty is an issue of impassioned discussion. “‘Poverty’ on a global scale was discovered after the Second World War; before 1940 it was not an issue.” (“The development of poverty”,[Read More…]
An AP report headlined “Trump administration to triple democracy aid to Venezuela” said: “The Trump administration is more than tripling U.S. support for pro-democracy work in Venezuela and for the first time directly funding opposition leader Juan Guaidó as he attempts to set up a government to rival the socialist administration of Nicolás Maduro. “The $52 million in new aid[Read More…]
Boris Johnson, the humiliated UK PM, said he believes the Supreme Court was “wrong” to rule his decision to prorogue a “paralyzed parliament” as shouts and boos rocked the House of Commons. The PM accused the opposition of “sabotaging” Brexit. In a raucous statement to the Commons on Wednesday, a day after the UK’s highest court ruled his suspension of parliament “unlawful,[Read More…]
A powerful mass demonstration was held on 25th September, 2019 from 11 a.m. to 2.15 p.m. by over 500 Muslims at the national protest site, JantarMantar, New Delhi. With a large banner indicating a national protest, it was attended by Muslims from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Assam, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. On the dais were seated[Read More…]
As French, Pakistani and other leaders seek to engineer a meeting between the US and Iranian presidents on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, big power rivalry could rack up tension in the waters of the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. With prospects for a face-to-face encounter between presidents Donald J. Trump and Hassan Rouhani slim at[Read More…]
The Prime Minister in the recent event in Houston ‘Howdy Modi’ went on to state that everything is fine and all is well in the country. This was stated in eight different languages to put across the point. The statement only goes on to show how defining the ‘wellness’ of a Nation has changed in the current times. A country’s[Read More…]
The answer to both questions is: No. The real figures are only a fraction of these figures. Who is putting out such high figures? The heads of the automobile industry. Auto industry bodies claim that the automotive sector accounts for 7 (or 7.5) per cent of India’s GDP, 49 per cent of manufacturing output, and 37 (or 40) million jobs“directly and[Read More…]
‘Though water is a State subject, inter-State rivers and river valleys fall under the Union List to ‘the extent to which such regulation and development under the control of the Union, is declared by Parliament by law to the expedient in the public interest’. Parliament can make law, but with an objective to expedite dispute resolution. Such a law, the[Read More…]
It seems that judicial system is moving far away from major section of society, specially dalits, marginalised sections, muslims and women. Many recent instances are ample proof of this. Some instances While the brutal killing of Tabrez Ansari has made little progress, his widowed wife is still clinging on hope. Shaista Parveen has been a widow for three months, a[Read More…]
Two Dalit children were on Wednesday beaten to death by two persons for defecating in front of a panchayat building in Shivpuri district’s Bhavkedhi village of Madhya Pradesh in the morning. Sirsod police station SHO RS Dhakad said the two children, Roshani (12) and Avinash (10), suffered serious injuries in the incident and were rushed to the district hospital where[Read More…]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday afternoon the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry directed at Donald Trump. The investigations currently being conducted by six separate House committees will now be funneled through the Speaker’s office to determine whether articles of impeachment should be drawn up against the US president. The action marks a significant escalation in the conflict within[Read More…]
The UK Supreme Court has ruled that British prime minister Boris Johnson acted unlawfully when he decided to prorogue parliament for five weeks, plunging Britain into a constitutional crisis. And, Boris Johnson, the humiliated prime minister, flies back from New York to face MPs’ fury after the court ruling. As decision to shut parliament is quashed, the humiliated PM says[Read More…]
It delighted Labour supporters and party apparatchiks who had been falling over each other in murderous ceremony at the party conference in Brighton: Prime Minister Boris Johnson would come to the unwitting rescue with his own version of a grand cock-up. This involved a now defeated attempt to circumvent parliamentary scrutiny and interference ahead of the Brexit date of October[Read More…]
Not very long ago (Sept 2, 2019), India launched a rocket to the far side of the moon. It carried a lunar lander that fell silent following the landing attempt four days later. Had it survived, India would have become the fourth country in the world to accomplish the feat. Still, the partial success was a matter of pride. [Read More…]
dappled bloody sheet and nineteen lakh bodies floating to the asphalt shores of Brahmaputra- naked and filled. Birds flying away, leaves falling cold sun setting low, moon bent till toe homes painted grey, heart- dead fay indians-moments ago, now far away. how shall one be in solitude in war? how shall one be happy in sorrow? if hunger seeks[Read More…]
Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek It was once a British police station, as well as the Victoria Prison Compound. Hong Kong inhabitants used to tremble just from hearing its name mentioned. This is where people were detained, interrogated, humiliated, tortured and disappeared. Now, after Hong Kong ‘returned to China’, it was converted into the Tai Kwun Center – one of[Read More…]
The federalism of Indian Constitutional governance is facing serious challenge from an unexpected front this time, i.e., the river front. Three Bills are presented by the Centre in the recently concluded session: a) River Basin Management Bill, 2019 proposing 13 River Basin Authorities for various river basins in our country, b) River Water Disputes Bill, 2019, to have a dispute[Read More…]
Hetero loves are known for the complete imbalance of power within which they operate. Declarations of eternal love are not concrete enough to hold together relationships. Mostly, they work within the realm of male domination. Any woman who discovers its pitfalls is either a victim or someone able to surmount it in rare cases. Simantini (Boundless), a collection of nearly[Read More…]
A five member team of eminent activists, journalists and civil society members recently returned from Kashmir. The all-woman team has now shared its findings on the situation on the ground in the region that still remains by-and-large cut off from the rest of the country, the communication blackout enabling unspeakable excesses against the local population by the military. The team[Read More…]
Much of the following article is based on a new 20-page report by environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason. Readers are urged to access the full report containing all relevant citations here. In a new paper published in King’s Law Journal – ‘The Chemical Anthropocene: Glyphosate as a Case Study of Pesticide Exposures’ – the authors Alessandra Arcuri and Yogi Hale Hendlin state: “As[Read More…]
Experience has taught Palestinians not to pay heed to Israeli elections. But to every rule there is an exception. Although it is still true that no Israeli Zionist leader has ever been kind to the Palestinian people, the dynamics of the latest Israeli elections on September 17 are likely to affect the Occupied Palestinian Territories in a profound way. Indeed,[Read More…]
My research on State responses towards the Maoist have often confronted me with a question – how is ideology perceived among the Adivasis? The reason being ideology has become a contesting ground for the government and the Maoist to establish the supremacy of ideas as represented by the respective conflicting parties. Maoists and the government are determined to seek the[Read More…]
We lost Gauri Lankesh to terrorism on 5th September 2017. This terrorism has a context. In this article I’ll be trying to put Gauri’s martyrdom into global context. When I started Countercurrents.org in 2002, the CO2 level in atmosphere was 370 ppm (parts per million). 17 years later now it is at 420 ppm. Recently scientists released a data that[Read More…]
[This report carries Greta Thunberg’s full speech at the UN Climate Action Summit.] Greta Thunberg, the young climate crisis activist on Monday opened the United Nations Climate Action Summit with an angry condemnation of world leaders for failing to take strong measures to combat climate crisis – “How dare you,” she said. “This is all wrong,” said Thunberg, the 16-year-old who[Read More…]
The Houston event is over. Cheerleaders are still debating the outcome of it and how it has ‘influenced’ America that no other Indian PM could have done so. Ofcourse, when the leader of the House of Representative spoke about the vision of India that has a shared understanding with that of America, of a liberal, plural and secular society based[Read More…]
It had a good deal of desperate scolding. Sweden’s Greta Thunberg assumed the role of punishing advocate, a Joan of Arc of fury. The main culprit in her speech at the UN Climate Action Summit was the hideous, super ego, the big bad “You”, ever condescending, ever indifferent, the “You” of adulthood that had trashed the environment and left a[Read More…]
The writing is on the wall: rich countries, whose wealth and progress is at the cost of resource exploitation of conquered nations and the unabated combustion of fossil fuels for energy, must bear the onus of climate action. However, commitments from these governments have been lacking owing to a refusal to acknowledge their moral responsibilities and ecological debt, as well[Read More…]
Earlier this month, popular ‘progressive’ news website The Intercept published an article entitled “From El Paso to Sarajevo: How White Nationalists Are Inspired by the Bosnia Genocide”, written by journalist and staff writer Murtaza Hussain. The piece argued that many of the perpetrators behind mass shootings and domestic terrorism in the West — from the convicted far right extremist behind the 2011 Norway attacks to[Read More…]
Days after the Democratic presidential candidates missed yet another opportunity to challenge President Donald Trump’s failed Venezuela policy on the debate stage on September 12, President Nicolás Maduro signed an important agreement with four opposition parties. These events offer insight into the differing perspectives on the economic, social and political crises in Venezuela – one perspective from the Washington political[Read More…]
The Military-Industrial Complex runs U.S. foreign policies. What passes for international ‘news’ reporting in the United States media was supremely represented by the instance of those ’news’ media stenographically reporting the Government’s lies about ’Saddam’s WMD’, even after it was unarguably clear that those were just blatant lies from the President and his Administration. America’s media were merely passive megaphones[Read More…]
Will Trump go to war with the Iranians or the homeless? Or both? Trump is a coward. The nation of Iran has the means and the will to fight. Do you recall the will displayed by Iranians when repelling foreign invaders when Iraq attempted to invade Iran as a de facto US proxy force? Conversely, the homeless do not possess[Read More…]
There are some dominant features of the contemporary India that needs to be narrated to understand the nature and direction of change that our country is making in a push to redefine nationalism and the bench marks of patriotism. A short summery is that these dominant features of contemporary India, screams loudly that the words like humanity, democracy, justice are[Read More…]
Jinnah propounded his two-nation theory in 1939—exactly two years after Savarkar presented it. Who could have been the best prime minister of independent India? Nehru or (Vallabhbhai) Patel? For more than last five years, we have been a witness to this manufactured debate—courtesy Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has tried all the tricks in its kitty to create a false[Read More…]
The 4th Summit of Asia Pacific Cities Alliance for Tobacco Control and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) Prevention (APCAT) will open in Bogor, Indonesia, on 25th September 2019, which also happens to be World Lung Day. This two-days regional meet is jointly organized by APCAT, Ministry of Health Indonesia, Republic of Indonesia, Bogor City, International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The[Read More…]
Arctic summer sea ice has declined at a rate of 12 percent per decade over the past four decades: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: Matt Osman A new report – United in Science – published ahead of key UN climate talks has warned the world is falling drastically behind in the race to avert climate disaster, with the five-year period ending[Read More…]
To say Greta Thunberg is a remarkable young girl is to understate her accomplishments. She is phenomenal. She has successfully exploited social media and through dogged persistence — including a trip across the Atlantic on a sailing yacht to make a point about the very high pollution per passenger on a commercial jet. Given the 20,000 planes in service[Read More…]
Recently, on a beautiful Kansas Saturday, I fell asleep early, exhausted by the excitement and ultimate disappointment of the Army football team’s double overtime loss to highly favored Michigan. Having turned against America’s forever wars and the U.S. military as an institution while I was still in it, West Point football, I’m almost ashamed to admit, is my last[Read More…]
They all do it: corporations, regimes, authorities. They all have the same reasons: efficiency, serviceability, profitability, all under the umbrella term of “security”. Call it surveillance, or call it monitoring the global citizenry; it all comes down to the same thing. You are being watched for your own good, and such instances should be regarded as a norm. Given the[Read More…]
Security forces in Egypt have clashed with hundreds of protesters in the port city of Suez, according to media reports, firing tear gas and live rounds to disperse crowds calling for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to quit, Al Jazeera reported Sunday (Sept 22). The unrest on Saturday came a day after thousands of people took to the streets in several Egyptian[Read More…]
Vincent Emanuele is a co-founder of PARC (which stands for Politics, Art, Roots and Culture), a community cultural center in Michigan City, Indiana, USA. Michigan City is a economically-devastated rust-belt city about 50 miles southeast of Chicago on Lake Michigan. According to a recent survey, over half of the population is surviving month-by-month, with considerable violence on the streets and[Read More…]
The role of Hindu religion on the Indian state and governing forces is coming up for more and more discussion after the Bharatiya Janatha Party and the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh came to power in 2014 and 2019. However, one also needs to examine whether Hinduism has its grip on Indian communists. Only then we can understand their role around caste[Read More…]
Oh, how weeps Mother Earth! Near her toes, the forests burn. Animals in death throes churn. Sumatran anacondas die. Smoke blinds the eye. Hazy skies, poison air People choke. Life comes to a halt. Brazil, her lungs they say, Now fiery flames breathe. With so much smoke, Will Mother Earth choke? Oh, how weeps Mother Earth! Young blood is spilt[Read More…]
Hadein woh khainch rakhi hain haram ke paasbano ne/ Ke bin mujrim bane paigham bhi pahucha nahi sakta ( Such lines have been drawn by the owners of pride/ Unless I become an accused I cannot get the message through) I chose the couplet from Majaz solely for the communalistic atmosphere prevailing in the country, primarily, after the opening of[Read More…]
The JK bank calendar on my wall shows 12th in red today. Remember JK bank, once the economic backbone of the state, which has gone through the raids, interrogations and management changes recently. This was in fact the prelude to the political annihilation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir on 5th August The red on the calendar means it[Read More…]
Millions of school children and supporting adults have joined Climate Strikes around the world that were inspired by the School Strike movement of Swedish teenager schoolchild Greta Thunberg and organized by local high school students. The School Climate Strike rallies had a stark message for effective climate change denialist neoliberal politicians – you are destroying our future, we are not[Read More…]
It has been interesting over the past few days watching the different reactions to the black face photos of a younger Justin Trudeau. Of course the local Conservative opposition is going to paint it in as bad a light as possible while Canadian Liberal supporters hope that the open admission of its racial prejudice implications and an apology for such[Read More…]
I think that the greatest sin the powers that be, whatever and whoever those powers are or have been, have committed is the destruction of human potential. I believe that each of us is born with our own self defining potentials. In positive and supporting environments, these potentials can be realized. In negative and destructive environments, these potentials are unrealizable[Read More…]
Every time I step out of my house I am not sure of my return Just because of my name Which reflects my identity Living in constant fear Just because of a name being a Khan or an Ansari The threat of lynching and beaten to death looms me over Day in and day out The fear of huge mobs[Read More…]
![Understanding the Kashmir Conundrum: A HistoricalOutline [1752-2019]](https://cdn.countercurrents.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/kashmir-pellet-200x150.jpg "Understanding the Kashmir Conundrum: A HistoricalOutline [1752-2019] 183")
By the collapse of Mughal rule in 1752, Kashmir came under the administration of the Afghans. Nevertheless, the Sikhs, under Maharaja Ranjit Singh, wrested Kashmir from the Afghans in 1819. In 1820, Maharaja Ranjit Singh appointed the Dogra king Gulab Singh to rule the state. In 1846, the British defeated Sikhs, and Gulab Singh, the Dogra ruler of Jammu, purchased[Read More…]
Having a humble background, Narendra Modi, no doubt, is a great a propagandistic, gadfly, dynamo, scold and swashbuckler. In the history of India, Narendra Modi is the first Prime Minister who leaves no stone unturned to sully and debase the Nehruvian legacy & dynastic family, no matter national or international platform. By doing this eloquently, he is not likely to[Read More…]
The Trump administration Friday announced that it is sending more troops along with air and missile defense systems to Saudi Arabia in the wake of the September 14 strikes against two Saudi oil facilities that temporarily cut Saudi Arabia’s oil production in half and sent global oil prices soaring by 20 percent last Monday. The announcement followed a White House[Read More…]
Climate change greatly impacts the lives of migrants in different parts of the world. According to the United Nations, by 2050, up to 1 billion people could be driven away from their homes due to the worsening impacts of climate change. Both, sudden and slow onset weather events, affect the migrants. Migrants face numerous challenges around their livelihood, safety, mobility[Read More…]
1. With the announcement of results of Lok Sabha elections of 2019, deep concerns were voiced by numerous comrades expressing anguish as to what would Narendra Modi’s victory portend for the Constitution and the democracy. During the last five years we have often heard from secular and progressive friends that we are wading through dark and bad times. The[Read More…]
Sixteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is my hero. Except for a handful of cynics, who wouldn’t be impressed by this soft-spoken girl with a no nonsense demeanor, seriously concerned about the well being of the planet earth? She has inspired millions around the world to change their perspective beyond the “here and now,” and onto the future in regards[Read More…]
It would be utterly immoral of the United States to launch a military attack upon Iran if it is true that one of the missiles that destroyed an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia on the 14th of September 2019 had a casing bearing a number that suggested that the weapon was manufactured for NATO forces. The alphabets preceding the number[Read More…]
He was the prototypical strong man softened by tactical reforms, blissfully ignorant before the fall, blown off in the violent winds of the Arab Spring. Having come to power in 1987 on the back of a coup against the 84-year-old Habib Bourguiba, whom he accused of senility, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was the face of Tunisia till 2011, when he[Read More…]
The fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day of 1970 will be in 2020. As environmentalism has gone mainstream during that half a century, it has forgotten its early focus and shifted toward green capitalism. Nowhere is this more apparent than abandonment of the slogan popular during the early Earth Days: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” The unspoken phrase of today’s Earth[Read More…]
US President Donald Trump has convened a meeting of his National Security Council today to hear proposals from US Defense Secretary Mark Esper and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford for a military attack against Iran. According to a senior administration official who spoke to the New York Times, the military brass is expected to recommend military[Read More…]
Climate strike has kicked off on Friday 20 September across continents. Millions of people and students from Sydney to Delhi and Melbourne to London and New York have marched/are marching for urgent action on climate crisis. Students and citizens of different ages and from different occupations have joined the strike in hundred of cities. Many mobilizations of people in cities[Read More…]
Co-Written by Varinder Singh & Ishfaq Majid Khalsa Aid International which is popularly known for its humanitarian relief charity and human saving efforts, is serving the common masses from 1999. Khalsa aid is a non-profit UK based organization that provides relief to the people who are facing any kind of distress. Not only this, Khalsa aid is also popularly known[Read More…]
Needless to say, when a person is corrupt he or she loses respect among the members of the society or family members but when a national leader is corrupt he or she loses respect in the world. Kanshi Ram was a non-corrupt fearless leader of the Dalit masses. However, he was not a good orator yet he always won the[Read More…]
The protestor of school age sported a placard featuring a distorted caricature of Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison: “Scomo was liking it hot”. A glorious spring day, and a gathering was already fussing and buzzing outside the Victorian State Library and students were striking. The placard image was one that toasted both ways – looking “hot” for the purposes of[Read More…]
I only listened to a small part of the Greta Thunberg U.S. congressional hearings this morning but was rather stupefied by the general ignorance and hubris of several of the U.S. commentators. Two main ideas stood out for the short period during which I listened to several U.S. government speakers and the commonality behind the two ideas – other than[Read More…]
Nazareth: For most Israelis, the general election on Tuesday was about one thing and one thing only. Not the economy, nor the occupation, nor even corruption scandals. It was about Benjamin Netanyahu. Should he head yet another far-right government, or should his 10-year divisive rule come to an end? Barring a last-minute upset as the final ballot papers are counted,[Read More…]
Major Saudi Arabian oil facilities of Abqaiq (Buqayq) and Khurais, east of capital Riyadh, were attacked last Saturday September 14. The attack could be considered the most devastating in modern history affecting not just Saudi Arabia but also the global economy. Abqaiq, operated by the Saudi oil giant ARAMCO, is the largest oil processing facility in the world. It is[Read More…]
Section 375 is an intense and layered courtroom drama revolving around the dialectics of justice and law. The movie comes at the time when the sensitization around the gender issues are seen to be taking their due space and the movie leaves the one thinking about the tenability of that same space. This movie is a profusion of debates around[Read More…]
Finance Minister Ms.Nirmala Sitharaman , who took over as finance minister in May, is eversince under pressure to bolster growth that’s slowed to a six-year low and check unemployment that’s risen to a 45-year high. The government’s measures to reverse the slowdown have so far come in ‘tranches’ and are seen as inadequate. –Report by Bloomberg on Sep 19, 2019.[Read More…]
On September 17, 2019, I attended the Houston City Council meeting to speak against the upcoming “Howdy Modi” event and urge city officials to decline participation. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be visiting Houston, TX on September 22 for a mega-rally dubbed “Howdy Modi.” City leaders, including Mayor Sylvester Turner,[Read More…]
Our planet is getting hotter, faster and faster. That is a fact, unexpectedly confirmed by a research institute created in 2010 to address the “concerns of climate change skeptics regarding global warming.” That is quoted from Berkeley Earth’s online pamphlet, Know the Facts: A Skeptic’s Guide to Climate Change. Berkeley Earth is an autonomous NGO research institute largely funded by[Read More…]
I’ve never been to Afghanistan, but I am the mother of two young children. So when I imagine what life must be like there after 18 years of war, my mind conjures up the children most vividly — the ones who have been affected by the conflict — and their parents. I think of the 12-year-old boy who was carrying water to[Read More…]
Currently, India stands out at the Global Environment Performance Index due to an enhanced rate of air, water, and land pollution. The emergence of industrialization and urbanization brutally impact the environment around us. The loss of biodiversity due to such constant transformation has become a global concern. Around the world, people have initiated countless measures to promote alternatives to protect[Read More…]
“I extend a special welcome to Australia’s former prime minister. It is in part due to his tough policy that we regard Australia as a model country. We especially respect it for the brave, direct and Anglo-Saxon consistency which it has shown on migration and defence of the Australian nation”. These words of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to Tony[Read More…]
Greta Thunberg delivered a 15-minute address to around 150 people, rounding off her two-day tour of Capitol Hill, Washington DC. The teenage activist from Sweden took the lectern under a giant chandelier in a grand committee room and smiled as she resumed her call to arms against the climate crisis. “The USA is the biggest carbon polluter in history,” Thunberg[Read More…]
I have just read a superb book by Mark Isaacs, an Australian who has documented several years of effort by a group of incredibly committed young people in Afghanistan to build peace in that war-torn country the only way it can be built: by learning, living and sharing peace. The book, titled The Kabul Peace House: How a Group of[Read More…]
Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J S Davies On Saturday, September 14th, two oil refineries and other oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia were hit and set ablaze by 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles, dramatically slashing Saudi Arabia’s oil production by half, from about ten million to five million barrels per day. On September 18, the Trump administration, blaming[Read More…]
Neither Saudi Arabia nor the United States is rushing to retaliate for a brazen, allegedly Iranian attack that severely damaged two of the kingdom’s key oil facilities. That is not to say that Saudi Arabia and/or the United States will not retaliate in what could prove to be a game changer in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Yet,[Read More…]
Mehran Kamrava. Troubled Waters. Insecurity in the Persian Gulf. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018) The 14 September 2019 drone attacks on oil installations in eastern Saudi Arabia have dimmed hope for U.S. – Iranian discussions aimed to reduce tensions and potentially end the armed conflict in Yemen. Tensions have increased, and oil prices have risen. Certain hopes created[Read More…]
The single most important aspect of the Indian economy is its very large black economy. In fact, it impacts not just the economic aspect of society but also its social and political facets. All the macroeconomic variables like, growth rate of the economy, inflation and fiscal policies are affected by the black economy. The microeconomic variables like education, health, drinking[Read More…]
Modi.2 has emerged as a very powerful Government. It has not only the numerical majority; it is also facing a weak and divided opposition. That is one of the reasons for it stream rolling over people’s opinions and imposing the agenda of RSS-BJP of Hindu nationalism in a blatant way. On one side it has brought in a law banning[Read More…]
Diary 2: 9thaugust 2019 Please minus 6th, 7th and 8th August 2019 from my life. These three days of my incarceration are equal to three centuries of subjugation but my isolation, apprehension and fear have become so overbearing that I have lost the sense and count of the days or dates. This day takes me back to my past memory[Read More…]
The pigeon flapped in desperation, moving across Melbourne’s lavish Capitol Theatre in fits and starts. It was more alarmed than anything else at the address being given by former Australian football (soccer to some) player Craig Foster. Foster has been beating the drum on one particular message for some time now: that sports can change the dimension of human rights,[Read More…]
Most low- and middle-income countries will require a substantial increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water use due to their efforts to increase food production as these countries try to fight hunger, finds a new research from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Obesity, undernutrition, and climate[Read More…]
The Baseco reclamation project is one of the 22 reclamation projects planned by the Philippines government along the Manila Bay. It is being opposed tooth and nail by the 70,000 settlers (mostly fisher folks) of Baseco Compound, Tondo, a reclaimed section of the Manila Port Area, who fear losing their livelihood due to forced evacuation and displacement. #BeyondLabelsBeyondBorders I met[Read More…]
The over-reliance on the organised sector for official GDP data is causing a gross miscalculation. During the global financial crisis, it was said that the experts were behind the curve. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and financial sector experts continued to predict till October 2008 that the global economy would grow rather than shrink. They were way off the mark[Read More…]
Worlds end. Every day. We all die sooner or later. When you get to my age, it’s a subject that can’t help but be on your mind. What’s unusual is this: it’s not just increasingly ancient folks like me who should be thinking such thoughts anymore. After all, worlds of a far larger sort end, too. It’s happened before. Ask the[Read More…]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is moving quickly to alter the political reality in Palestine, and facing little or no resistance. On September 10, Netanyahu declared his intentions to annex swathes of Palestinian land adjacent to the Jordan River, an area that covers 2,400 square kilometers, or nearly a third of the Occupied West Bank. That region, which extends from[Read More…]
How the West Distorted Communist Political Victories in the Recent Russian Elections The legitimacy of any democratic system is reflected in the percentage of people who turn out to vote. By this standard, the recent elections to the Moscow Parliament were relatively “illegitimate” with only 21.8% of eligible voters participating. Yet despite this low level of participation, Moscow Mayor Sergei[Read More…]
Night steals upon us like death… In the morning it leaves one or two cups of coffee untouched on the table! An eerie silence swallows me it howls into my ears. My trembling legs search up and down the lane the sound of boots answer me! At a distance I hear crowds, shouts, Gunshots and wails. You call it calm![Read More…]
(Dr. Ambedkar in the eyes of his contemporaries) I became interested in Dr. Ambedkar in 1943 when I was appointed Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia, and setup my operational Headquarters in Delhi. He was the Labour Member of Viceroy’s Council. He was fighting for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity and fair conditions of life. He clearly understood that[Read More…]
It is over one and a half month since the Kashmir valley is completely locked down without any communication network, internet, telephone and other facilities. Thousands of students and other professional who are living outside of Kashmir are unable to speak to their near dear ones. The people have been facing lots of difficulties and it is unspeakable and unimaginable[Read More…]
Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI) has presented a towering filmmaker and a lyricist from India with Life Time Achievement for keeping the flag of secularism high under a right wing Hindu nationalist regime. Gulzar had made the first ever Hindi film on Sikh genocide, and has penned short stories and poems on related topics, often inviting the wrath of[Read More…]
In the aftermath of Houti rebels drone attack on Saudi oil installations, President Vladimir Putin Monday offered Russian missile system to Saudi Arabia which now relies on American armaments including Patriot Missile system. “We are ready to provide respective assistance to Saudi Arabia, and it would be enough for the political leadership of Saudi Arabia to make a wise government[Read More…]
The constipated tedium that follows each call, denial and condemnation after another round of fake news and its giddying effects has become daily fare. Entire episodes with the sanctimonious and the solemn are being created to show up the citizen journalist, the blogger, the self-opinionated masturbator of news, in the hope that some high priest set will reclaim the ground. [Read More…]
Eurasia’s Great Game is anything but simple and straightforward. A burgeoning alliance between China and Russia that at least for now is relegating potential differences between the two powers to the sidelines has sparked a complex geopolitical dance of its own. With India, Japan and Europe seeking to drive a wedge between the two Asian powers, Central Asian states, where[Read More…]
The UN has stated in its charter that “the right of peoples to self-determination (is) one of the fundamental rights of international law. … Today, the right of peoples to self-determination is generally recognized as the norm of international law, which is the norm under customary law . Its legal character is also recognized under Article 1 (2) of the[Read More…]
Third Shambhu Dutta Memorial Lecture, Organized by Transparency International India at IIC, September 9, 2019. Preface to the Lecture I am grateful to Transparency International India for asking me to deliver the Third Shambhu Dutta Memorial Lecture. It is held in the memory of Shri Shambhu Dutta (1918-2016), the founding father of Transparency International India. He was a well-known Gandhian[Read More…]
It has been just over a fortnight since the publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. The publication of the Register culminates an unrivalled bureaucratic exercise for documenting genuine citizens of the state. The background of the exercise could be traced to the demands raised in the 1980s to update the 1951 Register. In its immediate phase,[Read More…]
Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, which experienced three massive meltdowns in 2011,is running out of room to store radioactive water. No surprise! But now, what to do about phosphorescent water? Addressing the issue, Japan’s environmental minister Yoshiaki Harada held a news conference (September 2019). Unfortunately, he proffered the following advice: “The only option will be to drain[Read More…]
The Foreigners’ Tribunals of Assam were first constituted around 1965,when the first alarm was raised about massive infiltration of foreigners from East Pakistan(now Bangladesh) and the Border Police were ordered to detect and deport them.The fact that the British had promoted an influx of migrants amounting to ten lakhs or more every decade and the notion that Assam had plenty[Read More…]
PUCL strongly condemns the actions of the Jharkhand police in dropping murder charges u/s 302 IPC from the charge sheet of the case related to the brutal lynching murder of Tabrez Ansari and replacing it with a much more diluted charge u/s 304 IPC, (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). PUCL also strongly deprecates the justification offered by the SP[Read More…]
I would like to announce the publication of a book, which reviews the lives and thoughts of some of the women and men who have addressed the crucial problems of ecology and sustainability that we are currently facing. I have tried to let them speak to us in their own words. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from[Read More…]
Waving Union Jacks and singing “God Save the Queen” hundreds of Hong Kong activists flocked to the UK Consulate in Hong Kong on Sunday. This was their bid to convince the UK to step in and protect them from China like it would have in the colonial era. The activists gathered in front of the British Consulate-General claim the Chinese[Read More…]
The water level in the Narmada Valley is increasing every second. The water level has reached it’s full height I.e 138.68 meters. Many villages have been completely submerged, some have become islands and in some villages water has started entering. Now that the water has started reaching the full height of the dam, the rigging done in the survey conducted[Read More…]
How are you with numbers? I can deal with $1.5 million. I think I can even imagine $1.5 billion, a sum a thousand times greater. But how about a million times greater: $1.5 trillion? That happens to be the estimated cost of the Pentagon’s program to build, deploy, and maintain the no-longer-so-new F-35 jet fighter over its lifetime. How can any people invest so[Read More…]
The attack on the world’s largest oil processing facility at Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia southwest of Aramco’s headquarters in Dhahran had a few predictable responses. Given that the facility has a daily output of some 5.7 million barrels, damaging it was bound to cause a spike in the price of oil. The question troubling the security chatterers was whether the[Read More…]
Enhanced and partial transcript of a PressTV Interview Background Saudi Arabia says the recent drone attacks on the state-run oil company Aramco, led to a temporary closure of its facilities and disrupted the kingdom’s oil production and exports. [Saudi] Energy Minister, Abdulaziz bin Salman said the attacks led to the interruption in production of an estimated five-point-seven million barrels of[Read More…]
The parallels between Kashmir and Palestine have been drawn for quite a while now – and there have been instances of solidarity based on similarity of circumstances between Palestinians and Kashmiris. Most recently, several important Palestinian news outlets like the 972 magazine, Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss have denounced the ongoing events in Kashmir which had a special constitutional provision abrogated by the Indian state on Aug 5 followed by a[Read More…]
A simple query sometimes occasions judicial intervention: Does the right to freedom of expression apply merely to believers? On September 6, the Madras High Court dismissed a Public Interest Litigation filed by M Deivanayagam raising such a question. The petitioner wanted the atheistic inscriptions placed under the statue of Periyar, father of the Dravidian movement, installed in Tiruchirappalli, to be[Read More…]
Maxime Bernier wants us to think he is sorry. The leader of the extremist People’s Party of Canada had tweeted that Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is “clearly mentally unstable. Not only autistic, but obsessive-compulsive, eating disorder, depression, and lethargy, and she lives in a constant state of fear. She wants us to feel the same.” Facing a ferocious backlash,[Read More…]
With $295 billion 2019 defense budget, Saudi Arabia Saturday failed to stop a drone attack on its oil installations from the Yemeni rebel rag tag militia. Drones launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacked the world’s largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia and another major oil field, sparking huge fires. The facilities are operated by Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned[Read More…]
So Messrs Angshuman Choudhuri and Suraj Gogoi are at it again———aiming pot shots at me while passing over or trivializing the main argument and point of view. Worse,their diatribe is assuming an increasingly personal tone and turning the debate into a squabble.Hence this is going to be my last and final attempt to clear up the confusion born of lack[Read More…]
The IMF, has been instrumental in helping destroying the economy of a myriad of countries, notably, and to start with, the new Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, Greece, Ukraine and lately Argentina, to mention just a few.Madame Christine Lagarde, as chief of the IMF had a heavy hand in the annihilation of at least the last three[Read More…]
In a recent Washington Post article, well-known Indian journalist Barkha Dutt railed against what she called the “living hell vs. happy place” narrative that seems to dominate recent news reporting on Kashmir. She informs the reader that she has been relaying news from Kashmir for 25 years, so knows a thing or two about issues in Kashmir. Fair enough – we cannot take her Kashmir experience[Read More…]
In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday morning, British District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange will remain in prison, despite the fact that his custodial sentence for “absconding” bail expires on September 22. The ruling is the latest in a series of attacks on Assange’s legal and democratic rights by the British judiciary. It means[Read More…]
Our Home Minister has talked about the importance of Hindi as a national language. He said, it would ‘strengthen’ national unity. These ideas are not knew which are emerging from Sangh parivar whose vision of India purely the dominance of the Aryan Race led by north Indian brahmins or Banias. The thought of diversity instill fear among them as they[Read More…]
Naomi Klein’s new book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, has one crippling flaw—it’s inspiring. At this moment in history, inspiring talk about solutions to multiple, cascading ecological crises is dangerous. At the conclusion of these 18 essays that bluntly outline the crises and explain a Green New Deal response, Klein bolsters readers searching for hope:[Read More…]
Not so much a Desperate House Wife as a desperate mother, a contrite Felicity Huffman, known for playing Lynette Scavo, has been convicted for her role in the university admissions scandal in the United States. The scene is set for another dramatization, though few can go past the sheer levels of tinkering Huffman was engaged in to have her daughter’s[Read More…]
How many Shovas have to endure violence, severe torture and sometimes death when extortionary dowry demands cannot be met? How many monstrous husbands and in-laws will abuse and kill innocent young women because their parents cannot pay the dowry amount to the husbands or to their families? Despite anti-dowry laws in Bangladesh, such crimes are unabated. This has been[Read More…]
Muharram is first month of the Islamic New Year. This month holds special place for the Muslims all over the world due to killing of Imam Husain in the battle of Karbala (Iraq) on the 10th day of Muharram. Husain was grandson of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and son of Caliph Ali. Muslims mourns the first 10 days of Muharram month[Read More…]
day1: 5th august 2019…. It is the morning, not the one it was yesterday. I could open door or window or heart yesterday or I could go out to talk about the leaked government orders which directed officials to prepare stocks of essentials at least for three to six months. I could ask questions to my local officials who would[Read More…]
Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. The word lynching conjures up images of a dark period in the history of the United States of America. Between 1877 and 1950, white supremacist gangs murdered 4,000 African Americans, while[Read More…]
9th September is revolutionary Punjabi poet Pash’s birth anniversary. He was born on 9th September 1950 in Talwandi Salem village in district Jalandhar and assassinated by Khalistani fundamentalists on 23rd March 1988. While going back into memories, an interesting episode from his life relevant to present day Kashmir situation came to my mind. I was in jail during emergency from[Read More…]
episode 1: a regiment of old people, more bones than flesh, are thrown into an army truck. to be unloaded in the woods near some godforsaken border. but, a fierce debate breaks out whether they should be blinded or not. orders are awaited from the capital city. episode 2: a burst of pellets perforate a sieve on a snow girl’s[Read More…]
If there is an upside to Brexit, it is this: it has made it increasingly hard to present Jeremy Corbyn, contrary to everything the corporate media has been telling us for the past four years, as anything but a political moderate. In truth, he is one of the few moderates left in British – or maybe that should read English[Read More…]
It is not difficult to speak about the state of media particularly the electronic one in India today. If Lal Krishna Adavani is true to his convictions then he must use a much powerful statement than what he used during the Emergency when he famously said : The media was asked to bend and it started crawling’. Problem is that[Read More…]
An intergovernmental coalition about a new U.S. initiative planned to counter Russia in Europe hosted a presentation on September 12, 2019 in Warsaw. Media reports said: The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) describes its initiative – Countering Malign Kremlin Influence – as a framework to help democratic institutions safeguard elections, counter propaganda and misinformation, and avoid dependence on Russian[Read More…]
The Pompeo Doctrine– How to Seize the Arctic’s Resources, Now Accessible Due to Climate Change (Just Don’t Mention Those Words!) Donald Trump got the headlines as usual — but don’t be fooled. It wasn’t Trumpism in action this August, but what we should all now start referring to as the Pompeo Doctrine. Yes, I’m referring to Secretary of State Mike[Read More…]
Many people are concerned that we have an oil problem. Or they are concerned about recession and the need to lower interest rates. As I see the situation, we have a problem of a networked economy that is not functioning well. A big part of this problem is energy-related. Strange as it may seem, energy prices (including oil prices) are too[Read More…]
PressTV Interview – transcript Excerpts: An Iranian parliamentary faction has come up with the idea of establishing a club of sanctioned countries for concerted action against the US economic terrorism. The chairman of the Parliament’s faction on countering sanctions, Poormokhtar, gave a report on the formation of the faction and its activities, as well as the ongoing efforts to establish[Read More…]
When Sahar Khodayari this week set herself alight in front of a Tehran courthouse, she indicted world soccer body FIFA, its Asian regional group, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and their presidents, Gianni Infantino and Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa. Messrs. Infantino and Al Khalifa have been selective in their support for women’s soccer rights. Mr. Infantino was in[Read More…]
There was something richly amusing in the move: three judges, sitting in Scotland’s highest court of appeal, had little time for the notion that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s suspension, or proroguing, of parliament till October 14, had been lawful. Some 78 parliamentarians had taken issue with the Conservative leader’s limitation on Parliamentary activity, designed to prevent any hiccups prior to[Read More…]
Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to “court the compatible left.” He knew that drawing liberals and leftists into the CIA’s orbit was the key to efficient propaganda. Right-wing and left-wing collaborators were needed to create a powerful propaganda apparatus that would be capable of hypnotizing audiences into believing the myth of American[Read More…]
You might cringe when someone makes an idiotic remark about Hinduism and Hindu practices. A majority of Indian Muslims will never make a negative statement about Hindus or Hinduism. Indeed, they will defend it as Hinduism is one of the most misunderstood religions like theirs. They are driven by the wisdom found in the Quran, 6:108 (Itani), “Do not insult[Read More…]
“The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?” -Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Ant-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia There is a fairly typical and recurrent notion among many Americans that Donald Trump and[Read More…]
When the British officially brought India under the governance of the British crown in 1858 declaring Queen Victoria as the Empress of India, the rationale provided was that the British Government would work to ‘better’ its Indian subjects. The ‘natives’ then considered uncivilized and deprived of the ‘enlightenment’ were therefore deemed unfit to govern themselves. Thus the white man’s burden[Read More…]
Global Ecological Sustainability depends critically upon ending the logging and burning of old forests and letting them recover, expand and reconnect “Each act of cutting and burning old trees diminishes and contributes to the pending collapse of the biosphere… The cutting and burning of old forests ends, as a prominent aspect of the coming Great Transition required for equitable and[Read More…]
The death of Israa Ghrayeb has ignited furious reactions regarding the so-called ‘honor-killings’ in Palestine and throughout the Arab world. It also wrought confusion with respect to the jurisprudential foundation of such crimes, which are often committed in the name of protecting the honor of the family. Israa, a 21-year-old makeup artist from the town of Beit Sahour in the[Read More…]
Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers Many who oppose the aggressive foreign policy of the United States under President Donald Trump, which has resulted in record numbers of bombs dropped, regime change operations against Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran and Hong Kong, the abusive use of unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) and record military budgets, cheered when uber-hawk, John Bolton was removed[Read More…]
Amidst political posturing, aerial terrorism and street bombings, Afghan citizens pursue their daily work toward peace. On a very warm September morning in Kabul, several dozen men, women, and children sit on the carpeted floor of a room at the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Borderfree Center. The women cluster together. All wear burqas, but because of the heat they push the[Read More…]
Marx’s dialectical materialist philosophy rests on the axiom that humans have needs and desires the satisfaction of which exist outside themselves. Thus, humans must ‘go over’ into an “other” to find self satisfaction.. That “other” is on the one hand, nature, and on the other hand, others of their species. Because, according to Marx, man is by nature a social[Read More…]
Climate impacts – such as super-charged hurricanes, floods, and wildfires – are becoming an increasingly urgent reality. Global leaders have called for urgent action on climate adaptation, and a global commission finds adaptation can deliver $7.1 trillion in benefits The Global Commission on Adaptation has warned Tuesday: Nations rich and poor must invest now to protect against the effects of[Read More…]
Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek Whenever Hong Kong protesters are destroying public property, there are no cameras of Western media outlets in sight. But when police decide to intervene, protecting their city, Western media crusaders emerge in full force. On September 08, 2019, huge US flags were waving in the air. A massive demonstration, consisting of mainly young people, was[Read More…]
Afghan president Ashraf Ghani may not be the only one to have welcomed US President Donald J. Trump’s cancellation of peace talks with the Taliban. Probably, so did Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the run-up to this month’s Israeli elections. The cancellation likely reduces fears harboured in recent weeks by Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli intelligence community that the US[Read More…]
Co-Written by Dr. P.S. Sahni & Shobha Aggarwal In solidarity with the locked up Kashmiris not one, but two protests were held simultaneously from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the 10th of September, 2019.The organizers and participants of the first protest were Kashmiri students and professionals based in Delhi or outside Delhi who decided to come together at JantarMantar[Read More…]
For a decade,NazaninZaghari-Ratcliffe, a 41-year- old British-Iranian woman had a normal life in north London. She had a home, a job, husband and a beautiful daughter named Gabriella. A 2016 visit to Iran changed all that. Nazanin was arrested and taken away at a Tehran airport by the members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, an elite faction of the government. She[Read More…]
One may or may not like cricket – not the worm, but the game – or even, could be someone like a typical Frenchman or woman who doesn’t understand the game, or pretends he/she doesn’t have any clues as to what British men (and now women too) do with a ball, two bats, and six sticks, inserted into the[Read More…]
18 years after the ghastly tragedy of 9/11, the seven-million strong American Muslim community remains at the receiving end with President Trump’s demonization of Muslims to bigotry, to hate crimes, to widespread discrimination, to media coverage that links Islam with terrorism. Tellingly, attack on Muslims and their faith is coming from our top political leadership. I mean from our President.[Read More…]
The 18th anniversary of the attacks on 11 September 2001 (9/11) will be commemorated in the US and worldwide by the corporate media to keep the legend about 9/11alive. The official 9/11 narrative, however, is not only riddled with contradictions and outright lies, but any deviation from this fairy tale will cost any detractor his existence. “Conspiracy theorists” works like[Read More…]
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) condemns the raid on DU professor, Dr Hany Babu’s residence in Noida, Delhi, by the Pune police earlier today (10 September 2019). The unending trial of democracy and unremitting assault on the Constitution and rule of law, in the name of Bhima-Koregaon, and the McCarthy-style With-hunt and victimisation of constitutionally minded academics and[Read More…]
When the conflict that the Vietnamese refer to as the American War ended in April 1975, I was a U.S. Army captain attending a course at Fort Knox, Kentucky. In those days, the student body at any of our Army’s myriad schools typically included officers from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Since ARVN’s founding two decades earlier,[Read More…]
Natsamrat (The King of the theatre) has shades of King Lear in it. However, the masterpiece of this Marathi movie starring Nana Patekar as Ganapat Rao Belwalkar is not just Nana, though his performance is spectacular. It is his best friend in the movie, Vikram Gokhale as Rambhau who lingers. Both are actors on the stage and according to[Read More…]
The information below and the quotes were taken from the 12-page report that accompanied Rosemary Mason’s recent open letter to the Chief Medical Officer to England, Sally Davies. It can be accessed here. Although the following focuses on the situation in the UK, the chemical onslaught on our food chain is global. For instance, researcher and policy expert Devinder Sharma,[Read More…]
The cover has finally blown. The shadow of a slowing economy has caught up as the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) recently declared an overall unemployment rate of 6.1% in FY18, the highest in 45 years. Though the government maintains its contention with the comparability of PLFS with older data, academics and scholars across the country reiterate its credibility. However,[Read More…]
Angshuman Choudhury and Suraj Gogoi** On 5 September, prominent Assamese intellectual and civil society figure, Dr Hiren Gohain, published a piece in The Hindu where he argued that “errors aside, the [National Register of Citizens (NRC)] process was rigorous, methodical and did not target any particular community.” The NRC final list was released in Assam on 31 August. Nothing can[Read More…]
Co-Written by Pooja Kalita and Prithiraj Borah “As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.” These famous words by Virginia Woolf perfectly fit the present political situation prevailing throughout the world. Assam too is no exception, as it seems to be perpetually engulfed in a[Read More…]
On 2 October 2019, it will be the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas K. Gandhi in Gujarat, India. I would like to reflect on the visionary leadership that Gandhi offered the world, briefly comparing it with some national leaders of today, and to invite you to emulate Gandhi’s leadership. While Gandhi is best remembered for being the mastermind[Read More…]
There are rare moments in history, when even the most determined enemies can suddenly recognize the futility of battle. Sometimes, just for a moment or two. Sometimes, for longer. Such moments of sanity may save thousands, even millions human lives. And, such moments are not expressions of weakness or cowardice; on the contrary; they are embodiments of courage. I want[Read More…]
You’re seeking a job. Maybe your first job. One of the sentences you’re likely to read in the job ad description is, are you a team player? Since this is your first job, you may be wondering what type of personality they are trying to attract with this particular bit of inquiry. You may have learned of figures like Isaac[Read More…]
Like Timor-Leste, West Papua, commonly subsuming both Papua and West Papua, remains a separate ethnic entity, acknowledged as such by previous colonial powers. Its Dutch colonial masters, in preparing to leave the region in the 1950s, left the ground fertile for a declaration of independence in 1961. Such a move did not sit well with the Indonesian desire to claim[Read More…]
Many in Asia look at the Middle East with a mixture of expectation of stable energy supplies, hope for economic opportunity and concern about a potential fallout of the region’s multiple violent conflicts that are often cloaked in ethnic, religious and sectarian terms. Yet, a host of Asian nations led by men and women, who redefine identity as concepts of[Read More…]
Israel followers seek advantage by adding praiseworthy phrases after the word “Israel,” such as, “Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East;” “Israel’s IDF, the most humane army in the world”; “Israel, the only country in the Middle East that has religious freedom.” Hogwash! No nation means no democracy. Examining the first expression leads to a conclusion that Israel cannot[Read More…]
Do you remember July 8, 2011? Where you were? What you did? Whom you talked to? Anything at all? I couldn’t pin down one single thing for that day. I couldn’t even locate an email I had sent or a photo I might have taken. It’s all evidently lost in the ether, known only to tech and telecom firms. But maybe, unlike[Read More…]
It is high time for the United Nations to initiate investigation regarding the usage of banned cluster bombs and weapons of mass destruction [WMD]. Even after emerging of substantial evidences, United Nations is delaying the investigations. United Nations gravely failed to protect the civilians during the war and knowingly ignored to take any action that caused more than the lives[Read More…]
In post-partition literary tradition in India, there have been writers altering the course of literary trend by their peculiar style of writing. Simultaneously, they have travelled their own way and have had the ability to go beyond the disciplinary conservatism while weaving their creative writings. They refused to maintain the literary status-quo. In the legacy of Urdu-Hindi post-partition literature,[Read More…]
After reading this book “ The Tattooist of Auschwitz”, the first thought that came into my mind was that this novel based on the life of one man and his wife among others could be the fiction companion of Victor Frankl’s immortal work “ Man’s search for Meaning” written in similar circumstances in a concentration camp. But on deeper reflection,[Read More…]
The Muslims of India are fighting the case of Babri Masjid as their last line of defense. The odds are heavily against. A very hostile Hindu populace, with BJP striding to power in most of the states in India as well as at Center, nearly one-sided executive/police and a bitter neighbour (Hindu) on practically every turn of an alley, hence,[Read More…]
A poet and literary personality, Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, present Minister for HRD authored around 60 books in Hindi. During the 90s, the Open International University (OIU) of Colombo conferred a D. Litt for his contribution in literature. Prior to that also he received a D. Litt degree from the same university for contributions in the field of science. It[Read More…]
An unusually hot summer worldwide has led to an extreme rate of Arctic ice melt, NASA said on Friday. NASA has released a visualization of sea ice in the Arctic that shows a devastating loss of perennial ice in the Arctic Circle within the last 35 years. NASA scientist Nathan Kurtz said the Greenland ice sheet is experiencing extreme levels[Read More…]
Waving U.S. flags protesters in Hong Kong have appealed to U.S. President Donald Trump to intervene and liberate them as they marched to the U.S. consulate general in the city on September 8, 2019. They engaged in violent acts including setting fires, breaking traffic signs and tearing away pavement before making the appeal. International media including AFP, BBC and New[Read More…]
We tend to feel that it’s only the sea creatures that suffer at the hands of fishermen, bulk fishing their food. But, when seals and other marine animals prey on fish caught in these fishermen’s net, we as lay people do not realise that it can be costly both economically and ecologically. It can reduce the amount of sell-able fish,[Read More…]
Indian-Americans have distinguished themselves in a variety of fields and have been lauded as one of the most successful diasporic groups in the United States. From captains of technology to corporate board members, from university administrators to hotel tycoons and hedge-fund managers, Indian-Americans have certainly made their mark in their adopted country. Recently, the emergence of Indian-Americans in the political[Read More…]
The planetary consequences of injecting >910 billion tons CO2 into the atmosphere are playing in real time. The Arctic Circle is suffering from an unprecedented number of wildfires in the latest sign of a climate crisis. With some blazes the size of 100,000 football pitches, vast areas in Siberia, Alaska and Greenland are engulfed in flames. The World Meteorological Organisation[Read More…]
In 2017, MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Tory creature trapped in cold storage, suggested that the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union was tantamount to fighting the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo and Trafalgar, a true statement of British strength. (Much inconsistency there, but let him ride with it.) “This is Magna Carta, it’s the Burgesses coming at Parliament, it’s the great[Read More…]
IT has been nearly 27 years since the destruction of the 16th century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. And it still feels like yesterday that the tragedy that changed India forever struck. Most of us remember where we were or what we were doing that fateful day. It is as if time has stood still all these years. It indeed has[Read More…]
Co-Written by Ishfaq Majid & Varinder Singh In 1949, a special provision was added to India’s constitution providing autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The article was allowing the state to have its own constitution, a separate flag, and independence over all matters except foreign affairs, defence, and communications. Another provision later added under Article 370 was 35A[Read More…]
In these days of rising communal tensions, a courageous woman achieved her dream of obtaining ‘No Caste No Religion’ certificate through persistent struggle. This incident is a significant one. Some colleges in West Bengal have also introduced ‘humanity’, ‘agnostic’ , ‘secular’ or ‘non-religious’ in the application forms for online submission for students who are unwilling to disclose their faith. (West[Read More…]
Scientists have barely offered resistance to pseudoscience. This must change—IIT students show how. Surely India’s scientific community must be waking up to the realisation that their silence is detrimental to scientific development and allows many varieties of mischief to breed. In a rare show of gumption, students of the elite engineering institute, IIT Bombay, have slammed the recent decision to invite the Human Resources[Read More…]
Much has been written about the excitement of Hindu Nationalist men at the prospect of being able to marry Kashmiri “girls”, but a question still remains. Why in the world would Kashmiri “girls”,or at least those interested in boys, want that – especially in light of the hotness quotient of Kashmiri men? This could well be damned as a politically[Read More…]
Five days have now passed since Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas with injury and death estimates continuing to grow and the widespread nature of damage becoming clearer. The official death toll rose to 30 Friday but is expected to rise dramatically as recovery efforts continue on the island chain off the southeast coast of Florida. As of Friday afternoon, more[Read More…]
Co-Written by Prithiraj Borah and PoojaKalita Perhaps the void that is produced by death sometimes creates a space – to reflect and to introspect. The despair that some deaths evoke, rather than pushing us to a state of nothingness or blind blame-games should set in motion strings of questions in which we and some of our fellow beings exist and[Read More…]
Dear Scientists and MITROS at ISRO. Greetings from the Indian People! Even though the Mission failed its fine. We have faith in the Institutions that Nehruji founded. To ensure the Mission’s success, the next time both Modi & Shah need to be seated in the Satellite & driving the Rover on the Moon. So do create and design the Satellite[Read More…]
The climate crisis is turning average law-abiding people into raging law-breaking eco rebels, by boatloads. Extinction Rebellion (ER) is at the forefront, demanding that governments declare climate emergencies and take urgent action. In that regard, ER, which started in the UK, says government must reduce carbon emissions to Net Zero by 2025, or else! Social chaos will spring loose[Read More…]
“Enlightenment Now” by neoliberal, Canadian-American One Percenter Steven Pinker argues that the 17th century onwards European Enlightenment that promoted reason , science and humanism resulted in huge scientific, technological and moral advances with ultimately huge improvements in the human condition in many areas. However Pinker scoffs at Greens and leftists, supports the neoliberal capitalist order, and ignores horrendous realities from[Read More…]
A high ranking US official said Thursday (Sept 5) that Washington was in talks with the Houthi rebels in a bid to end Yemen’s war. “We are narrowly focused on trying to end the war in Yemen,” US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker told reporters during a visit to Al-Kharj air base near the Saudi[Read More…]
Political posturing aligned with commercial interests means that truth is becoming a casualty in the debate about genetically modified (GM) crops in India. The industry narrative surrounding Bt cotton is that it has been a great success. The current Modi-led administration is parroting this claim and argues its success must be replicated by adopting a range of GM food crops,[Read More…]
Taking assigned seat at banquet table Right across from me Robert Mugabe President of Zimbabwe Destroyer of Rhodes and his ilk Leader of the Revolution Against Apartheid, Racism, Colonialism, Imperialism Personal Hero Intelligent, sophisticated, well-informed, polished, well-spoken Devout Catholic too Vilified by Western Governments and their Flunky News Media No surprise there After dinner talking about his problems I joked[Read More…]
There is something to be said of wariness when it comes to revolutionary voices. As Albert Camus argued in that beautiful tract of illumination and contradiction, The Rebel, “All modern revolutions have ended in the reinforcement of the power of the state.” But he also argued that humankind were the only creatures refusing to be what they are, a permanent[Read More…]
He crossed the border without permission or, as far as I could tell, documentation of any sort. I’m speaking about Donald Trump’s uninvited, unasked-for invasion of my personal space. He’s there daily, often hourly, whether I like it or not, and I don’t have a Department of Homeland Security to separate him from his children, throw them all in degrading versions of prison[Read More…]
Little suggests that fabulously wealthy Gulf states and their Middle Eastern and North African beneficiaries have recognized what is perhaps the most important lesson of this year’s popular uprisings in Algeria and Sudan and the 2011 Arab revolts: All that glitters is not gold. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and to a lesser extent Kuwait have in the last[Read More…]
The nationalism which was at the root of freedom movement, which is based on inclusive pluralism, is currently under severe strain with the ascendance of the politics of RSS combine. All the wings of RSS are actively infiltrating and dominating most of the fields of our social and political life. Running parallel to this is the attempt to create a[Read More…]
Recently economist Jean Dreze told, “There were radical land reforms in Kashmir in 1950s and those land reforms were made possible due to Article-370.” [https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/economist-jean-dreze-jandk-more-developed-than-gujarat-special-status-helped-reducing-poverty] It is really so because without Article 370 the then Chief Minister Sheikh Abdullah could not expropriate big landlords without compensation. We know that happened from a 1953 article by Daniel Thorner, ‘The Kashmir Land[Read More…]
The Punjabi Press Club of British Columbia unanimously condemned the ongoing assault on press freedom in Indian-occupied Kashmir at its monthly meeting in Surrey on Tuesday, September 3. On August 5, the Indian government unilaterally scrapped special rights given to the state of Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian constitution, suspending civil liberties and arresting local leaders on the[Read More…]
Note: Ganesh Gaitonde is a fictional character from the Netflix series Sacred Games, but that does not make him any less real than anyone else on the planet. Warning: Profanity ahead. Get parental advice before proceeding. Somewhere on a yacht in choppy waters off the western Indian coast I met Ganesh Gaitonde, noted[1]political analyst, role model for the youth and[Read More…]
The Green New Deal pivots on a central lie of continued growth, promising this growth and employment whilst pretending it can magic away the environmental and humanitarian consequences. The result of this is that on all three counts – infinite growth, reliance on fossil fuels, and colonial resource extraction – the Green New Deal is unable to challenge the prevailing[Read More…]
“The dead albatross that hangs around our neck is our legacy of arrogance, racism. And we must struggle to atone, to reconstruct, to create a different historical system.” So wrote the late sociologist and thinker Immanuel Wallerstein in unequivocal tones of repentance on Europe’s legacy, its “oldest disgrace.” Wallerstein was one of those refreshing types in an increasingly restrictive academy,[Read More…]
On September 1, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, struck an Israeli military base near the border town of Avivim. The Lebanese attack came as an inevitable response to a series of Israeli strikes that targeted four different Arab countries in the matter of two days. The Lebanese response, accompanied by jubilation throughout Lebanon, shows that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may[Read More…]
An American friend asked me the following question: How is it that the large Arab World that extends from the Persian Gulf east all the way to the Atlantic Ocean west, and from Turkish border north to the Indian Ocean south with all its wealth of oil and gas, and spending trillions of dollars acquiring American, British and French sophisticated[Read More…]
For cars, baubles, and beef We pledged our untrammeled allegiance For cars, baubles, and beef We declared an insidious war We held our flag up high We demanded full compliance For cars, baubles, and beef We punished all dissenters Here we are today Apocalypse here and now For cars, baubles, and beef We sacrificed our smiling children Progress is hard[Read More…]
Pakistan army’s spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor Wednesday (Sept 4) categorically denied rumors regarding the establishment of relations between Pakistan and Israel. Addressing a press conference in Islamabad General Ghafoor said rumors such as these are spread as part of ‘fifth-generation warfare’. “We are the only country in the world whose passport refuses entry to Israel; we have had this[Read More…]
A Report by the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) and the Free Speech Collective (FSC) A month after the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution of India, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, on August 5, 2019, the continuing shutdown of communication in the Kashmir valley has resulted in the throttling of independent media. Laxmi[Read More…]
I arrived in Srinagar on the 3rd of August to spend my annual vacation with my family based in Kashmir. Two days after I arrived government suddenly announced bifurcation of the state, revocation of article 370 and turning Kashmir into a union territory. With this decision Mobile phones, internet and all other forms of communications were cut immediately to stop[Read More…]
One important inference that can be drawn from the speeches of the 30th August 2019 rally of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), is that the recent bust controversy will be a pivotal issue in the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) election scheduled to be held on 12 September. The dispute will not cease with the announcement of election results.[Read More…]
The Great Bank Robbery: This is not the title of a new Big Budget movie, like Saaho, which reportedly grabbed 10,000 screens across the world. It is related to real, not reel,life. The Saaho in economy was the big ticket reform of 10 PSU Banks merger into four Bahubalis,as painted by some media, that was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala[Read More…]
The oceans are “crying for mercy,” a fact that is starkly revealed in a telling 900-page draft of a forthcoming UN report due for release September 25th. The draft report obtained by Agence France-Presse (AFP) assesses the status of the oceans and cyrosphere. It’s a landmark UN report, and it’s not a pretty picture. In the final analysis, the report[Read More…]
Extreme GHG and temperaturerise rates question linear climate projections Preamble “we will be in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will most likely lead to the end of our civilization as we know it”… “Now we probably don’t even have a future anymore, because that future was sold so that a small[Read More…]
As we in Florida await in our ( hopefully) boarded up and sandbagged homes the arrival of but another deadly storm , one has time to sit and ponder things. This writer lived through a major hurricane assault, when Mathew trampled through Port Orange, Florida in October of 2016. We were lucky while being the unlucky neighbors in our 50[Read More…]
Amid a debate over whether the annulment of article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir was purely a government decision to reorganise the state, it is necessary to know whose real interest lies here. This removal of article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir (aka J&K) invited a number of intellectuals across the world to hold talks and making opinions regarding legitimacy[Read More…]
Chiang Mai, Thailand: Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) notes with growing concern the abrogation of human rights and manipulation of the constitution in the name of democracy in India, specifically with regard to the situation in Indian-administered Kashmir, without giving the people of Kashmir any say to make decisions over their own lives and future. Kashmir[Read More…]
It took gallons and flagons of blood, but it eventuated, a squeeze of history into a parchment of possibility: the Taliban eventually pushed the sole superpower on this expiring earth to a deal of some consequence. (The stress is on the some – the consequence is almost always unknown.) “In principle, on paper, yes we have reached an agreement,” claimed[Read More…]
Many have already noticed: The U.S. really, really doesn’t feel like the world leader, or even as a ‘first world country’. Of course, I write that sarcastically, as I detest expressions like ‘first world’, and the ‘third world’. But readers know what I mean. Bridges, subways, inner cities, everything is crumbling, falling apart. When I used to live in New[Read More…]
Concealing the truth from the people is not unusual in politics. It is perhaps more pronounced in global politics partly because it is more difficult to hold powerful global actors accountable. That might is right is an adage that rings true at the international level more than in the domestic arena. There are currently a number of international issues[Read More…]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday (Sept 3) cancelled a planned visit to India on September 9 to meet his counterpart Narendra Modi who last month annexed the disputed territory of Kashmir. This is the second time this year that Netanyahu on has cancelled a planned visit to India, doing so earlier before the April elections. Netanyahu’s planned visit[Read More…]
In an earlier article in Medium, I wrote about a corrosive sports culture that brings out peoples’ baser instincts- from applauding violence to replacing a plural view of humanity with elemental tribalism. In the piece, I also discussed sports-obsession as an example of the abdication of affirmative citizenship, given the time, money, and mental energy people spend on sports versus civic[Read More…]
A noted Indian Muslim politician and Supreme Court Lawyer, Mr. Salman Khurshid has authored a book recently with the title “ Visible Muslims, Invisible citizenship: Understanding Islam in Indian democracy” (2019), he has been an ardent follower of Congress Party and its secular ideology throughout his political life. He has also served earlier in the Ministry of external[Read More…]
This article is a criticism and condemnation of a self-declared “major” “modern money theory – green new deal initiative” written by the economist Bill Mitchell and disseminated on his website. According to his wikipedia page William Francis Mitchell was born March 1952 and is a professor of economics at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia and a notable[Read More…]
The beauty of the Gaian theology is that, unlike for ordinary theology, you don’t have to rely only on second-hand reports about the subject of your studies. Gaia exists, and you can perceive Her all around us. Then, the question is: what or who is She? As you know, the modern idea of Gaia as a denizen of the Earth’s ecosphere[Read More…]
In my village in my childhood and now there was/is one common practice. Each occupation is performed by a single community. Each community has its own name. Tilling the land, shepherding or cattle rearing, fishing, toddy tapping, pot making, cloth washing, clothe weaving, barbering and chappal making, including handling of dead bodies of animals or humans are done by each[Read More…]
Quote and misquote related to Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar have become part of political discourse particularly since the abrogation of article 370 ( which is technically not correct as the article is not yet abrogated, special status is abrogated using the same article). Many people are quoting Baba Saheb in Kashmir as if he and Shayama Prasad Mukherjee, the leader[Read More…]
Climate change continues to accelerate, hitting the planet harder and harder—and the Arctic north among the hardest of all. Two major catastrophic signs of how fast things are moving in the Arctic—and for the planet as a whole—emerged in July and August. On August 1, the layer of ice covering the country of Greenland melted more in a single day[Read More…]
President Maithripala Sirisena on Monday [August 18, 2019] named a General accused of war crimes as Commander of the Sri Lankan Army, sparking concern over the appointment that the UN later termed “deeply troubling”. What the United Nations is saying? “I am deeply troubled by the appointment of Lieutenant-General Shavendra Silva as Commander of the Sri Lankan Army, despite the[Read More…]
I write these words in an agony of urgency. Already this year, 2019, there have been 31 mass shootings in the USA; more than in any other nation. Over half of these have been in the state of Texas. At what is only temporarily the most recent crime scene, in Odessa, one of the victims was 17 months old. The[Read More…]
There is a fact about Hemingway that few people know, and that is that for most of his life he was surveilled by the FBI. As people have come to realize, that surveillance, along with other factors such as injuries to his head, years of heavy drinking, and his feeling that he had “lost it” as a writer,contributed to the[Read More…]
…an historian who is indefatigable in the pursuit of knowledge and prolific in its publication, and who is above all a devoted partisan of the truth. … The early history of the country has been illuminated by Professor Thapar, whom I now present, more than by almost any other scholar. An historian of that period who seriously wishes to refute[Read More…]
The Ramjanambhumi/Babri Masjid, Ayodhya, Faizabad, UP, title suit is in its last phase, since, the Supreme Court ordered its hearing to start on a day to day basis from Aug 5, and the matter got further expedited as Chief Justice Rajan Gogoi made it to be heard for five days a week, instead of the previous three. The constitution bench[Read More…]
Videos posted online late Sunday and early Monday provided the first glimpse of the scale of destruction Hurricane Dorian—a historic Category 5 storm—left in its wake in the Bahamas as it slowly moves toward the southeastern coast of the United States, forcing nearly a million residents of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas to evacuate. “I have seen utter devastation here… We are[Read More…]
Saudi coalition jet fighters carried out a series of airstrikes on a Houthi rebel-run prison in southwestern Yemen early Sunday morning, killing more than 100 and wounding another 40. The attack ranks among the worst in a long string of war crimes committed by Saudi Arabia, with the full backing of the American and British governments, in its four-year-long effort[Read More…]
Jury is out on whether the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A by the Government of India is a masterstroke or a monumental folly, having brought about a situation in Kashmir where political dialogue and autonomy have been removed from the agenda. A “special status” enjoying entity has been reduced to the rank of a centrally ruled/administered area. Abrogation was[Read More…]
Fires are destroying Amazon rain forest for the last three weeks with nearly 75,000 fires ravaging. According to Brazil’s National Institute of for Space Research(INPE). there has been a increase of 80 % fires compared to last summer. Three football fields of land in the Brazilian Amazon are deforested every minute. This week, the intensity of fires is so high [Read More…]
A rain of blood fell from the sky on a valley A sixteen year old boy cried in pain when his eyes were hit with pellet bullets `But why?’ He asked the soldier who shot him `You sold our country to another country’ `To which country?’ the boy asked with tears of blood `To Pakistan,’ said the soldier confidently `And[Read More…]
As someone who has been a union member since I was a Marine with the American Servicemen’s Union until I retired last year as a Teamster as well as a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, I have lived the reality of mistreatment of workers in the United States. It is good to see labor rising with teacher[Read More…]
The final list of updated National Register of Citizen (NRC) that has been published on August 31 which has excluded nearly 19 lakh people in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam of their citizenship. In the final draft of NRC, out of 3.30 crore applicants, 31.11 crore names have been found to be eligible for inclusion in updated NRC and[Read More…]
As we wait with bated breath for real news from Jammu and Kashmir since the total clampdown of 5 August, 2019, a large number of Writ Petitions finally got filed and the Supreme Court belatedly heard these on 28.08.2019. I read those of the petitions uploaded on the web and prepared this brief piece; and added a note on what[Read More…]
When I was a child, I used to watch these films. Films about an evil force that rose to power and swept across Europe. Films about wicked and powerful men who believed that they were better than everyone else. Films about armies invading and occupying. Films about soldiers patrolling the streets and demanding: “Ihre Papiere, Bitte” — Your Papers, Please.[Read More…]
More than ten years ago, in Nadi, Fiji, during a UN conference, I was approached by the Minister of Education of Papua New Guinea (PNG). He was deeply shaken, troubled, his eyes full of tears: “Please help our children,” he kept repeating: “Indonesian army, TNI, is kidnapping our little girls in the villages, raping them, and then… in the most[Read More…]
Cringe worthy, a touch molesting in sentiment: this was the celebratory occasion of the gathering of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison with his East Timorese counterparts. During the course of its history, the state has been pillaged and bombed, its residents massacred and its politicians spied upon. The exposure of that seedy little matter of espionage came in December 2013,[Read More…]
Nearly two millions people, predominantly Muslims have been left out of the NRC list in Assam. Now those who know about the Assam problem understand it will that Assam burnt because of the invasion of the outsiders in the state and conflict among different tribe groups. The issue of livelihood is greater. This issue was never communal or Hindu Muslim.[Read More…]
Dead people are free human beings For freedom is a term meant for the living The living dead walking as corpses on streets Or on their best luxurious vehicles Are also are free human beings in their own minds For they do not know that their freedom is determined by others. To that extent, freedom is a mental construct Whether[Read More…]
On 20th June 2019, a Ford India worker in Sanand, Gujarat was sacked. In the last year, the workers of Ford formed an organization called Karmavati Kamdar Ekta Sangh (KKES). The organization consists of nine hundred workers to put forward their very own demands. The sacked worker is a member of this worker’s body. The worker said that he had[Read More…]
Avoiding the War on Terror would have saved over 10 million lives at home and abroad 
The Angertainer Steps Down: Rupert Murdoch’s Non-Retirement 
Climate Emergency Update, September 2023 
My appeal to Meta’s Oversight Board: Palestinian political and resistance organizations & individuals are not “terrorists” as classified by Israel 
Artificial Intelligence: Profit Versus Freedom 
How Can We Understand the Passage of Time? 
Pre- and Post-Soviet Language Policy in the East-Baltic States 
Breadcrumb 
Three Indian Movies win TIFF 2023 Awards 
Ukrainian president holds crisis talks in Washington amid failure of “spring offensive” 
Zelensky Faces Difficult Time In Washington D.C. 
Stumbling Towards Old Age And Looking for Someone to Lean On 
Tolstoy’s Dilemma 
Ukraine Peace Activists Protest During Zelensky White House Visit 
“Our world is becoming unhinged”: Antonio Guterres 
How Chances of Direct War between the USA and Russia Are Increasing 
G20 Biofuel Alliance threatens Food security 
Thousands Of Auto Workers Strike In Three U.S. Plants, Face Financial Hardship 
Submission To Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission, NACC: Mainstream Media Lying 
In The Name of Decolonization 
Is This the End of French Neo-Colonialism in Africa? 
Tel Aviv’s Losing Brands: Israeli ‘Coup’ and the Death of False Democracy 
Tackling Global Emergencies – UN International Day of Peace 
The Futility of Feudalistic Democracy 
Bayer over-riding Bhartiya Krishi 
Pulwama Bombing 14th February 2019: Unanswered Questions 
Himalayan Apple Growers Worried Over Increasing Threat from Imports 
After protests in flood-hit Derna, Libyan officials order journalists to leave 
International Day of Peace: Fostering Harmony and Unity in a World of Diversity 
More Butterflies, Fewer Billionaires — Unrigging the Global Economy 
Veganic Farming: How My Tiny Plot Produced 5,000 Pounds of Food Without Using Manure 
Fighting the Diaspora: India’s Campaign Against Khalistan 
CAIR Files Lawsuit to End Islamophobic No Fly List 
N.D.Mahanor, The Poet Who Taught Us to See Culture in Agriculture 
Dark and light streaks in India-China relations 
Why the Central Government Should Rush Special Aid Package for Himachal Pradesh 
Special Session: Another Image-Boosting Move? 
Eddelu ( Wake up) Karnataka: The Great Citizen’s Wall Against BJP 
Urgency of Improving Dam Safety Re-Emphasized in Libya and Ukraine 
Climate Crisis Threatens Largest U.S. Cities 
My Amma (Malayalam word for Mother) passed away on August 22, 2023 at 3.10 AM. It is always difficult to deal with the passing of a parent, that too one’s mother. I thought the grief would go away. No it didn’t. All those bitter sweet memories won’t go away. At night I lie awake for hours. My friend, guide and[Read More…]
