Archive for February, 2020

Delhi Riots: Muslim Youth Forced To Sing National Anthem In Viral Video Dies

Delhi Riots: Muslim Youth Forced To Sing National Anthem In Viral Video Dies

A Muslim youth, Faizan who was seen lying injured on the street with a few others as policemen made them sing the national anthem in a video that went viral, died three days after the assault. His family told News18, Faizan was declared dead at the GTB Hospital on the morning of February 26. Nothing is Shocking anymore ;( pic.twitter.com/1aAX6C007Z[Read More…]

by 29/02/2020 1 comment India
Communist Manifesto Remembered-Part 1

Communist Manifesto Remembered-Part 1

Red Books Day : Communist Manifesto being reprinted in massive editions of lakhs of copies in India                                    Communist Manifesto was formally launched once again across India on 21 February, 2020 named as Red Books Day. The first version of the Communist Manifesto, written[Read More…]

by 29/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Forever-Chemicals Tap Water

Forever-Chemicals Tap Water

Throughout the history of Western Civilization there are times,but only on rare occasions, when people en masse feel compelled to run into the streets, similar to the storming of the Bastille 1789,screaming at the top of their lungs: “Stop the Madness!” Now is one of those times, as only recently Feb 2020 the Trump administration signed a regulation to remove[Read More…]

by 29/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and Contemporary Nationalism in India

‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and Contemporary Nationalism in India

Like most of the political phenomenon, even the practice of Nationalism is not a static one. It changes with the changing political equations of the political forces and assumes the expressions which are very diverse. As such the phenomenon of Nationalism has a long journey and various state policies in particular have used it for purposes which relate more to[Read More…]

by 29/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Notes on India, BRICS and Digital Economy

Notes on India, BRICS and Digital Economy

The digital economy is shaping the world today. From becoming a smooth transaction platform to modern-day swag, it is leaving its footprints all over the globe. The digital economy is different than the traditional economy and has become a priority area for many countries. India, for example, came with “Digital India” in 2015. The official website states that “Digital India[Read More…]

by 29/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Political interpretations of Trump’s India visit: Diplomacy beyond understanding 

Political interpretations of Trump’s India visit: Diplomacy beyond understanding 

U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to India turned to political hues rather than tremendous progress toward a comprehensive accord. Therefore, the bilateral agreement between India and U.S. deserves to be seen through diplomatic lenses only as there remains much to accomplish, and the upcoming change in the U.S. after the presidential election will test the relationship. Trump’s maiden trip in[Read More…]

by 29/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Democracy, Development and Political Under Representation of Muslims in India

Democracy, Development and Political Under Representation of Muslims in India

It is crucial to note that Jamia Millia Islamia, a ‘Lusty Child’ of the Non-Cooperation, the Khilafat movements and product of anti-colonial struggle, as mentioned by Prof. Mushirual Hasan and Rakshanda Jalil in their book, “Partners in Freedom: Jamia Millia Islamia”, has now completed its 100 years in 2020. To celebrate and commorate100 years of Jamia, several programmes, seminars, conferences[Read More…]

by 29/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Delhi riots: The chilling loneliness of their grief

Delhi riots: The chilling loneliness of their grief

Communal Violence Bill was brought by the UPA to ensure accountability from public servants as per article 14 and 21 of the Constitution. But it was dropped in February 2014. And the country continues to wait for an effective anti-riots law Monu, a resident of Brahmpuri, didn’t go home after he was discharged from Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) Hospital on[Read More…]

by 29/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Neutrality at this point of time only means connivance with hate mongers

Neutrality at this point of time only means connivance with hate mongers

The Delhi government sanction to prosecute sedition charges against former JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and other unambiguously reflect the agenda that AAP is following and all those who believed that Kejriwal is a different politician ‘focused’ on governance model will be shocked, though people like us who have followed and known Kejriwal and Anna Hazare’s movement well would[Read More…]

by 29/02/2020 1 comment India
Activists Enroute Goalpara Detention Camp Barred

Activists Enroute Goalpara Detention Camp Barred

Security personnels deployed in the Shimultabu area near Kokrajhar along the Assam-West Bengal border on Friday. GUWAHATI: A group of students travelling to the underconstruction detention camp at Matia of Goalpara were barred from entry into Assam at Shimultabu near Kokrajhar at about 2 pm along the Assam-West Bengal border on Friday. Hundreds of security personnel were pressed into action[Read More…]

by 29/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Kashmir youngsters opt for VPN apps to bypass ban on social media

Kashmir youngsters opt for VPN apps to bypass ban on social media

As the Government of India extended 2G services to Jammu and Kashmir after months, many websites continue to remain blacklisted in the region. Among those are social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. In order to bypass the ban on social media, people in Kashmir have started using VPNs to bypass the firewall. Naveed Ul Haq, 21, who lives[Read More…]

by 28/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
33 Turkish soldiers confirmed killed in Idlib airstrike

33 Turkish soldiers confirmed killed in Idlib airstrike

At least 33 Turkish soldiers have been killed and an unspecified number of soldiers were injured in an airstrike in Syria’s Idlib province. Turkish officials blamed the strike to the Syrian military. Casualties from the strike were being treated at hospitals in the border town of Reyhanli. Turkish officials have called the NATO secretary-general and the U.S. national security adviser[Read More…]

by 28/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Reciprocal Altruism

Reciprocal Altruism

   Treating others with trust and happiness, and hoping for their self-realisation seems to be natural behaviour that follows natural laws. 2500 years ago the Buddha had to leave his sheltered home and venture into the alleyways and bye-ways of Greater Magadha to learn about common sense and natural laws. The habit of treating others with trust and affection is[Read More…]

by 28/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Is Delhi’s Anti-Muslim pogrom a plan to forcefully implement All India NRC?

Is Delhi’s Anti-Muslim pogrom a plan to forcefully implement All India NRC?

(The planned attack on Muslims in Delhi 2020, is similar to Anti-Muslim Gujarat riots 2002, then CM and now PM were silent for 3 days) Muslims for Independence of India: Very much surprising to know that around 5,00,000 Muslims got martyred for the Independence of India since revolt of 1857 followed by The Reshmi Rumaal Tehreeq in 1905, The Mopla[Read More…]

by 28/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Harrowing hearts and sowing hatred? Spare a thought for harvest season also!

Harrowing hearts and sowing hatred? Spare a thought for harvest season also!

Majority community must understand that hate crimes breed retaliatory hate crimes. It would be a big mistake to believe growing trend of targeted violence against Muslims to be infertile. Hours after violence broke out in north-east Delhi on Monday, a Muslim friend shared on his Facebook wall: “I feel like going out, sporting my father’s skull cap and shout at[Read More…]

by 28/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Julian Assange, the Glass Cage and Heaven in a Rage: Day Four of Extradition Hearings

Julian Assange, the Glass Cage and Heaven in a Rage: Day Four of Extradition Hearings

Thursday, February 27, Woolwich Crown Court.  The first round of extradition hearings regarding Julian Assange’s case concluded a day early, to recommence on May 18th.  It ended on an insensible note very much in keeping with the woolly-headed reasoning of Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who is of the view that a WikiLeaks publisher in a cage does not put all heaven[Read More…]

by 28/02/2020 1 comment Human Rights
Love in the Time of Riots

Love in the Time of Riots

US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pose as they visit the Taj Mahal in Agra on February 24, 2020. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images) If the above picture doesn’t melt your heart, nothing will! No loving couple would miss this grand opportunity of visiting the iconic Taj Mahal, an[Read More…]

by 28/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
us supreme court

How Democracy Ends – Not With a Bang But With a Whimper

In this fast-paced century, rife with technological innovation, we’ve grown accustomed to the impermanence of things. Whatever is here now will likely someday vanish, possibly sooner than we imagine. Movies and music that once played on our VCRs and stereos have given way to infinite choices in the cloud. Cash currency is fast becoming a thing of the past. Cars[Read More…]

by 28/02/2020 1 comment World
David Ray Griffin’s The Christian Gospel for Americans: A Systematic Theology

David Ray Griffin’s The Christian Gospel for Americans: A Systematic Theology

A Review   There are very few writers who have done more to try to open the public’s mind to the evil nature of the American empire than David Ray Griffin.  His series of books on the false flag attacks of September 11, 2001 will endure for a long time, and they will one day, when it is safe to do[Read More…]

by 28/02/2020 1 comment Book Review
Blame Rests With Right-Wing For Fomenting Riots In Delhi

Blame Rests With Right-Wing For Fomenting Riots In Delhi

When I say that the right wing is responsible for the anti-Muslim riots happening in Delhi, it means that the right wing, aka the RSS and BJP, its media and its affiliates are entirely responsible for the mess. From failing on the economic front to other policies, the right wing party wants to hide its failures and is not living[Read More…]

by 28/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Defend democracy, Lula calls on citizens

Defend democracy, Lula calls on citizens

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, former President of Brazil, called on the Congress and citizens of Brazil to defend democracy against the calls for a coup by ultra-right-wing ruler Jair Bolsonaro and retired general Augusto Heleno. Bolsonaro has recently sent a message via WhatsApp to his close circle of allies in which he calls for “action” against Congress. Bolsonaro follows[Read More…]

by 27/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
"U.S. Den of Espionage Museum" in Tehran.

A Difficult Peace

Nearly a thousand of us were gathered in Chicago beneath the alarming edifice of Chicago’s “Trump Tower.” Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani had been brutally murdered the day before in Iraq, with several of his associates; and the welcome surprise of Iran’s relatively measured response was yet a few days off.  A region-wide conflagration seemed just on the verge of engulfing[Read More…]

by 27/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Toxic Agriculture and the Gates Foundation

Toxic Agriculture and the Gates Foundation

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 and has $46.8 billion in assets (December 2018). It is the largest charitable foundation in the world and distributes more aid for global health than any government. One of the foundation’s stated goals is to globally enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty. The Gates Foundation is a major funder of[Read More…]

by 27/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Will vandalism, arson, killings stop in India?

Will vandalism, arson, killings stop in India?

 The germs of arson, killings and vandalism  run through blood of Hindutva organizations. There is no denying the fact that the Hindutva outfits got extraordinary power to organize communal violence across India under the nose of Narendra Modi. These powerful Hindutva outfits feels that they want to correct history so whatever they are doing is correct. The act of vandalism[Read More…]

by 27/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Call for Global Action on Communal Violence in New Delhi

Call for Global Action on Communal Violence in New Delhi

This is an urgent call for global action. For the last three days, large violent mobs of right-wing Hindu nationalists have unleashed a spate of violent attacks in Delhi, which have led to at least twenty three deaths recorded so far and injured more than 100. Vehicles and commercial establishments owned by members of the Muslim community have been specifically[Read More…]

by 27/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Delhi: Poison Seeds, Bloody Harvest

Delhi: Poison Seeds, Bloody Harvest

  On Tuesday February 25 morning, even as 35 companies of paramilitary forces were deployed in North-Eastern Delhi and Commissioner of Police Amulya Patnaik claimed that the situation was under control, violence broke out in Maujpur area with shops ransacked and set ablaze, vehicles torched and stone pelting between groups from two communities. As the day passed, violence continued in the[Read More…]

by 27/02/2020 2 comments India
Justice to Tamil of Disappeared, Surrendered And Forcefully Arrested Victims

Justice to Tamil of Disappeared, Surrendered And Forcefully Arrested Victims

For Sri Lanka, after the fallout from the April bombings bred communal violence, endangered minorities and put freedoms in peril. Justice and reparations for the 30 year conflict seem to be increasingly out of reach for the victims, as even the limited but key gains of recent years appeared at risk of rollback given statements by the new government. “For[Read More…]

by 27/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
Not a pretty picture: The contours of a new world order are on your tv screen

Not a pretty picture: The contours of a new world order are on your tv screen

Television news summarizes daily what a new world order shaped by civilisationalists entails. Writer William Gibson’s assertion that “the future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed” is graphically illustrated in pictures of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of desperate Syrians fleeing indiscriminate bombing in Idlib, Syria’s last rebel stronghold, with nowhere to go. It’s also evident[Read More…]

by 27/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Julian Assange, Political Offences and Legal Restraints: Day Three of Extradition Hearings

Julian Assange, Political Offences and Legal Restraints: Day Three of Extradition Hearings

Wednesday, February 26, Woolwich Crown Court.  Today, the focus shifted to the protagonist himself and the nature of the US-UK Extradition Treaty of 2003, a contentious document that shines all too favourably for US citizens. Julian Assange, whose deteriorating condition has been noted for months by psychologists, doctors and UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer, has been making a[Read More…]

by 27/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Beyond Israeli Elections: Israel at the Cusp of a Bleak Era

Beyond Israeli Elections: Israel at the Cusp of a Bleak Era

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, must be channeling the spirit of Houdini as he continues to plot his escape from one of the most convoluted political dilemmas in Israel’s history. It is no secret that Netanyahu’s political behavior is almost entirely shaped by his desire to survive in office for as long as possible in order to avoid possible jail[Read More…]

by 27/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Julian Assange Against the Imperium: Day Two of Extradition Hearings

Julian Assange Against the Imperium: Day Two of Extradition Hearings

The second day of extradition hearings against Julian Assange and by virtue of that, WikiLeaks, saw Mark Summers QC deliver a formidable serve for the defence at Woolwich Crown Court.  “It’s difficult to conceive of a clearer example of an extradition request that boldly and blatantly misstates the facts as they are known to be to the US government.”  The[Read More…]

by 26/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Open letter to President of India 

Open letter to President of India 

 To, Mr. Ramnath Kovind, Hon’ble President of India, New Delhi. Respected Sir, For more than 70 days now, our country has seen massive and sustained protests against the union government’s divisive and dangerous citizenship Amendment Act scheme. This has been a movement which has not only affirmed equal citizenship as a right, but shown the whole world that citizenship is[Read More…]

by 26/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Jabeda Begum

Orwellian Nightmare in India

The sale of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-four, has reportedly surged 10,000 times since a New York property developer was elected to the world’s most powerful office.  It would be interesting to know how the groundbreaking book has fared in India since the man from Gujarat moved to Delhi. For more than the land of the free or the Western[Read More…]

by 26/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Lalan Fakir in Outerspace

Lalan Fakir in Outerspace

I have seen the world recede behind the trees; the world that was for you and me — a vibrant blue world, dotted with green, swirls of ocean and breeze painted by Van Gogh — A Starry Night, and then came a tsunami that wiped it all from site.   A fakir overnight, as Lalan, I sing afloat in space[Read More…]

by 26/02/2020 3 comments Arts/Literature
Assange’s Extradition Hearing Reveals Trump’s War on Free Press Is Targeting WikiLeaks Publisher 

Assange’s Extradition Hearing Reveals Trump’s War on Free Press Is Targeting WikiLeaks Publisher 

On Monday, WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange’s one-week extradition hearing began at Woolwich Crown Court in SouthEast London. The judge heard the opening arguments for the prosecution and defense. The prosecution began, accusing the journalist who exposed the US government’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan of espionage charges that would carry 175 years in jail. The US-based investigative journalist Kevin[Read More…]

by 26/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
 The Paradox of America’s Endless Wars – They Persist Because They Don’t Exist (For Americans)

 The Paradox of America’s Endless Wars – They Persist Because They Don’t Exist (For Americans)

There is no significant anti-war movement in America because there’s no war to protest. Let me explain. In February 2003, millions of people took to the streets around the world to protest America’s march to war against Iraq. That mass movement failed. The administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had a radical plan for reshaping the Middle East and no protesters, no[Read More…]

by 26/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
How we stay blind to the story of power

How we stay blind to the story of power

If one thing drives me to write, especially these blog posts, it is the urgent need for us to start understanding power. Power is the force that shapes almost everything about our lives and our deaths. There is no more important issue. Understanding power and overcoming it through that understanding is the only path to liberation we can take as[Read More…]

by 26/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Democracy: from Athenian Origins to 21st Century America

Democracy: from Athenian Origins to 21st Century America

I will not write much here.  Those who read me often hear enough of my words and have become familiar with my convictions and concerns.  What I am doing instead is putting together a series of quotations from African-American philosopher Cornel West, from his essay Putting on Our Democratic Armor from the book, DEMOCRACY MATTERS (1).  Dr. West committed these[Read More…]

by 26/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
As Delhi burns, its many Neros fiddle and twiddle

As Delhi burns, its many Neros fiddle and twiddle

It is hardly difficult to notice the irony that the two most powerful people in Delhi have presided over, abetted and prolonged some of the worst mass-violence in India – that in Gujarat in 2002. Yet, that was in Gujarat, a slight distance away from the capital, Delhi. It was sort of their fiefdom, their corner of the world, and[Read More…]

by 26/02/2020 1 comment India
You, yes you!

You, yes you!

He’s not my leader the one who is too busy for the people who are dying on the streets, he’s just a bad fox who eats on the dead and lurks in dark to escape to his friends who are murderers! You, yes you! I am fed up of you how you lie, how you kill and then groan in[Read More…]

by 26/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Human rights under assault worldwide: warns UN chief

Human rights under assault worldwide: warns UN chief

“Human rights are under assault,” said Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, as he opened on Monday the UN Human Rights Council’s main annual session in Geneva. “People are being left behind. Fears are growing,” he said, pointing to swelling divisions and political polarization in many countries. A perverse political arithmetic “A perverse political arithmetic has taken hold: divide people to[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Delhi-NCR region remains to be the most polluted region in the World

Delhi-NCR region remains to be the most polluted region in the World

According to the World Air Quality Report 2019, 21 out of the top 30 most polluted cities are located in India New Delhi, February 25: With 90% of the global population breathing unsafe air, air pollution poses not only to be an environmental but a severe human rights issue. The latest data from continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations across[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Why Modi and Sangh Parivar Want to ‘Disremember’ Golwalkar

Why Modi and Sangh Parivar Want to ‘Disremember’ Golwalkar

PM Modi didn’t mention former RSS chief Golwalkar on his recent 114th birth anniversary. The idea is to implement his ‘essence’ in private while not mentioning him in public. The 114th birth anniversary of Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar went unnoticed. Barring a stray article by a second-rung leader of the saffron party in a national daily, none from the top hierarchy deemed it[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Trump is a winner; Modi is a loser !

Trump is a winner; Modi is a loser !

The grand welcome organized by Modi for US President Donald Trump beginning from Gujarat, a home state of Modi, was expected. Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, is an event-manager., is a well known fact.The ordinary citizens of India should not cry over wasting their money on Trump. In the last few years, Modi has already wasted a lot of[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Julian Assange and the Imperium’s Face: Day One of the Extradition Hearings

Julian Assange and the Imperium’s Face: Day One of the Extradition Hearings

If we are to believe it, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, the man behind showing the ugliness of power, is the one responsible for having abused it.  It is a running theme in the US case against this Australian publisher, who has been given the coating of common criminality hiding the obvious point: that the mission is to make journalism on[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 1 comment World
The Disturbing Situation In Delhi

The Disturbing Situation In Delhi

Deeply disturbing scenes of violence in East Delhi are floating since yesterday where over 5 persons have been killed including one policeman of Delhi police in the violence. We dont know whether they were killed in violence or police firing but according to police, section 144 has been imposed in about 10 locations of Eastern Delhi like Mauzpur, Babarpur, Seelampur,[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
During Black History Month, I Know Favorites

During Black History Month, I Know Favorites

I have favorites for this month celebrating Blacks in the USA. There are about ten of them because they are me and I am them. Here is one: “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Roland Barthes on Kashmir

Roland Barthes on Kashmir

From the curious academic debates in contemporary socio-cultural theories, we have learnt that our society is like a meta-text in which diverse territorial or generic mental sets intricately inform the production, consumption, falsification and reproduction of meanings. This whole process is essentially unconscious, for it slowly and silently puts on a seemingly irrefutable ‘naturalness’. In the profoundly elaborate process, spreading[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Big Tech’s Inevitable Reckoning

Big Tech’s Inevitable Reckoning

Though unpopular in many circles, Karl Marx wrote passionately about the inherent contradictions of capitalism. While his arguments were complex, some of the pillars can be simplified to suggest that these contradictions are created by capitalism’s constant need to grow. In different economic circles- much more popular than the Marxist circle — growth is synonymous with what’s good and right.[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
The ‘Healing’ Touch of Nurses

The ‘Healing’ Touch of Nurses

In big hospitals – Government or private – nurses play a crucial part. While doctors look after patients till operation, nurses take care of post-operative trauma and assist in speedy recovery. They have not only to deal with in-patients and comfort them by their constant attendance, but also calm down the anxious helpers who accompany patients and eagerly wait for[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 2 comments World
Sedition for Peace! The Curious Case of Amulya Leona

Sedition for Peace! The Curious Case of Amulya Leona

Recently, at a rally in Freedom Park, Bangalore, Amulya Leona, a young 19 year old girl  was seen shouting Pakistan Zindabad’ (Long Live Pakistan) twice and later alsoHindustan Zindabad’ (Long Live India). She was not allowed to complete her speech after the first sentence. AMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi, who was also sharing the stage rushed to her and shouted, `What[Read More…]

by 25/02/2020 1 comment India
The Trump and Modi Show: Of Tangri Kebabs and Cannibal Cows

The Trump and Modi Show: Of Tangri Kebabs and Cannibal Cows

Co-Written by Madhumita Dutta and Sirisha Naidu Indians love eating their tangri kebabs i.e.  barbequed chicken drumsticks and the Americans are eager to sell them the millions of tons of chicken legs they have piled up in their freezers. The leaders of the two of the biggest so-called democracies are magnanimously obliging both sellers and clients during Donald Trump’s visit[Read More…]

by 24/02/2020 1 comment World
Many Dimensions of Shaheen Bagh Movement in India

Many Dimensions of Shaheen Bagh Movement in India

The protest in Shaheenbagh began on December 16, 2019 against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC), National Population Register (NPR) and against police brutalities. Now, more than seventy days later, it emerged as a non-violent, creative and an inspiring movement led by women – a movement against fascism, a movement of reckoning based on the ideology[Read More…]

by 24/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Democracy is hypocrisy as long as ‘Wall’ of Shame exists in India

Democracy is hypocrisy as long as ‘Wall’ of Shame exists in India

World’s two ‘biggest’ and ‘greatest’ ‘democracies are exhibiting their strength today in the most undemocratic way. Gun trotting policemen and security agencies will cover the entire Ahmadabad today particularly the routes where Donald Trump and Narendra Modi are ‘ road show’. Here, the people cant come at their own but at the whims of the rulers and Trump is expecting[Read More…]

by 24/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
By 2030, 2·3 billion people are projected to live in fragile or conflict­ affected contexts

By 2030, 2·3 billion people are projected to live in fragile or conflict­ affected contexts

A World Health Organization (WHO)-United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)-The Lancet Commission report said: Rising inequalities and environmental crises threaten political stability and risk international conflict over access to resources. By 2030, 2·3 billion people are projected to live in fragile or conflict ­affected contexts. The commission’s report – A future for the world’s children? (www.thelancet.com, published online on February 18, 2020[Read More…]

by 24/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Language and democracy

Language and democracy

Languages, connected to economy including market, trade and commodity, are in conflict and in collaboration with contending class forces. Thus, in general, and not taking into consideration stages society passes, languages are [1] inseparable question of democracy, and, in particular cases, of democratic struggle, and [2] a tool for subjection. The two contradictory positions depend on conflicting classes using it[Read More…]

by 24/02/2020 5 comments Life/Philosophy
The politics of seeing and non-seeing

The politics of seeing and non-seeing

     In the Ring of Gyges, the famed myth framed by Plato, the wearer of the ring may wear it and turn invisible. In the story, Gyges wears the ring to commit unjust acts and because of the invisibility accorded by the ring is then able to thwart any moral consequence. One of the arguments then which Plato wants to[Read More…]

by 24/02/2020 1 comment India
A thinking imperfection we brought with us into this New Age

A thinking imperfection we brought with us into this New Age

Scientists are now warning us that irreparable damage is being done to our planet. Continuing human existence is in question. Yet most of us go about our daily lives with no sense of fear for the future. XXXXX This brings us to the question of our Age: Do we all psychologically neurologically have the ability to develop by means of[Read More…]

by 24/02/2020 1 comment Climate Change
Mixed Returns for the Huawei Bashing Tour

Mixed Returns for the Huawei Bashing Tour

The US imperium is rattled, so much so it’s letting everyone else know about it.   Move over the trade war with its bitchy insistence on redressing imbalances, surpluses and deficits; the next phase of conflict with China is being waged in matters of technology, with Huawei’s 5G prowess featuring prominently.  As the veteran Australian journalist Tony Walker soberly notes, “The[Read More…]

by 24/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Gender equity and human rights are pivotal for advancing progress on SDGs

Gender equity and human rights are pivotal for advancing progress on SDGs

  The Nairobi Statement endorsed to mark 25 years of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD25) gives renewed hope and stronger thrust to gender equity and human rights. Achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights as a part of universal health coverage; zero unmet need for family planning information and services, and universal availability[Read More…]

by 24/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Patriarchy
Slavery at Mount Vernon

Slavery at Mount Vernon

The photograph depicts a replica of a slave cabin in Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate. It is based on an early 20th-century photograph as the original cabin no longer exists. After about two decades, on President’s Day (February 17), I found myself in front of the replica of the slave cabin on the grounds of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate.[Read More…]

by 24/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Why Trump Rejects the Need from Middle Eastern Oil

Why Trump Rejects the Need from Middle Eastern Oil

Oil may not be the only factor driving a reduced US commitment to guaranteeing security in the Middle East, but it certainly is one that weighs heavily in US President Donald Trump’s mind. “Because we have done so well with Energy over the last few years (thank you, Mr. President!), we are a net Energy Exporter, & now the Number[Read More…]

by 23/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
FILE - In this Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011 file photo, Sacramento County inmates watch television at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center, in Elk Grove, Calif.  Counties across California are taking steps to increase jail capacity or found alternatives to incarceration to deal with the increase of offenders who will be their responsibility under a state law that took effect Oct. 1. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

The new informal Jim Crow

Here is Jim Crow when I was a child in Florida. Blacks couldn’t go to white restaurants, motels, gas stations or bathrooms. They had something called The Green Book when traveling in the South of the USA. It showed where they could go. I wish that I were making this information up. Yet I can’t to save my life. It’s[Read More…]

by 23/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
In solidarity with Sharjeel Imam – Over Representation of Muslims in jail in most of Indian States: Here’s the State Wise Data

In solidarity with Sharjeel Imam – Over Representation of Muslims in jail in most of Indian States: Here’s the State Wise Data

In any sensible country anywhere in the world, a person of Sharjeel Imam’s talents would have been an important advisor to the government of the day on subjects ranging from technology to the social sciences. Instead, in India – where sensibility is a long-vanished (or vanquished?) commodity – this brilliant, polyglot, computer scientist engineer turned historian is in prison, charged[Read More…]

by 23/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Socialism by another name?  Aam Admi Party and the case of Bolivarian Venezuela

Socialism by another name?  Aam Admi Party and the case of Bolivarian Venezuela

One can probably sense the cynicism and the scoffs right away, given that the title of this piece seems to make almost a preposterous comparison. But, patience is requested, and some good humour. It is interesting to note that what the AAP has made available to the citizens of Delhi, in terms of subsidized electricity and water, and improved –[Read More…]

by 23/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Why Walls Around Gujarat Model Of Development? | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Why Walls Around Gujarat Model Of Development? | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Assume that Donald Trump is coming to address ‘Namasthe Trump’ meeting in Hyderabad or Vishkhapatnam or Bangaluru or to Chennai or Cochin there would not have been a need for building walls around the slums on the way to Airport or to his hotel or to the stadium where he addresses the meeting. But in Ahamedabad there is such a[Read More…]

by 22/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
John Avery

Collected Essays, Volume V

A new freely-downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a new book, with the title, “Collected Essays, Volume V”. The book contains articles on the serious problems that are facing the world today. It may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Collected-Essays-by-John-Scales-Avery-Part-Five.pdf Other books and articles on global problems can be found on these[Read More…]

by 22/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Book Review
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - FEBRUARY 19: Democratic presidential candidates (L-R) former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA),  and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) react as raise their hands during the Democratic presidential primary debate at Paris Las Vegas on February 19, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Six candidates qualified for the third Democratic presidential primary debate of 2020, which comes just days before the Nevada caucuses on February 22. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Liberal Lamentations in their Diminishing Hopes

Even while the six US Democratic hopefuls were busy in their pursuit of winning the most goodwill of the Nevada public, the Liberal media were busy constructing alternative futures towards containing a modest incursion by the “great unwashed” in their comfy domain where the corporations have an almost exclusive control over those chosen through a mind-numbing array of manipulative processes.[Read More…]

by 22/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Shaheen Bagh is a template for Restoring India’s Unity

Shaheen Bagh is a template for Restoring India’s Unity

The commentaries on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and National Registry of Citizens (NRC) from a large number of learned and distinguished Indians including Nobel laureates, retired judges of India’s Supreme Court and other luminaries have opined that CAA is discriminatory against the minorities and divisive for the nation. The BJP government expected that opposition to CAA will come from[Read More…]

by 22/02/2020 2 comments India
Amidst Protests, Masses are Getting Politicized and Energized

Amidst Protests, Masses are Getting Politicized and Energized

 It is a historic moment for all of us that Jamia is among the first Central University in our country which has now completed its hundred years of an academic journey. This august institution and its stalwarts had vehemently participated in the anti-colonial struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi. And its founding members like Zakir Husain, Mohammad Mujeeb and Maulana Mohammad[Read More…]

by 22/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Shaheen Bagh means we need to strengthen Fight for public space

Shaheen Bagh means we need to strengthen Fight for public space

One aspect ignored regarding the Shaheen Bagh protests on the citizenship issue in Delhi is the issue of denial of public space to people, increasing restraints on acces to existing such spaces.Civil liberties groups urban planners should seriously study, take up these issues.The Supreme court raised questions on February 10 about protests on roads in Delhi . It would be[Read More…]

by 21/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
What about Kashmiri Pundits? Three Decades of Exodus

What about Kashmiri Pundits? Three Decades of Exodus

This January 2020, it is thirty years since the Kashmiri Pundits’ exodus from the Kashmir valley took place. They had suffered grave injustices, violence and humiliation prior to the migration away from the place of their social and cultural roots in Kashmir Valley. The phenomenon of this exodus had been due to the communalization of militancy in Kashmir in the[Read More…]

by 21/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
IMA Writes To Minister On Worsening Air Quality

IMA Writes To Minister On Worsening Air Quality

Indian Medical Association writes to Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, asks to include all non-attainment cities in National Clean Air Programme .IMA has also demanded the ministry to increase the number of monitoring stations across the country New Delhi, 21 February : Indian Medical Association (IMA) has expressed grave concerns on the worsening air quality levels in the country. In a[Read More…]

by 21/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Winter 2019-20 was so far the warmest on record in the contiguous U.S.

Winter 2019-20 was so far the warmest on record in the contiguous U.S.

  January Average Temperature Departures The first two months of meteorological winter (December 2019 – January 2020) were the warmest on record for the contiguous U.S. in data going back to 1895. January 2020 the fifth warmest January on record in all 48 contiguous states. The states saw above- to much-above-average temperatures last month. This was the ninth consecutive January[Read More…]

by 21/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Not Just Communalist: Unpacking India’s New Citizenship Law and its Impact on the Indigenous Northeast

Not Just Communalist: Unpacking India’s New Citizenship Law and its Impact on the Indigenous Northeast

Globally, indigenous peoples’ land and cultural identity has been subjected to increasingly violent pressure in the last fifteen years, either for resources or due to demographic tensions over land.Indigenous land defenders attempting to protect fragile homelands from dispossession for mining, food, and logging projects are being subjected totargeted killings at twice the rate of previous decades. Between 2002 and 2017,[Read More…]

by 21/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Viral Losses: Australian Universities, Coronavirus and Greed

Viral Losses: Australian Universities, Coronavirus and Greed

There are few things more richly deserved than the punishment of a profligate ruler who finds himself fending off a hungry citizenry.  But such matters lie in the realm of government, elections, holding representative office.  Universities, notably in Australia, are oblivious to accountability and have, over several decades, become a booming corporatocracy.  Institutionally, they constitute a white collar criminal class[Read More…]

by 21/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
‘The Donald Trump I know’: Abbas’ UN Speech and the Breakdown of Palestinian Politics

‘The Donald Trump I know’: Abbas’ UN Speech and the Breakdown of Palestinian Politics

A precious moment has been squandered, as Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, had the chance to right a historical wrong, by reinstating Palestinian national priorities at the United Nations Security Council on February 11, through a political discourse that is completely independent from Washington and its allies. For a long time, Abbas has been a hostage to the very language[Read More…]

by 21/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
Why No Retired Generals Oppose America’s Forever Wars

Why No Retired Generals Oppose America’s Forever Wars

There once lived an odd little man — five feet nine inches tall and barely 140 pounds sopping wet — who rocked the lecture circuit and the nation itself. For all but a few activist insiders and scholars, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is now lost to history. Yet more than a century ago, this strange contradiction of a[Read More…]

by 21/02/2020 1 comment Imperialism
Shaheen Bagh movement is an inspiration to understand peaceful democratic protests in India

Shaheen Bagh movement is an inspiration to understand peaceful democratic protests in India

It is always inspiring to hear women at Shaheen Bagh as their spirit and energy still is an envy for all. Most of the time a movement more than 65 days old would get tired as the government or the critics of Shaheen Bagh would have thought but to their disappointment, the unity and fraternity at Shaheen Bagh is more[Read More…]

by 21/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Six months of being hunted, yet not vanquished | Stan Swamy

Six months of being hunted, yet not vanquished | Stan Swamy

The second half of 2019 (July – December) was both a very trying but sobering experience for me. Jharkhand police was after me and I was after the police !  The difference was the police acted illegally and I acted legally. Issue of ‘arrest warrant’ (June), declaration of me an ‘absconder’ (August), raid of my workplace cum residence and confiscation[Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
Is Sharjeel Imam a symptom of bigger political malaise?

Is Sharjeel Imam a symptom of bigger political malaise?

  Let’s agree that,we the people are Indian citizens;however, some are less than others. We all share some form of social solidarity with respect to our socio-cultural markers. These identities are more pronounced among the politically inferiorized identities and every party tries to co-opt these groups to win election.  With the decline of Congress and politicization of these identities, there[Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 1 comment India
Toxic Air: Pollution from fossil fuels costs 5.4% of India’s GDP annually

Toxic Air: Pollution from fossil fuels costs 5.4% of India’s GDP annually

(Coal fired power plants in India have repeatedly missed the emission deadline set by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change) For the first time, Greenpeace Southeast Asia and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) have quantified the global cost of air pollution from fossil fuels, finding that it has reached an estimated US$8[Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
River in flood-ravaged UK town reaches highest level in 200 years following Storm Dennis

River in flood-ravaged UK town reaches highest level in 200 years following Storm Dennis

The River Wye in Hereford has reached its highest level in at least 200 years in the wake of Storm Dennis lashing the area with torrential rain. The River Taff in Pontypridd reached its highest level in more than 40 years and the River Usk reached the highest level since 1979. Britain will be lashed by more heavy rain this[Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
An Open Letter To Noam Chomsky ON CAA, NPR, NRC

An Open Letter To Noam Chomsky ON CAA, NPR, NRC

Co-Written by Angshuman Choudhury & Suraj Gogoi Dear Professor Chomsky, Hope you are well. Please allow us to introduce ourselves. We are two young academics from the Northeast Indian state of Assam. [Angshuman is a researcher at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (New Delhi) while Suraj is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the National University of Singapore.][Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Pardoning Julian Assange: Donald Trump, WikiLeaks and the DNC

Pardoning Julian Assange: Donald Trump, WikiLeaks and the DNC

The central pillar to Democratic paranoia and vengefulness regarding the loss of Hillary Clinton in 2016 was the link between Russian hacking, the servers of the Democratic National Committee and the release of emails via WikiLeaks.  Over time, that account has become a matter of hagiography, an article of faith, with grave conclusions: WikiLeaks and Russia elected Donald Trump. The[Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Painting A True Christ: A Review of Terrence Malick’s Film “A Hidden Life”

Painting A True Christ: A Review of Terrence Malick’s Film “A Hidden Life”

There’s an early scene in Terrence Malick’s masterful new film – what I would call a moving painting – where the central character Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant farmer from an isolated small mountainous village who refuses to take an oath to Hitler and fight in the German army, is talking to an older man who is restoring paintings in[Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
Is it Time for a New Labor Center in the United States?

Is it Time for a New Labor Center in the United States?

The failures of the labor movement in the US are legion over the past 40 years.  It’s not needed to repeat the failures nor the efforts to revitalize the labor movement, most of the latter which have been unsuccessful to date.  (For the best compilation of writings on these and related issues, while not complete, please see the “Contemporary Labor Issues” bibliography,[Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
What Would You Do If?

What Would You Do If?

Fred: OK. So you’re a pacifist. What would you do if someone were, say, attacking your grandmother? Joan: Attacking my poor old grandmother? Fred: Yeah, you’re in a room with your grandmother and there’s a guy about to attack her and you’re standing there. What would you do? Joan: I’d yell, “Three cheers for Grandma!” and leave the room.”  Fred: No,[Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Educating Constitutional Morality

Educating Constitutional Morality

The Liberating potential of education has been identified by many social reformers like Jyotirao Phule, Periyar and Ambedkar while confronting the social evils and its subsequent discrimination. Similarly Paulo Freire in his classical book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” has detailed the significance of Conscientizacao, which means learning to perceive social, political and economic contradictions, and to take action against oppressive[Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Prof.C Kaseem and State Repression in Telangana

Prof.C Kaseem and State Repression in Telangana

” If filling my pen with the tears of Telangana people is treason, then I am prepared for such treason.” – Dr. C Kaseem Crackdown on intellectuals and rights activists, fake encounters by the police are very usual in the state of Telangana. The current anti-people Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) led government is following the age old textbook rules of[Read More…]

by 20/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
Mumbai Bagh In Times of Islamophobia

Mumbai Bagh In Times of Islamophobia

The blatantly communal remarks of a taxi driver at Byculla was an acrid reminder of just how far the politics of hate have gone, with the nation’s top leaders making it perfectly legitimate for others to say the most obnoxious things. Choosing to stop and get out of the taxi, I opted for a bus that crawled along Nagpada until[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
India: Letter to Finance Minister on proposed amendments in IT Act

India: Letter to Finance Minister on proposed amendments in IT Act

The Finance Minister Ministry of Finance Government of India New Delhi 110001 Dear Nirmala Sitharaman, I am writing this letter to seek an appointment to submit a representation on some of the clauses of the Finance Bill, 2020 which will adversely affect the not-for-profit sector and as a result weaken the work on poverty alleviation and other charitable causes. Firstly[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
The song of Shaheen Bagh

The song of Shaheen Bagh

Shaheen Bagh is untouched by the winter chill there is a fire burning within! Shaheen Bagh replies speeding bullets with flowers ‘why don’t we love each other?’ Shaheen Bagh is singing ‘ we will see… We will see that promised day’ Shaheen Bagh Is reading out a piece of paper, their inheritance- ‘Justice Freedom! Equality!’ Shaheen Bagh is singing a[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 1 comment Arts/Literature
Conservative Islamic views are gaining ground in secular Bangladesh and curbing freedom of expression

Conservative Islamic views are gaining ground in secular Bangladesh and curbing freedom of expression

Bangladesh has seen an increase in terrorist activity in recent years, including attacks on foreigners, activists and religious minorities. Perpetrators of these attacks have included people from privileged backgrounds. News reports indicate they were all motivated by the idea that Islam is under attack by secularists and must be defended. This is significant in a country that was founded in[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled South Asia
Discussion on dealing with adversity

Discussion on dealing with adversity

  I wrote to a friend: I want to tell you about two of my fights that infect my bad dreams. One involves a heritage apple farm in my neighborhood. On the plus side Boyleston botanical hill took slips from the trees to keep the genetics going. On the negative side, the farm owner, after the old guys who’d owned[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Indian farmers and fishermen to challenge World Bank group immunity ruling

Indian farmers and fishermen to challenge World Bank group immunity ruling

WASHINGTON – – A fishing and farming community in Gujarat, India will challenge a ruling from a federal judge in the District of Columbia that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – part of the World Bank Group – is immune from being sued for damages inflicted by a coal-fired power plant that it negligently funded. EarthRights International represents the community,[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
“Leave Our Bloke Alone”: A Little Mission for Julian Assange

“Leave Our Bloke Alone”: A Little Mission for Julian Assange

“I think that now it is time that the government I am a part of needs to be standing up and saying to both the UK and the US: ‘enough is enough, leave our bloke alone and let him come home.’” George Christensen, Australian conservative MP, Sydney Morning Herald, Feb 19, 2020 An odd crew and perhaps the sort Julian[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
UN list of firms aiding Israel’s settlements was dead on arrival

UN list of firms aiding Israel’s settlements was dead on arrival

Nazareth: After lengthy delays, the United Nations finally published a database last week of businesses that have been profiting from Israel’s illegal settlement activity in the West Bank. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, announced that 112 major companies had been identified as operating in Israeli settlements in ways that violate human rights. Aside from major Israeli[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
Apocalypse Now! Insects, Pesticide and a Public Health Crisis  

Apocalypse Now! Insects, Pesticide and a Public Health Crisis  

In 2017, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver, and UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics, Baskut Tuncak, produced a report that called for a comprehensive new global treaty to regulate and phase out the use of dangerous pesticides in farming and move towards sustainable agricultural practices. In addition to the devastating impacts on human health, the two[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Canada’s colonial settler policies alive and well

Canada’s colonial settler policies alive and well

There is a lot of obfuscation and sloganeering about the Canada wide protests in support of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation of British Columbia and their resistance to corporate and governmental greed in pushing a natural gas pipeline through their traditional territory. Last night (Monday, February 17, 2020) a CBC reporter cited – and probably paraphrased closely – Prime Minister Justin[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
 “The Right to Do Whatever I Want as President”

 “The Right to Do Whatever I Want as President”

On February 5th, the Senate voted to acquit President Donald J. Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. In other words, Trump’s pre-election boast that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters” proved something more than high-flown hyperbole. (To be fair, he did lose one Republican “voter” in the Senate[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Dark Phase!!

Dark Phase!!

Far away,secluded in an utter isolation, She used to count the yellow lights, being numbed, Sometimes, few of her owns came to visit her, but they never lookedback whie leaving, Again,an utter silence left behind,devoured her existence in quite dark…! Broken soul,weird thoughts,no way to be released,she wanted still to live a life, Every morning,with some needles and nerves,she painfully[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
ISIS local HQ in Idlib province after being liberated by Syrian Army

Could The Latest Outburst Of Ankara’s Temper Lead To Escalation In Syria?

 Text and Photos: Andre Vltchek So far Turkey, militarily the second mightiest NATO country, has been able to get away with virtually anything it has chosen to brew in the Middle East. The reason why, is simple: to confront Turkey’s bullying and expansionism militarily would be like confronting the United States or Israel; thousands of innocent people would die as[Read More…]

by 19/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
The Lancet publishes letter from doctors: “End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange”

The Lancet publishes letter from doctors: “End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange”

This week’s edition of the Lancet—the world’s pre-eminent peer reviewed medical journal—carries a letter from 117 medical doctors in 18 countries, renewing their call for urgent action to save the life of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. Their letter appears less than one week before the start of the US extradition hearing in London that may decide Assange’s fate. The doctors’ two-page letter appears[Read More…]

by 18/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Julian Assange Must Be Freed, Not Betrayed

Julian Assange Must Be Freed, Not Betrayed

On Saturday, there will be a march from Australia House in London to Parliament Square, the centre of British democracy. People will carry pictures of the Australian publisher and journalist Julian Assange who, on 24 February, faces a court that will decide whether or not he is to be extradited to the United States and a living death. I know[Read More…]

by 18/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Mississippi Pearl River’s third-highest crest on record causes flooding in Jackson

Mississippi Pearl River’s third-highest crest on record causes flooding in Jackson

The Pearl River in Jackson, Mississippi, reached its third-highest crest on record as flooding impacted homes and businesses. Hundreds of residents have fled Jackson ahead of potentially historic flooding of the Pearl River. Hundreds of homes have been damaged by the flood. The number may increase to at least 1,000 said Malary White with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. After[Read More…]

by 18/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
NOAA revealed Thursday that July 2019 was the hottest month on record since the U.S. government began recording temperature date in the lat 19th century. (Photo: Lukas Schulze/Getty Images)

Methane Leakage Makes Australia A World Leading Per Capita Greenhouse Gas Polluter

Methane (CH4) is 85% of natural gas, leaks, and has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) 105 times that of the same mass of carbon dioxide (CO2)  on a 20 year time frame with aerosol impacts included. Such considerations reveal that Australia with 0.33 % of the world population has revised annual Domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are 2.5% of[Read More…]

by 18/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Martyr vs the Victim: Revisiting Nellie on its anniversary

Martyr vs the Victim: Revisiting Nellie on its anniversary

There is a difference between a victim and a martyr. My effort in this piece is to relocate the victim in contemporary Assam and critique the amnesia built around the victim. What is a victim? A victim is someone who is allows us to identify the experiences of evil. Evil, writes historian Wendy Doniger, is not what we do. In[Read More…]

by 18/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
The Perpetual War Scam

The Perpetual War Scam

Years ago the late great historian and author Gore Vidal came up with that phrase ‘Perpetual War’. He knew, that even back to the early days of our republic, we are a nation predicated on Perpetual War. Whether it be war on Native Americans ( who were here way before the Mayflower landed), or war on different people of color[Read More…]

by 18/02/2020 2 comments Imperialism
Labeling, an awful occurrence

Labeling, an awful occurrence

I was taught in teacher training classes never to label children. It can usually only cause damage. I didn’t need to learn that message. Often it is a form of bullying and abuse that I had already seen as a child. Tina Tonkel a classmate of mine was repeatedly shunned and ridiculed at school by her peers. Indeed she had[Read More…]

by 18/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
CCTV Footage Exposes Police Brutality in Jamia Millia Islamia University

CCTV Footage Exposes Police Brutality in Jamia Millia Islamia University

Two months after the  police brutality at Jamia Millia Islamia, a new video has emerged showing paramilitary and police personnel beating up students in the library on December 15. The 48-second video, which appears to be CCTV footage, shows some seven to eight paramilitary and police personnel entering the Old Reading Hall and beating up students with batons. The paramilitary[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Pakistan puts press freedom at the core of struggle for new world order

Pakistan puts press freedom at the core of struggle for new world order

Sweeping new regulations restricting social media in Pakistan put freedom of expression and the media at the heart of the struggle to counter both civilizationalist and authoritarian aspects of an emerging new world order. The regulations, adopted without public debate, position US social media companies like Facebook and Twitter at the forefront of the struggle and raise the spectre of[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 1 comment Human Rights
Debate centering army in Pakistan politics

Debate centering army in Pakistan politics

Old debate centering army in Pakistan politics has reemerged following remarks by the country’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. A report in Pakistan’s leading daily The Dawn said: “Opposition parties have taken exception to the reported remarks of Prime Minister Imran Khan that the army knows who is corrupt in the country, terming the statement ‘irresponsible’.” The report by Amir Wasim[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 Comments are Disabled South Asia
Supreme Follies By The Supreme Court Of India – Judiciary In  A Morass

Supreme Follies By The Supreme Court Of India – Judiciary In  A Morass

Death of an infant at the Shaheen Bagh protest site, Delhi has been taken ‘note’ of by the Supreme Court of India. The Court has taken up the matter with the cause title of the case (initiated suo motu) being: “In re To Stop Involvement Of Children And Infants In Demonstrations And Agitations In View Of Death Of An Infant[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Ripe Time For Tamil Voters To Elect Young And Committed Leaders To The Causes Of The Tamils

Ripe Time For Tamil Voters To Elect Young And Committed Leaders To The Causes Of The Tamils

It is election year for Sri Lanka. A general election has to be held before August 5th 2020 for a new Government to rule the polarized and divided country of majority Sinhalese and minorities with Tamils and Sinhalese politically pitted against each other for the last 72 years. This election is unique and historical as the President Gotabaya and his[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 Comments are Disabled South Asia
Mistrial Is Another Blow To US Coup In Venezuela

Mistrial Is Another Blow To US Coup In Venezuela

Co-Written by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers Last week, we along with Adrienne Pine and David Paul were unsuccessfully prosecuted by the Trump administration for our protection of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC from April 10 to May 16, 2019.  The jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision and so we remain innocent of the charge of interfering[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 1 comment World
Corporate Occupations: The UN Business “Black List” and Israel’s Settlements

Corporate Occupations: The UN Business “Black List” and Israel’s Settlements

Mikhail Bakunin, in that charming anarchist tradition, regarded the state as an evil to be done away with.  Such collective formations were criminal, oppressive, eviscerating to the individual.  The corporation might be regarded as a similar collective, adopting and aping elements of the state with, in some cases, greater latitude to achieve its object.  At times, they collude with states[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Afghan National army (ANA) soldiers line up during military training in  Badakhshan province, Afghanistan, on May 8, 2016 (Photo by Mohammad Sharif Shayeq/NurPhoto) *** Please Use Credit from Credit Field ***

Afghan troops say Taliban are brothers and war is “not really our fight.”

The world is waiting anxiously to see whether the U.S. and Afghan governments and the Taliban will agree to a one-week truce that could set the stage for a “permanent and comprehensive” ceasefire and a withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign occupation forces from Afghanistan. Could the talks be for real this time, or will they turn out to be just another smokescreen for[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
The Bonbibi deity

Nature, Bonbibi, American cetologist in the Sundarbans

To find answers about how to define the idea of nature, French anthropologist Philippe Descola went to the depths of the Amazon to find the Achuars, an indigenous tribe of the Ecuadorian and Peruvian descent. He was interested in finding why they lived remote from others, isolated in their respective groups, under the domination of nature. In the process, he[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Bad, bad banks — simply terrible

Bad, bad banks — simply terrible

The banking industry is a giant racket to make money. Here is my experience of the wrong. I had no credit rating at all. So I went off to Bank of Boston (which became Bank of America). With me was all of my verifiable paperwork that I had with me, I proved that I had 120 to 130 thousands of[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 1 comment World
Vibrant ‘Education System’ for doing Social Science in India  

Vibrant ‘Education System’ for doing Social Science in India  

It is a historical moment to remind us that Jamia Millia Islamia, is a ‘Lusty Child’ of the Non-Cooperation and the Khilafat movements (which were launched under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and supported by Jamia’s stalwarts to fight against the colonial rule) has now completed its 100 years in 2020. To celebrate 100 years of Jamia, several programmes, seminars[Read More…]

by 17/02/2020 1 comment India
Climate Crisis Could Cause a Third of Plant and Animal Species to Disappear Within 50 Years

Climate Crisis Could Cause a Third of Plant and Animal Species to Disappear Within 50 Years

The human-caused climate crisis could cause the extinction of 30% of the world’s plant and animal species by 2070, even accounting for species’ abilities to disperse and shift their niches to tolerate hotter temperatures, according to a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. University of Arizona researchers Cristian Román-Palacios and John J. Wiens analyzed data on 538[Read More…]

by 16/02/2020 2 comments Climate Change
The Lost Chinar!

The Lost Chinar!

I watch my brothers crying, begging to the nation for justice, The same pain,some sane voices to rebel against their bloody wounds, It’s the Freedom,who is chained in rules..!! Free birds got locked in a vicious cage, They’re afraid ,they tremble in the souns of bullet, A silencer is put towards their home, It’s the Freedom,which is chained in rules..!![Read More…]

by 16/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Intelligence Spats: Australia, Britain and Huawei

Intelligence Spats: Australia, Britain and Huawei

A note of fraternal tension has been registered between the United Kingdom and Australia.  It began with Britain’s decision to permit China’s technology giant Huawei a role in the construction of the country’s 5G network.  While the decision is qualified to non-core functions, as UK officials term it, the irritations to the United States and, it follows, Australia, have been[Read More…]

by 16/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
What “That’s Not Realistic” Really Means: Bernie Sanders, Social Democracy, and Capitalist Apologetics

What “That’s Not Realistic” Really Means: Bernie Sanders, Social Democracy, and Capitalist Apologetics

When discussing politics, or listening to pundits in the mainstream media in the run up to the 2020 presidential election, you’ve probably heard a common refrain: certain policies are “not realistic.” It’s similar to the close-minded remark that certain politicians, such as Bernie Sanders, have issues regarding their “electability”. What are these elites and people who continually parrot these media[Read More…]

by 16/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Tithing And Religions

Tithing And Religions

I have nothing against any religious views unless they face off against my values. Then watch me fly at the wrong that I see. After all, how could I take away a religious view that someone believes that brings comfort and joy? How wrong would be that? So this Christian lady, who I met in a grocery store, told me[Read More…]

by 16/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
AAP’s Success belongs to Shaheen Bagh

AAP’s Success belongs to Shaheen Bagh

If anyone truly deserves the credit for Kerjiwal’s extraordinary victory, it is the women of Shaheen Bagh So the aam aadmi’s ‘jhadu’ (broom) has swept away the toxic rubbish that the BJP had flooded the national capital of Delhi with. The credit for the spectacular performance by Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party is being attributed to his brand of development politics[Read More…]

by 16/02/2020 1 comment India
Union Budget 2020-21: Figuring out its Politics and Economics

Union Budget 2020-21: Figuring out its Politics and Economics

The Union Budget has two goals. First, to tackle the current problems plaguing the economy which may be a continuing one or one that has cropped up in the year in which the Budget is drafted. The second goal of a Budget is to try to fulfill the vision that the government puts out. This again could be pertaining to[Read More…]

by 16/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Ambedkar And Martin Luther King: The Giant Epoch Makers | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Ambedkar And Martin Luther King: The Giant Epoch Makers | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

The Ambedkar-King Study Circle of the United States of America by asking me to give a keynote on the occasion of its Annual Conference 2019, gave me a great opportunity to compare the life and work of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Martin Luther King Jr. This gives me an opportunity, particularly, to examine their role in expanding the spiritual democratic[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
I Am A ‘Love Jihadi’ – An Open Letter to Cardinal George Alencherry of Syro Malabar Church of Kerala

I Am A ‘Love Jihadi’ – An Open Letter to Cardinal George Alencherry of Syro Malabar Church of Kerala

Sir. I belong to the most ancient school of philosophical thought in India called Charvakas. The Charvakas existed during the time Upanishads in India, much before Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Jews, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism and other religions including Marxism emerged in India. For a person like me, I do not find God as an enemy, unlike many atheists and mechanical rationalists.[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 1 comment India
It is all about the corporations

It is all about the corporations

Watching Mike Papantonio on the weekly show “America’s Lawyer” is an antidote to the narcotic called “corporate advertising.”  Think of each installment as a new chapter in the book entitled “How Giant Corporations Screw You.” Listening to the corporate ads that envelope us, you would think that this is the best of all possible worlds, and all your problems will[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Amazon Onslaught

Amazon Onslaught

This month Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro proposed a new bill promoting mining, expanded agriculture, and energy production on indigenous lands in the Amazon. Accordingly, private developers as well as private hedge funds will occupy and develop land that’s been home to indigenous people for thousands of years. Meantime during Bolsonaro’s first full year in office, deforestation increased by 85%. More[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Traditional Indigenous And White Man’s Conflicting Rules Of Law: A Coming To Terms That Hasn’t Been Resolved Since First Contact

Traditional Indigenous And White Man’s Conflicting Rules Of Law: A Coming To Terms That Hasn’t Been Resolved Since First Contact

The controversy now erupting throughout Canada over the issue of the construction of the Coastal Oil/Gas Pipeline & TransMountain Oil Pipeline is an old one that once again reveals a fundamental unresolved impasse that has existed since first contact in the New World between the opposing philosophies and rules of law of the New World’s traditional indigenous peoples and all[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
A bold step forward in Mexico City for international socialist regroupment

A bold step forward in Mexico City for international socialist regroupment

Participants in the Partido Obrero Socialista (POS) Conference that preceded the Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR) Meeting in Mexico City. PHOTO: Courtesy POS In December, Bob Price and I traveled to Mexico City with Nancy Kato to represent the U.S. and Australian sections of Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) in a series of formal and informal[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Dying to work at Amazon

Dying to work at Amazon

“I’m still too young to feel like I’m 90 years old,” Candace Dixon told the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). Dixon lost her job when two month’s work at Amazon’s new “fulfillment center” in Eastvale, California, left her permanently disabled, with bulging discs, a back sprain, joint inflammation and chronic pain. Unable to work, she worries about losing her home.[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 1 comment World
Defending political freedoms: Incidents in Israel and Scandinavia raise alarm bells

Defending political freedoms: Incidents in Israel and Scandinavia raise alarm bells

Incidents this week in Israel and Scandinavia ring alarm bells. They highlight how the rise of civilizationalist leaders in democracies empower anti-liberal and anti-democratic forces. They also illustrate the contradictory choices made by on the one hand an institution that stands for academic freedom and freedom of expression and on the other a commercial entity whose business is pre-empted on[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Buddhist Leader Calls for Nuclear Weapons Free Security

Buddhist Leader Calls for Nuclear Weapons Free Security

Photo: SGI president Daisaku Ikeda. Credit: Seikyo Shimbun BERLIN | TOKYO (IDN) – An eminent Buddhist philosopher and nuclear disarmament advocate has tabled four critical initiatives to “contribute to the creation of a sustainable global society where all can live with dignity and a sense of security”. The initiatives cover four major areas: building support for the Treaty on the Prohibition[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Role of Public Intellectuals in Civil Society Protest

Role of Public Intellectuals in Civil Society Protest

Attack on public intellectuals is no longer limited to any specific group as a state response to protests against the number of government policies. Indian political scene witnessed several protests on many issues beginning from demonetization, Rohit Vemula’s suicide at HCU and Una agitation in Gujarat and attacks on JNU students. However, it has taken an unprecedented rise on the[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 1 comment India
Perceived Roles Of Hinduism And Islam Reversed

Perceived Roles Of Hinduism And Islam Reversed

On January 26, Republic Day, 2020, while protests simmered against Citizenship Amendment Act and National Regiser of citizens throughout India, a dozen North American cities also witnessed historic protests. Indian Embassies have been witness to protests in the past. But this time it was different. In Washington D.C., 800 Indian Americans, many of whom had driven hours from neighbouring states,[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
A take on Pro-CAA gang

A take on Pro-CAA gang

Those supporting the CAA have the following questions against anti-CAA protestors? · We do not understand why they are protesting? CAA only talks of giving citizenship and not taking away citizenship. Then why the protests? The issue is not whether it takes away citizenship through CAA alone. True it does not talk of the same. But the potential that it[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Politicians won’t save us

Politicians won’t save us

Monobina Gupta is right, Kejriwal shouldn’t be expected to fight an ideological battle. In fact, no electoral politician should be expected to fight ideological battles—at least not overtly and definitely not within a few months before the elections. Electoral politics is the winning stroke of an ideological war, not a space for fighting ideological battles. Electoral politics is the fruit[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Humanity Means Being Humane

Humanity Means Being Humane

Humanity means *“the quality of being humane, benevolent”, it also meansbeing kind, compassionate, understanding, sympathetic, empathetic, gentle and generous. But weseem to have forgotten what humanity really means. To us, nowadays, humanity only means that we are human i.e. bipedal primate mammals. Not only that, we ridicule those do have humane character traits and consider them impractical misfits. We think they[Read More…]

by 15/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
An amoral foreign policy

An amoral foreign policy

A responsible voice from the US foreign affairs establishment now tells: US foreign policy is amoral. Ms. Marie Yovanovitch, former US ambassador to Ukraine, has made the observation. She was speaking on February 12, 2020 at Georgetown University on receiving an award of excellence in diplomacy from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. The 33-year diplomatic veteran has worked[Read More…]

by 14/02/2020 1 comment World
Modern Childhood’s Shortage of Honest Inspiring Adults

Modern Childhood’s Shortage of Honest Inspiring Adults

Most would agree that happy, healthy, bright children are an ideal goal and a wonderful outcome, but kids also need genuinely good and sensible adult examples and inspiration and instruction. Outstanding adult mentors ought to be commonplace, prolific. Such is not the case now in the so-called ‘western world’. Integrity has been marginalized, and a mad matrix based on deception[Read More…]

by 14/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
January 2020 was the warmest January on record for the Earth

January 2020 was the warmest January on record for the Earth

Last January was the hottest January on record over the world’s land and ocean surfaces, with average temperatures exceeding anything in the 141 years of data held by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The record temperatures in January follow an exceptionally warm 2019, which has been ranked as the second hottest year for the planet’s surface since[Read More…]

The Philippines Are Choosing New Allies – Asia Is Watching

The Philippines Are Choosing New Allies – Asia Is Watching

Now what? President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines is outraged. He wants an end to the U.S. military presence in his country. He wants to curb all cooperation with the U.S. armed forces. He hits hard, talks big. And his people seem to be behind him, no matter what – his popularity rating is high and rising, now around 87%,[Read More…]

by 14/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Can the World’s Second Superpower Rise From the Ashes of Twenty Years of War?

Can the World’s Second Superpower Rise From the Ashes of Twenty Years of War?

Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies February 15 marks the day, 17 years ago, when global demonstrations against the pending Iraq invasion were so massive that the New York Times called world public opinion “the second superpower.” But the U.S. ignored it and invaded Iraq anyway. So what has become of the momentous hopes of that day? The[Read More…]

by 14/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
War Addicts, Inc.

War Addicts, Inc.

My first question is simple enough: After 18-plus years of our forever wars, where are all the questions? Almost two decades of failing American wars across a startlingly large part of the planet and I’d like to know, for instance, who’s been fired for them? Who’s been impeached? Who’s even paying attention? I mean, if another great power had been[Read More…]

by 14/02/2020 1 comment Imperialism
The Steal of the Century

The Steal of the Century

Much has been said of the proposed “Steal of the Century,” rigged by the United States Executive Department to advance powerful Israel and silence the powerless Palestinians. Touted as a fresh approach to Middle East Peace by Israeli Representative to the UN, Danny Danon, who claims, “That’s what makes it good,” the fresh plan is a stale and obvious continuation[Read More…]

by 14/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
Breaking with Washington: Arabs and Muslims Must Take a United Stance for Palestine

Breaking with Washington: Arabs and Muslims Must Take a United Stance for Palestine

A negotiated solution to the ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’, at least the way envisaged by successive US administrations, has failed. Now, Palestinians and their allies would have to explore a whole new path of liberation that does not go through Washington. It is easy to place all the blame on the current US administration, setting apart dodgy characters such as the President’s[Read More…]

by 14/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
Fashion Fetishism, Surgical Masks and Coronavirus

Fashion Fetishism, Surgical Masks and Coronavirus

Entering Singapore’s Changi Airport gives the visitor a glimpse of a mask fetish.  Security guards wear it.  As do the nurses and the various personnel who man cameras like anti-aircraft batteries, noting the approaching passenger in transit with due suspicion.  The passenger, in turn, wishes to avoid showing anything that might be construed as a suspect symptom.  Whatever you do,[Read More…]

by 14/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Objectifying. Others

Objectifying. Others

Others are often means to making an income or vast wealth for oneself. With the way that the economy is set up, it is the norm. Here are a few examples. They should exemplify the condition. I injured my knees and other parts of my body when saving another person’s life. That action is a  no-brainer for me. If I[Read More…]

by 14/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Uncategorized
Concentration of CO2 Hits Record High of 416 ppm

Concentration of CO2 Hits Record High of 416 ppm

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record high Monday, a reading from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that elicited fresh calls from climate activists and scientists for the international community to end planet-heating emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation. According to NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory, an atmospheric baseline station in Hawaii, the daily average of CO2 levels[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 1 comment Climate Change
U.S. troops clash with villagers in Syria, teenager killed

U.S. troops clash with villagers in Syria, teenager killed

Media reports said: A Syrian was killed and another was wounded when villagers attacked U.S. troops and tried to block their way as their convoy drove through an army checkpoint in northeastern Syria. The incident prompted a rare clash. Another report said: A Syrian teenager was killed while another man was injured during the altercation between U.S. troops and locals.[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
The Philippines scrap security agreement with U.S.

The Philippines scrap security agreement with U.S.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has terminated the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the U.S. The Philippines announced its decision Tuesday – a move the U.S. embassy in the Philippines called a “serious step” – touching off a six-month countdown to the end of the deal. Duterte’s disdain for the Philippines’ close ties with the U.S. is well-known, He sees[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Even with Corbyn gone, antisemitism threats will keep destroying the UK Labour party

Even with Corbyn gone, antisemitism threats will keep destroying the UK Labour party

Nazareth: If there is one issue that denotes the terminal decline of Labour as a force for change – desperately needed social, economic and environmental change – it is not Brexit. It is the constant furore over an “antisemitism crisis” supposedly plaguing the party for the past five years. The imminent departure of Jeremy Corbyn as leader will not end[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Western Anti-Chinese Propaganda Exaggerates Coronavirus Danger, Creates Panic

Western Anti-Chinese Propaganda Exaggerates Coronavirus Danger, Creates Panic

Now it is becoming obvious who China’s friends are, and who her enemies are. In the West, many nations and individuals are celebrating the short-term difficulties that the Chinese nation is facing, pouring salt into the wound, while giving birth to anti-Chinese sentiments. Even the WHO (World Health Organization) has been warning not to impose travel bans against the countries[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
America United: The Politics of the Coronavirus

America United: The Politics of the Coronavirus

 The upcoming 2020 presidential elections, in their current standing, are more of a battle for the democrats.Donald Trump seems, at least for the time being, to be empowered by the impeachment acquittal and by a strong performance on the economy. As China is a part of the political debate, Trump has already built up his resume in the ‘civilised combat’[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Book Review: The Age of Illusions – How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory

Book Review: The Age of Illusions – How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory

The Age of Illusions – How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory. Andrew J. Bacevich. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, NewYork, 2020. Another in his series of remarkable books, Andrew J.Bacevich has written an interesting, coherent, and timely work, The Age of Illusion. In a clear fashion it describes how Donald J. Trump is not the cause of current U.S.[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Book Review
Are Adivasis Hindus? Forthcoming Census and RSS campaign | Ram Puniyani

Are Adivasis Hindus? Forthcoming Census and RSS campaign | Ram Puniyani

Currently massive protests are going on against NPR, NCR and CAA. At the same time we are going to begin the process of decadal census in 2021. Already RSS is active in promoting NPR, NCR and CAA. At the same time RSS wants that Adivasis should register themselves as Hindus rather than ticking the column of ‘Others’. As per their[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Are OBCs Not Eligible To Be On Sri Ram Temple Trust? | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Are OBCs Not Eligible To Be On Sri Ram Temple Trust? | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

After the Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Ram temple trust the former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, who over saw the Babri Msjid  destruction, Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharati, who actively participated in that act, said that the Other Backward Classes (Shudra/ OBCs) are as much Ram Bhakts as Dalits are and demanded for inclusion of an OBC member[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
The Art of Protests and Foot-marking the Politics of Silence

The Art of Protests and Foot-marking the Politics of Silence

While the art of protest is curating its own shows in the streets across the country, an art show titled ‘Rustic Footmarks’, recently held in Kochi has raised a question-mark over uncritically endorsing the generic term ‘Indianness’ and the autonomy of art The first act is the speech of silence enacted on the upfront. An art show has recently held[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Challenges in maintaining the quality of milk

Challenges in maintaining the quality of milk

Introduction Milk may be considered as a complete food by the virtue of its nutritional properties. But, it’s hard to believe that most of the raw milk and various milk products are not up to quality parameters as per many reports. Furthermore, recently World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that in India adulteration is prevailing in milk and milk products[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 1 comment India
Free thinking and free thinkers

Free thinking and free thinkers

There is a strange co-relation between last week and this week.Last Saturday, i.e., 8th of February was the birthday of Dr Zakir Husain, the third President of India and co-founder of Jamia Millia Islamia who also served as its vice-chancellor.The coming Saturday, i.e., 15th of the month is the completion of two months of Jamia Millia Islamia’s brutal attack which[Read More…]

by 13/02/2020 1 comment India
Palestine: Still Chasing The Mirage

Palestine: Still Chasing The Mirage

In all my years on this earth I have never had any doubt that we Palestinians will one day get our rights recognised and our land liberated and that we will, at last, have the right to return home. When I say, ‘we the Palestinians’ I do not refer to officialdom. I do not refer to The Palestinian Authority, to[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 1 comment Palestine
Tribalism

Tribalism

Tribalism is rampant on both the micro and macro scale. Whether in contentious actions by individuals or entire nations, it kicks into play as a survival mechanism by biological evolutionary roots. This because through it, people ensure that their own group gets the power, territory and goods. So of course there is going to be racism, casteism, hatred of people[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Erdogan battles on multiple fronts in risky regional power bid

Erdogan battles on multiple fronts in risky regional power bid

The optics seem evident: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is at odds with just about everybody. Mr. Erdogan is on opposite sides of Russia in Syria, with Turkish and Syrian troops poised for an all-out fight in the north of the war-torn country, as well as in Libya and didn’t do himself any favours by coming out swinging against his[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
What needs to be learnt from Delhi elections Result

What needs to be learnt from Delhi elections Result

   It is good that the voters of Delhi wisely decided to kick the highly explosive BJP out of power in Delhi. It is also a fact that the massive victory of Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi will ever change the attitude of the BJP leaders towards marginalized Dalits, Muslims and Christians. The powerful central Modi government in connivance with economically[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Yes, we are Shaheen bagh

Yes, we are Shaheen bagh

You call me by your own names Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tukde Tukde gang or Terrorists You push us to the walls Or kick us with all the trolls You shoot us Or abuse us   We declare, We are just a simple Shaheen bagh We are no big people But just pure simple folks of this country Who never understand your[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Intelligence coup of the century: Spying, profit also

Intelligence coup of the century: Spying, profit also

Confidential documents published Tuesday by The Washington Post and German and Swiss broadcasters ZDF and SRF show: The CIA, the world-famous U.S. intelligence agency, secretly bought a Swiss company that sold encrypted devices and rigged them to spy on clients. The company, Crypto AG, sold gadgets and software to spies, diplomats, military officials, and private companies for decades. The company[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
 Will Trump Ride Pentagon Spending to Reelection?

 Will Trump Ride Pentagon Spending to Reelection?

Donald Trump likes to posture as a tough guy and part of that tough-guy persona involves bragging about how much he’s spent on the U.S. military. This tendency was on full display in a tweet he posted three days after an American drone killed Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad: “The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment.[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Muslim Minorities – Seeking Protection From Wolves…

Muslim Minorities – Seeking Protection From Wolves…

In December of 2019, India’s ruling party in the state of Assam, the BJP, passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), easing citizenship requirements for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Christians and Sikhs from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Notably excluded from this list are Muslims, including Rohingya refugees. And this is where the CAA comes in; non-Muslim residents of Assam who are not[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Delhi verdict has defeated BJP but not decimated communal politics

Delhi verdict has defeated BJP but not decimated communal politics

The Delhi results are out. Aam Admi Party i.e AAP has won decisively and with a massive mandate again. This is unique and remarkable for a party to repeat its performance. With nearly the same vote percentage AAP won 62 seats out of 70 while the BJP has to console itself with 8 seats though it got nearly 38.58%. The[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 1 comment India
From Shah Bano Case to Shaheen Bagh:  Challenges to Majoritarianism

From Shah Bano Case to Shaheen Bagh:  Challenges to Majoritarianism

Co-Written by Badre Alam Khan & Wasim Ahsan In a just concluded Assembly Election (11th Jan 2020), the AAP (Aam Admi Party) has got ‘Landslide Victory’ by securing 62 out of 70 seats and defeated the BJP with a huge margin. In this election, Shaheen Bagh protest site was the center of discourse amidst electoral campaign. Most of the BJP’s[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Panaji: BJP President Amit Shah address BJP supporters in Panaji, Goa on Saturday. PTI Photo(PTI8_20_2016_000228A)

What led to BJP’s defeat in Delhi assembly election 2020

The overwhelming victory for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) with 62 seats out of 70 in Delhi assembly polls did not surprise the nation as all exit polls already pointed to the absolute majority mark. People proved their ripeness by casting votes for continuing AAP government sideling the other national and emotional assurances promised by BJP as good governance of Delhi[Read More…]

by 12/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
 AAP Victory in Delhi: Secular India Stands Defeated

 AAP Victory in Delhi: Secular India Stands Defeated

In spite of a full fledged campaign based on hate politics, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) failed to win the coveted Delhi state elections. Aam Aadmi Party (Common Peopl’s party) or AAP led by incumbent Chief Minister Aravind Kejriwal won 63 out of 70 seats. BJP managed to get seven seats while Congress drew a blank. While[Read More…]

by 11/02/2020 14 comments India
Antarctic continent suffers from record temperature of 18.3°C

Antarctic continent suffers from record temperature of 18.3°C

Aerial view of melting glaciers on King George Island, Antarctica. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that the Antarctic likely saw a new temperature record of more than 18°C on Thursday. Speaking to journalists in Geneva, spokesperson Clare Nullis from the WMO, said that the record reading taken in the north of the continent, would be[Read More…]

by 11/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Italy Tries To Kick Out The Right-Wing Extremist Steve Bannon From The ‘Gladiator Cloister’

Italy Tries To Kick Out The Right-Wing Extremist Steve Bannon From The ‘Gladiator Cloister’

Steve Bannon, a former White House strategist and Breitbart editor,was finally kicked out of an Italian monastery, which even Newsweek wittily described as a“far-right boot camp”. This author, along with a few others, has been warning for some time that the former Trump’s top advisor had crossed all lines, and began directly interfering in the internal affairs of the European[Read More…]

by 11/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Social Boycott, a powerful oppressive tool to perpetuate caste hierarchies in Gujarat

Social Boycott, a powerful oppressive tool to perpetuate caste hierarchies in Gujarat

Una taluka of the Gir Somnath district in Gujarat is notorious for the violence against the Dalits. Most of them actually are landless and work as farm labourers. It is this economic dependence that keep them tied to the oppression. This model of dependence on the Savarna kept flourishing and any attempt to empower Dalits in the rural Gujarat is[Read More…]

by 11/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Annihilate Caste
IAPI honoured for standing up against repression

IAPI honoured for standing up against repression

Canada-based Indians Abroad for Pluralist India (IAPI), established in response to growing attacks on religious minorities and political dissidents under a right wing Hindu nationalist BJP government in India, was honoured in absentia at a public event held in Ludhiana on Sunday, February 9. A Punjabi media outlet Suhi Saver, that covers alternative politics, presented a plaque to the organization[Read More…]

by 11/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Police Brutally Beat Up Jamia Millia Islamia Students Again

Police Brutally Beat Up Jamia Millia Islamia Students Again

Police brutally beat up Jamia Millia Islamia students today. The police resorted to a lathi-charge on the protesters near Holy Family hospital which is within walking distance of Jamia Millia Islamia university. The students were holding an anti-CAA march from Jamia Millia Islamia to Parliament. The police had earlier denied permission to the protesters for the march. Height of brutality[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 1 comment India
Why Pakistan’s Islamists Don’t Want India’s CAA Repealed

Why Pakistan’s Islamists Don’t Want India’s CAA Repealed

Seattle City Council, one of the most powerful city councils in the United States, recently made history. It became the world’s first elected body to pass a resolution asking the Indian government to repeal the CAA, stop the National Register of Citizens and uphold the Indian Constitution. It also sought ratification of United Nations treaties on refugees. The said resolution[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Celebration of Sant Guru Ravidass Birthday

Celebration of Sant Guru Ravidass Birthday

On 9th Feb, 2020, Dalits across India celebrated Sant Guru Ravidass birthday with pomp and show. I had the opportunity to see a huge gathering of people on the streets of Jalandhar(Punjab). People across all Dalit communities marched together happily. It was good to see a wonderful spectacle on the streets. Shops were set up alongside the main road from[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Kicking The Habit

Kicking The Habit

Our addiction to fossil fuels can kill us The Industrial Revolution marked the start of a massive human use of fossil fuels. The stored energy from several hundred million years of plant growth began to be used at roughly a million times the rate at which it had been formed. The effect on human society was like that of a[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 3 comments Uncategorized
War in the Arctic?

War in the Arctic?

  In early March, an estimated 7,500 American combat troops will travel to Norway to join thousands of soldiers from other NATO countries in a massive mock battle with imagined invading forces from Russia. In this futuristic simulated engagement — it goes by the name of Exercise Cold Response 2020 — allied forces will “conduct multinational joint exercises with a[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
The Tribulations of Truth-Teller Julian Assange

The Tribulations of Truth-Teller Julian Assange

When it comes to accurate and responsible publication of vast numbers of secret or suppressed or censored documents, included those revealing state crimes, Julian Assange and Wikileaks have been preeminent since 2006. Not surprisingly, their vital and courageous work, on behalf of truth and transparency in the public interest, earned Julian Assange, and Wikileaks, powerful and dangerous enemies. The focused[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
Can the Democratic Party in the United States Recover From the Impeachment Process Wreckage?

Can the Democratic Party in the United States Recover From the Impeachment Process Wreckage?

The lack of the Democrats ability to focus on a process and actuate the correct mechanism to gain removal of President Trump, and the ingenuous attitude of the Republicans to the serious matter, disturb the political environment. Were these elected representatives to the United States government, members of a congress dedicated to protecting the interests of the American people, which[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Menace on the Menu in Post-EU Britain

Menace on the Menu in Post-EU Britain

Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written the report ‘Bayer CropScience rules Britain after Brexit – thepublic and the press are being poisoned by pesticides’. It has been sent to editors of major media outlets in the UK. In it, she outlines her concerns for pesticide regulation, health and the environment in a post-Brexit landscape. This article presents some of[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Misconceptions Of Indians Over Sexuality!

Misconceptions Of Indians Over Sexuality!

Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men’s eyes when deciding what provokes it. ~ Naomi Wolf As an Indian, I should be proud of my country and yes, I am proud of this land but what I’m not proud of are the civilians of this country. India became India when it had the concept of romance[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Patriarchy
Beyond Federalism: the protests against CAA-NRC should be broadened

Beyond Federalism: the protests against CAA-NRC should be broadened

 Before engaging with Professor Partha Chatterjee’s essay published in the Wire, 18th January on the anti-CAA protests going on at nation-wide, let me briefly give his academic background and kind of works produced by him. He is one of India’s leading scholars who have produced large volume of the literature on themes like Nationalism as derivative discourse, Secularism, debates around[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Which State do Indians Want?

Which State do Indians Want?

Indians have to make a call- and make it soon- on what nation they want to live in and what nation they want to bequeath to their children. This decision is incredibly important and is not an easy one. Both the negative propaganda and the blandishments of those in power obscure the picture that should, after so much damage has[Read More…]

by 10/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Researchers found that the rate at which bumblebees are declining is "consistent with a mass extinction." (Photo: David A. Hofmann/flickr/cc)

‘Consistent With a Mass Extinction’: New Study Warns Climate Chaos Driving Rapid Decline of Bumblebees

The rising frequency of extremely hot temperatures tied to human-caused global heating is creating “climate chaos” that drives widespread declines of bumblebees, some of the planet’s most important pollinators, according to a new study published in the journal Science. Researchers at the University of Ottawa in Canada and University College London in the United Kingdom developed a new measurement of temperature based on[Read More…]

by 08/02/2020 1 comment Climate Change
The Rama Of Gandhi

The Rama Of Gandhi

Religion is the fundamental basis on which Indian civilization was created. The Aryan invasion took place along with it all the oppressed tribes of our own country became more bound to follow them, yet what stood the same for both of them is the belief of a/many superior power/s. The politics of India has been running on the spine of[Read More…]

by 08/02/2020 1 comment Communal Harmony
Indian Courts Have Let Down Democracy

Indian Courts Have Let Down Democracy

Justice Markandey Katju is a former judge of Supreme Court of India. Long before he retired in 2011, he had been known for both his outspoken views and his brilliant, scholarly lectures and speeches, especially on Indian history, Urdu literature and shared Hindu-Muslim civilizational heritage. After retiring from the highest court in the land, Justice Katju seems to have become[Read More…]

by 08/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Palestinian rights and Western duplicity

Palestinian rights and Western duplicity

President Trump’s fraudulent Middle East deal runs roughshod over Palestinian rights, harms long-term Israeli interests, and is only the latest example of the US arrogance and disdain for international law. Essentially Trump’s offer, negotiated without any Palestinian input, requires the Palestinians to sell out their hopes for justice and a decent life free of occupation for money. Trump was attempting[Read More…]

by 08/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
The majestic Royal Bengal Tiger in the Sundarbans

The majestic Royal Bengal Tiger in the Sundarbans

A Bengal tiger in the Sundarbans, which crosses India and Bangladesh. In describing the Sundarbans (beautiful forests), Amitav Ghosh, an internationally acclaimed writer wrote in his novel, The Hungry Tide: “A mangrove forest is utterly unlike other woodlands or jungles. There are no towering, vine-looped trees, no ferns, no wildflowers, no chattering monkeys or cockatoos. Mangrove leaves are tough and[Read More…]

by 08/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
How doubtful citizens can be ‘foreigners’

How doubtful citizens can be ‘foreigners’

The link between the NRC and the CAA is through amendment to Rules under Foreigners’ Order. The Rule 3A (6) added by Amendment to Foreigners Order 1964 in 2019 says: The district magistrate may also refer to the Tribunal for its opinion the question as to whether the appellant is a foreigner or not within the meaning of the Foreigners[Read More…]

by 08/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Time For UNHRC To Act Firmly On War Crimes Committed In Sri Lanka

Time For UNHRC To Act Firmly On War Crimes Committed In Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is fast moving towards a military state and is now promoting alleged war criminals to top posts in Military and Government Departments. The appointment of Lt. General Shavendra Silva.  Lt Gen Shavendra Silva’s name was mentioned in the resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2013, alleging rights abuses by the Sri Lankan Army. Defence[Read More…]

by 08/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
JNU and the idea of Affordable Education

JNU and the idea of Affordable Education

JNU has been on boil since last four years starting from the February 9th incident in 2016 when news channels aired some doctored videos with ‘masked people’ chanting objectionable slogans and the whole university was declared Anti National. Cut to 2020, the campus again saw around 70-100 masked goons entering the campus on the first Sunday evening of this year[Read More…]

by 08/02/2020 1 comment India
#She!

#She!

Someday,sometimes,if I was remembered by you, Do come alone,with bare limbs, as I dwell in the utmost bliss.. Not the woman I’m ,whom you used to know pretty before.. She was an innocent pie,did keep faith on the lie,some col blooded lie! Here struggles a warrior,you’ll find her war marks on her body, Ruthless,desperate,leaving all her priorities to uphold her[Read More…]

by 08/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Delhi Elections: The shades of Communal Polarization

Delhi Elections: The shades of Communal Polarization

The voting-day (8 February 2020) for the Delhi Assembly elections has finally arrived. The BJP has continued its all-time strategy of communal polarization and Congress bashing in its election campaign. However, the emphasis remained more on communal polarization in the discussions held in the public domain and also in circles of anti-BJP intellectuals. There has been such a concentrated publicity[Read More…]

by 08/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Failed Prosecutions: Donald Trump Survives the Senate

Failed Prosecutions: Donald Trump Survives the Senate

Never undertake a prosecution unless you have good grounds, and prospects, for a solid conviction.  In the case against President Donald Trump, there was never a serious prospect that the Senate would cool sufficiently to give the Democrats the votes necessary to affirm vote of impeachment in the House.  The GOP remains very much in Trump’s pocket, a remarkable if[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
From The Roots To Statelessness : Are “We, the People of India”?

From The Roots To Statelessness : Are “We, the People of India”?

In the 70-year Republic, the public of India are burdened to prove their citizenship under NRC rules, prove place and birth of their parents under NPR, or face the CAA 2019. With CAA, the citizens might end up in Detention Centres. The 2015 and 2016 notifications under the Foreigners Act and Passport (Entry into India) Rules 1950 regularised the stay[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
All Assam Students’ Union, Anti CAA protests and lack of women’s representation

All Assam Students’ Union, Anti CAA protests and lack of women’s representation

Co-Written by Bhargabi Das  and Sutputra Radheye In a remote village in lower Assam, a thio naam performance (a type of devotional song performed while standing, developed by the Vaishnavite movement in Assam by Srimanta Shankardeva and his disciple Madhabdeva) unfolds. This introduces one to a story about Sita and Dashrath from the Hindu epic ‘Ramayana’. The story is about[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
The flu has killed 10,000 Americans this season

The flu has killed 10,000 Americans this season

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 19 million Americans have been infected with the flu so far this season, and 180,000 of them have been hospitalized because of the illness. The flu virus has already killed an estimated 10,000 people across the U.S., including 68 children, according to the CDC. Fourteen influenza-associated pediatric deaths[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
United States representative Mike Pompeo speaks to a rally of general aviation workers at Cessna Aircraft in Wichita, Kan., Monday, March. 21, 2011. The rally was attended by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Governor Sam Brownback, Senator Jerry Moran and an estimated 2,000 aircraft workers of general aviation companies in the Wichita area. (AP Photo/The Wichita Eagle, Mike Hutmacher)

Today’s “central threat” is, according to the US secretary of state, …

In today’s tumultuous world, the US faces many threats. It’s, sometimes, terrorism. It’s, to an important part of the state machine, climate crisis. Mr. Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has now identified the central threat. He has also suggested steps. Mr. Pompeo’s assertion and suggestion tell something about the Empire: hiding from facts or fooling self. Mr. Pompeo[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 1 comment World
Latin America is free to make own policy choices, says Lavrov on US threats and the humiliating Monroe Doctrine

Latin America is free to make own policy choices, says Lavrov on US threats and the humiliating Monroe Doctrine

With Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s current Latin America tour significant change is happening in the region. Sergey Lavrov has hit back at threats from Washington over Moscow’s support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, insisting Caracas and its neighbors deserve the option not to be U.S. vassal states. Lavrov was in Mexico on an official tour. Prior to the Mexico[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
A 12500 Sq Km Lie in Court to save an Illegal Building: Kerala Coastal Zone Management Authority’s Kamikaze Act in 2003

A 12500 Sq Km Lie in Court to save an Illegal Building: Kerala Coastal Zone Management Authority’s Kamikaze Act in 2003

The Government of India published the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification in 1991, approved the Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) in 1996, and appointed the Kerala State Coastal Zone Management Authority (KCZMA) for implementing it in 1998. After two decades of its coming into being, the government says there are 26,000 buildings constructed in violation of the CRZ Rules in[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Socialist Party (India) condemns attempts to disturb the peaceful nature of ongoing anti-CAA movement

Socialist Party (India) condemns attempts to disturb the peaceful nature of ongoing anti-CAA movement

Demands government must take action against all those who have made violent, provocative and misleading statements against the protestors There have been three attacks on anti-CAA protestors by armed men in the last four days. This violence is clearly an outcome of the irresponsible and incendiary statements by numerous politicians and public figures associated with the ruling party in response[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Indian Health Authorities Plan To Treat nCoronavirus Positive Patients As Guinea Pigs By Experimenting With Anti-AIDS Drugs. Resist it

Indian Health Authorities Plan To Treat nCoronavirus Positive Patients As Guinea Pigs By Experimenting With Anti-AIDS Drugs. Resist it

“Damned philistino-medico Student crew The whole world’s just A bag of bones to you                  – Karl Marx Media reports (Millennium Post, 6 February, 2020) indicate: “The Drug Controller General of India has approved the “restricted use” of a combination of drugs used widely for controlling HIV infection in public health emergency for treating those affected by novel coronavirus (nCoV),[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Climate Manipulation and Murdoch’s PR Machine

Climate Manipulation and Murdoch’s PR Machine

Western democracies and their respected societies appear to be incapable or unwilling of solving global warming. At least partly, this might be because voters in most countries have been lied to by the corporate media for decades on end. Much of this is due to one very rich and very old man – Rupert Murdoch.The shaping of public opinion takes[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Women and Trauma in the Trump-Putin Era

Women and Trauma in the Trump-Putin Era

Last month, as hundreds of thousands of people showed up for the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., a few miles from my home, I was at a karate dojo testing for my first belt. My fellow practitioners, ranging in age from five into their seventies, looked on as I hammered my fist through a two-inch piece of wood. The words of one[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Patriarchy
The United States of America’s Doll House: A Vast Tapestry of Lies and Illusions

The United States of America’s Doll House: A Vast Tapestry of Lies and Illusions

This is an updated and revised version of the full cover-story that appeared in the important publication, garrison: The Journal of History and Deep Politics, Issue 003.  Issue 004 is due out this week and I urge readers to purchase it.  You will read articles there that you will find no place else, brilliant, eye-opening analyses of issues that the MSM will never touch.[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Bt Cotton: Cultivating Farmer Distress in India

Bt Cotton: Cultivating Farmer Distress in India

Later this month, India’s Supreme Court will hold a lengthy hearing on the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) mustard, which would be the country’s first GM food crop. The court has asked the chair of the Technical Expert Committee to be present and says that the decision on GM mustard cannot be kept pending. The TEC has come out against[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
 40 Days On: Aftermath and the On-going Struggles in Uttar Pradesh

 40 Days On: Aftermath and the On-going Struggles in Uttar Pradesh

A five member team from Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) conducted a fact finding visit in four districts of Western Uttar Pradesh – Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Shamli and Bijnor, on 1st and 2nd of February 2020 to document the situation 40 days after the incidents of alleged police brutalities, which occurred on December 18th, 19th and 20th 2019[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Primary health care facility in Delhi

Primary health care facility in Delhi

Working on primary health care has been in the list of Mr.Kejriwal led Delhi Government’s priority along with Education, water and electricity among others. One of the flagship programs in the area of health included Mohalla clinic beside Delhi ArogyaKosh (DAK) and Farishtey Scheme for victims of accident. The Farishtey Scheme eases the process of providing a quick, hassle free[Read More…]

by 07/02/2020 2 comments India
When Two Elderly Women Met At Shaheen Bagh

When Two Elderly Women Met At Shaheen Bagh

Co-Written by AurobindoGhose and Gurjeet Kaur Picture of two Elderly Women at ShaheenBagh, is worth thousand words: Divided by Class and privilege but United by Compassion and Patriotism The moment we saw on Facebook on 25 January, 2020 the happy photograph of two elederly women together at the iconic site of women protest against the new Citizenship law, Shaheen Bagh,in[Read More…]

by 06/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Catering to finance alone can not qualify India as a democracy

Catering to finance alone can not qualify India as a democracy

The budget placed in the Indian Parliament on 1st February fails to send out a long due message to the stagnating Indian economy. This is by failing to announce policies for a possible recovery of aggregate employment and output in near future. Above is evident with measures in this budget too few or altogether absent in stimulating the domestic economy[Read More…]

by 06/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Palestinians have no choice but to resist injustice!

Palestinians have no choice but to resist injustice!

For more than seventy years, the Palestinians have been awaiting international justice. They have hoped that they will obtain their rights through international laws. They have long believed that the world will not accept this injustice they subjected to. They also think that they have enough UN resolutions to their side to restore their stolen rights. In 1947, when a[Read More…]

by 06/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
Triumphal Divisions: Trump’s State of the Union Address

Triumphal Divisions: Trump’s State of the Union Address

In this year of the presidential elections, President Donald J. Trump shows little sign of cowering. It had been some time in coming, but here was a businessman talking to a Congress long in the pocket of business, a seemingly seamless order of things that would have made the Founding Fathers cringe. Trump’s rule has remade political practice in the[Read More…]

by 06/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Degrowth Toward a Steady State Economy: Unifying Non-Growth Movements for Political Impact

Degrowth Toward a Steady State Economy: Unifying Non-Growth Movements for Political Impact

Co-Written By Brian Czech and Riccardo Mastini  Limits to Growth and the Environmental Movement No later than the 1960s, scholars wrote in rigorous terms of the limits to economic growth. Europeans such as E.F. Schumacher, Americans including Herman Daly, and European-born Americans (most notably Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Kenneth Boulding) set the stage for later studies in ecological economics and sustainability[Read More…]

by 06/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Duh, Jared! So who built the PA as a ‘police state’?

Duh, Jared! So who built the PA as a ‘police state’?

Nazareth: Maybe something good will come out of the Trump plan, after all. By pushing the Middle East peace process to its logical conclusion, Donald Trump has made crystal clear something that was supposed to have been obscured: that no US administration has ever really seen peace as the objective of its “peacemaking”. The current White House is no exception[Read More…]

by 06/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
Crisis and Opportunity: The ‘Deal of the Century’ Challenge for Palestinians

Crisis and Opportunity: The ‘Deal of the Century’ Challenge for Palestinians

After several postponements, US President, Donald Trump, has finally revealed the details of his Middle East plan, dubbed ‘Deal of the Century’, in a press conference in Washington on January 28. Standing triumphantly beside Trump, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, must have surely understood that the timing of the announcement, only a few weeks before Israel’s third general elections in[Read More…]

by 06/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
 The Mottled Logic of Power:  Reactions to Seattle’s Anti-CAA Resolution

 The Mottled Logic of Power:  Reactions to Seattle’s Anti-CAA Resolution

A few days ago, the Seattle City Council approved a resolution condemning the CAA and NRC, both creations of the ruling BJP government in India.  People involved in the creation and support of the resolution speak clearly of the splenetic reaction of many Indian-Americans to the resolution and of their searing rhetoric offered in defense of the CAA and NRC. [Read More…]

by 06/02/2020 1 comment India
A Trade War? ‘The Battle of ‘Washing Machines’

A Trade War? ‘The Battle of ‘Washing Machines’

  Dubbed as the Trade War, it has less to do with war, but more to do with global race for increasing consumerism and protectionism.  Since 9/11, and since the elusive term— ‘the War on Terrorism’ dominated global affairs, this word ‘war’ lost its brutal connotations. War on Drugs, on Opioid, Healthcare War, and War on Immigration…etc. are seeping into[Read More…]

by 06/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Delhi Election 2020: One Election, Two Battles

Delhi Election 2020: One Election, Two Battles

In the most common parlance, like every election in a democracy, the current election of Delhi legislative assembly seems that it has triggered the battle between major parties – Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC) – to got requisite electoral mandate of people in order to claim the throne of the national capital[Read More…]

by 06/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Curbing The Coronavirus – While Targetting China

Curbing The Coronavirus – While Targetting China

We are inundated with an avalanche of information on the novel coronavirus infection. Within this avalanche, there is a lot of “news” that is clearly false. Those responsible for such news can be classified into two categories at least. The first comprises mischief-makers who derive some cheap thrill by generating and disseminating fake news that creates fear and causes panic[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Cycling Against #CAA_NRC_NPR

Cycling Against #CAA_NRC_NPR

Yesterday for nearly four hours I was cycling in various working class localities of Bangalore, covered around 30 kms . I noticed that after nearly 7 weeks since the draconian law of CAA was enacted, people in general are aware of things that are happening. Undoubtedly the “walls” between various communities have come down. As Karl Marx once said “conditions[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Why BJP’s Subjugation of Gandhi’s Legacy Hit a Roadblock at Shaheen Bagh

Why BJP’s Subjugation of Gandhi’s Legacy Hit a Roadblock at Shaheen Bagh

‘Death ends all enmity’ (Marnanti Vairani) goes a maxim in Hinduism. The story also goes that when Ravana was on death bed, Ram had even asked Laxman to go to him and learn something which no other person except a great scholar like him could teach him, declaring that though he has been forced to punish him for his terrible crime, ‘you are[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
GASS condemns arrest of a teacher and parent of a school in Karnataka on ‘sedition’

GASS condemns arrest of a teacher and parent of a school in Karnataka on ‘sedition’

Ganatantirk adhikar suraksha sangathan, (GASS) Odisha here has the opinion that the drama performed by children between nine and twelve years of a Private school, Bidar, Karnataka as reported in various newspapers no way invites sedition. So, arrest of teacher and mother of a child of that school is highly condemnable. Also the hours long interrogation of the small children[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Equality Labs Chases The Mother Of Inequality (Brahminism) In America | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Equality Labs Chases The Mother Of Inequality (Brahminism) In America | Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

To the utter shock of American Brahminism an unusual organization called Equality Labs came into being in New York. IT was  established by second generation, American born, Dalit women activists to chase it in America in every sphere of life, including in the digital media. Thenmozhi Soundararajan and few other US born citizens with amazing talents and were told by[Read More…]

The Zionists Shall Be Defeated No Matter What They Do!

The Zionists Shall Be Defeated No Matter What They Do!

During the crusades time in Palestine, which, lasted about 200 years, there was a wise crusade prince who knew that the only possibility to stay in the region is to reconcile with the area. He got it right. He knows that crusaders are a minority in an Arab sea; he knew there is no way to win the war in[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
AI and Predictive Justice in our Courts: Paying heed to exigencies of the responsibilities and the risks

AI and Predictive Justice in our Courts: Paying heed to exigencies of the responsibilities and the risks

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Talking to Strangers, wrote of the difficulty faced by a judge whether to allow bail to an accused. Gladwell, in essence, highlights that being human, there is a propensity for judges to make a wrong judgment of the accused’s character when faced with strangers in a courtroom. Gladwell then references an AI that was designed[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
 The Art of the Deal, Pentagon-Style: Wars Without Victories, Weapons Without End

 The Art of the Deal, Pentagon-Style: Wars Without Victories, Weapons Without End

The expression “self-licking ice cream cone” was first used in 1992 to describe a hidebound bureaucracy at NASA. Yet, as an image, it’s even more apt for America’s military-industrial complex, an institution far vaster than NASA and thoroughly dedicated to working for its own perpetuation and little else. Thinking about that led me to another phrase based on America’s seemingly endless[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
A Radical Call To Action

A Radical Call To Action

A radical call to action has never been more vital than today, as the abomination of capitalism known as neoliberalism tears apart society from stem to stern, continuing the grand experiment that originated under the watchful eyes and vision of aristocratic plantation-owners like Washington and Jefferson as wealthy patriots. In honor of their hard fought war to avoid taxation as[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Book Review
New South Wales, Australia. PHOTO: Blair Webster, firefighter from Aotearoa (New Zealand).

The fires in Australia: Climate-warming crisis leads to outrage and solidarity

Intense foreboding hung over Australia in September. Spring was the driest on record and summer, the dreaded fire season, was months away. Already, huge fires were raging in Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) — 130 in all, including an ancient rainforest! We knew this summer would be hell on Earth, and it is. By mid-January, 28 people had been[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Violence Against Dalits And Women On The Rise In Uttar Pradesh

Violence Against Dalits And Women On The Rise In Uttar Pradesh

Two incidents in Uttar Pradesh have reflected in the growing normalisation of violence and complete collapse of the law and order. The first incident happened in district Farukhabad where a couple kept hostage to 23 children at their home and threatened to blow them off unless their demands are met. Subhash Batham was on the bail from the high court[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Photo by MarioGuti / iStock.

Goodbye!

Like a torn string,,like a wingless seagull, I’m done..and its all over!! All my slogans,all my comrades, I bid you farewell,as my time is up.. I’ve seen brutal faces with fake adore ,covered in them, Where each eye is upon me, And my lone soul walk along.. Over the thorns, leaving my bloody steps behind.. I bid you fsrewell, my[Read More…]

by 05/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Under CAA, India rejects its own to welcome a few outsiders

Under CAA, India rejects its own to welcome a few outsiders

A large number of Indians – most of them Dalits, Adivasis and the poor – will lose their citizenship under CAA only for a few thousand refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to be accommodated, writes Vivek Sakpal Many of the long-serving and soon-to-retire government employees have their birthdays in June. Most of these, in Maharashtra, have a common date of[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Political Narrative by the Ford Foundation progeny

Political Narrative by the Ford Foundation progeny

Recently, I came across a news piece published in the ‘Indian Express’ in which Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had claimed that they have changed the narrative of politics. There has been a grand debate ranging from the end of history to the end of ideology since the last decade of the past century . This propagated ‘endology’ apparently meant[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
CAA-NPR-NRC’s Impact on Urban Poor

CAA-NPR-NRC’s Impact on Urban Poor

Statement by National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU) The National Coalition for Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanisation (NCU) unequivocally condemns the unconstitutional and anti-constitutional CAA-NPR-NRC being unilaterally imposed by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. The NCU is a network of activists, researchers, urban practitioners, lawyers, informal sector workers, collectives and individuals who, for the past two years have[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Pakistan and Somalia declare national emergency over locust as hordes near India border

Pakistan and Somalia declare national emergency over locust as hordes near India border

Following infestation of swarms of desert locusts in the eastern part of Pakistan the country’s Prime Minister Imran Khan declared national emergency on Saturday to protect crops and help farmers. The Pakistan government said it was the worst locust infestation in more than two decades. “We are facing the worst locust infestation in more than two decades and have decided[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
The Script is Being Written

The Script is Being Written

The script is being written For those belonging to the `other’ faith For women, Dalits, and the margins and For the under-nourished colours Trying to cover their bodies and minds From the gazes of penetrating shame The script is being written In bolder and bolder letters.   The script is being written When the gutters swallow the Constitution For the[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Countries with confirmed coronavirus cases. Photo: ABC News. The photo is used here in public interest.

China plans to ban the trade in wild animals, believed to be behind the coronavirus as racism spreads worldwide

China said it would ban illegal wildlife markets and trade in light of the Wuhan coronavirus or 2019-nCoV, which has killed at least 426 people and infected more than 20,000. Beyond China, at least 169 cases have been confirmed in 25 countries. It is widely believed that the Wuhan coronavirus likely started in a wet market, where live and dead[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 2 comments World
State assembly resolutions against Constitutional (Amendment) Act 2019:  Debating legalities for or against?

State assembly resolutions against Constitutional (Amendment) Act 2019:  Debating legalities for or against?

The outbreak of dissent voices against the newly enacted Constitutional Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 which grants citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, appeared as several forms of condemnation for the last two months in India insisting for repeal of the act. For the first time, the post independent India happened to be an eyewitness for the religious[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Palestine – “Deal of the Century” – or Fraud of the Century?

Palestine – “Deal of the Century” – or Fraud of the Century?

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demolished President Trump’s “Peace Plan” or, as the Donald called it, “The Deal of the Century”, calling out “Jerusalem is not for sale”, warning that the “conspiracy deal will not pass. The Palestinian people will reject it.” He added, “[the Plan] belonged to the dust bin of history”. And he is absolutely right. That is an[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
The Holocaust, the BBC and antisemitism smears

The Holocaust, the BBC and antisemitism smears

Senior BBC news reporter Orla Guerin has found herself in hot water of an increasingly familiar kind. During a report on preparations for the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, she made a brief reference to Israel and an even briefer reference to the Palestinians. Her reporting coincided with Israel hosting world leaders last[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
World Interfaith Harmony Week : Steps Toward A Harmony Renaissance

World Interfaith Harmony Week : Steps Toward A Harmony Renaissance

              The United Nations General Assembly on 20 October 2010, by resolution A/RES/65/PV.34 designated the first week of February of every year as the World Interfaith Harmony Week between all religions, faiths and beliefs. The General Assembly, building on its efforts for a culture of peace and non-violence,  wished to highlight the importance that mutual understanding and inter-religious dialogue[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Teflon Lies and Mowing Lawns: The Afghanistan Papers

Teflon Lies and Mowing Lawns: The Afghanistan Papers

Afghanistan is a famous desert for empires, a burial ground which has consumed those in power who thought that extra fortification and trading most might benefit them.  It remains a great, and somewhat savage reminder about those who suffer hubris, overconfidence and eagerness in pursuing their agendas.  But the country has also served another purpose: a repository for the untruths[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
It’s Time

It’s Time

Vaults will be broken to take out all our belongings you took away from us like nothing to make one happy palace with a big bed of our dreams, on our hope you light a bonfire! Your home shall burn for the sins you committed by taking our belief to be in power, and then nailing one fabulous manifesto filled[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Death Penalty or Victim Centric Justice System?

Death Penalty or Victim Centric Justice System?

For past few days, since the Supreme Court has awarded death penalty to four convicts, the media headlines are screaming for the blood of rapists who brutally gang-raped Nirbhaya or Jyoti Singh on 16th December 2012.  Heated discussions are going on regarding the execution of convicts where several experts and activists argue against death penalty, while there are those who[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
Seattle City Council Passes Resolution Against CAA, NRC

Seattle City Council Passes Resolution Against CAA, NRC

The Seattle City Council, one of the most powerful city councils in the U.S., on Monday unanimously passed a resolution condemning India’s recently-enacted Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Reaffirming Seattle as a welcoming city and expressing solidarity with the city’s South Asian community regardless of religion and caste, the resolution “resolves that the Seattle[Read More…]

by 04/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Shaheen Bagh Movement: Deepening Democracy-Uniting India

Shaheen Bagh Movement: Deepening Democracy-Uniting India

As democracy is seeping in slowly all over the world, there is an organization which is monitoring the degree of democracy in the individual countries, The Economist Intelligence Unit. As such in each country there are diverse factors which on one hand work to deepen it, while others weaken it. Overall there is a march from theoretical democracy to substantive[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Understand the Chronology

Understand the Chronology

Opinions are divided over the constitutionality and morality of Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). The extent of this dyad is difficult to comprehend, however, the ambit of anti-CAA stir steadily swelled across India. Soon after President Kovind gave his nod, protests against the contentious law gripped different cities and smaller towns. A sit-in protest was organized in Shaheen Bagh – a[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Death of a Housewife: Some Thoughts on Stay-at-Home Motherhood

Death of a Housewife: Some Thoughts on Stay-at-Home Motherhood

The differential ways in which our society reacts to the death of a patriarch and a housewife manifest categorically the extent to which patriarchy and the associated hierarchy cut across various facets of our day-to-day life. Incidentally, the orthodox social wisdom views the death of even the elderly male head of a family as a greater loss than that of[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Patriarchy
Budget Versus Three Themes of India

Budget Versus Three Themes of India

As an ordinary person belonging to the middle class was looking forward to a budget which can really kick start the economy but Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman disappointed not only me but a million of ordinary citizens. In the Parliament she went on speaking on three themes: Aspirational India, Economic development and a Caring society. No doubt, the Modi government[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Open Letter To Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi

Open Letter To Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi

VOTE FOR BJP OR YOU WILL GET RAPED? IS THIS YOUR MESSAGE TO DELHI’S WOMEN? YOUR PARTY IS ALSO EXHORTING MOBS TO AIM BULLETS AT WOMEN & CHILDREN. PLEASE STOP YOUR PARTY FROM THREATENING WOMEN WITH VIOLENCE. FIGHT THE ELECTION UPHOLDING THE DIGNITY OF OUR CONSTITUTION. Dear Mr. Prime Minister: We speak to you as women of this country, and[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Scientists sign open letter to Australian Government urging action on climate crisis

Scientists sign open letter to Australian Government urging action on climate crisis

  More than 270 scientists have signed an open letter to Australia’s leaders calling on them to abandon partisan politics and take action on climate change. They are calling for urgent action to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions The scientists warn the impacts of climate change are coming faster, stronger and more regularly The letter comes as the Australian Parliament[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Female flogging squad engaged in Indonesia’s Aceh

Female flogging squad engaged in Indonesia’s Aceh

A female flogging squad in Indonesia’s Aceh province has been engaged recently. Reports by media including reports by AFP and The Jakarta Post said: The members of the squad sometimes unleash flurry of lashes as part of their duty. They watch for morality crimes in Aceh, the only region in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation that imposes Islamic law –[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
 Coronavirus-China Fights Determinately, While Others Smear!

 Coronavirus-China Fights Determinately, While Others Smear!

Testimonies from inside China   China has been hit by coronavirus as if by a brick over the head; heavily and mercilessly. Instead of help, Beijing has received criticism, even verbal attacks. In spite of doing tremendous job fighting the epidemy, China is getting almost no tributes for its performance. Now Bangkok, Jakarta and other regional capital are in panic.[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Hyderabad: Understanding India’s Biggest Massacre

Hyderabad: Understanding India’s Biggest Massacre

While speaking on the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) with a neighbor of mines who hails from Zaheerabad, Telangana as in almost every discussion on CAA we ended up discussing the documents issue. He started telling this story of how his family escaped from Zaheerabad when ordinary farmers took up arms and unleashed violence on Muslims. I was taken aback[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Time for a mid-term poll -in response to reverberations from Shaheen Bagh and other parts of India

Time for a mid-term poll -in response to reverberations from Shaheen Bagh and other parts of India

The  protestors  in  Shaheen  Bagh  in  the  national  capital  are  being  targeted  by    police-protected   revolver-wielding  Hindutva  fanatics,   and  those  in  other  cities  across  the  country  are  being  prevented  by  the  police  from  demonstrating in  the  streets.   Nevertheless   their  voices  are  reverberating  from  all  corners  of  India  to  the  corridors  of  the  United  Nations  and  the  global  institutions  of   Europe.  They [Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
‘Deal of the Century’ : Never Trust Foreigners

‘Deal of the Century’ : Never Trust Foreigners

In 1929, as a result of extreme British mandatory forces’ oppression and a huge increase in Jewish immigration to Palestine, the beleaguered Palestinians showed their first act of defiance. They announced a general strike and raised black flags. The British Government’s answer to that legitimate protest was to hang the three leaders of the resistance; Hijazi, Zeir and Jamjoum. Their[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
Trump Attempting To Consolidate The Balfour Declaration

Trump Attempting To Consolidate The Balfour Declaration

There are two schools of thought as to whither the fate of the newly revealed proposed settlement to the protracted Palestine problem. One espoused by Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Inspector, that it is an offer that Palestinians cannot refuse and the other that it must be rejected, not least because of its total disregard of[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Palestine
 The Shame of Child Poverty in the Age of Trump

 The Shame of Child Poverty in the Age of Trump

Billionaires Are Soaring, Poor Kids Are Losing More The plight of impoverished children anywhere should evoke sympathy, exemplifying as it does the suffering of the innocent and defenseless. Poverty among children in a wealthy country like the United States, however, should summon shame and outrage as well. Unlike poor countries (sometimes run by leaders more interested in lining their pockets[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 1 comment World
These Chains Will be Broken

These Chains Will be Broken

These Chains Will be Broken – Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons. Ramzy Baroud. Clarity Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 2020. On first opening Ramzy Baroud’s new book, These Chains Will be Unbroken, there is a series of references from five distinguished activists praising, in different ways, the short anecdotes from those who have been or are imprisoned within[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Book Review
Unlikely Confluences:  Sarah Bernhardt, Nikola Tesla and Swami Vivekananda

Unlikely Confluences:  Sarah Bernhardt, Nikola Tesla and Swami Vivekananda

            In one of those obscure, seemingly unlikely, yet epoch-making encounters in the grand pageant of human interactions, the paths of three trailblazers of contemporary history- the divinely graceful French actress and singer, Sarah Bernhardt, the Yugoslav inventor-genius par excellence Nikola Tesla, and the Indian cyclonic monk and firebrand Vedantist, Swami Vivekananda, came together in ostensibly mysterious ways towards the[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 1 comment Life/Philosophy
BJP’s Vicious Campaign In Delhi Elections

BJP’s Vicious Campaign In Delhi Elections

The filth is growing day by day and the desperation on the faces when the entire cabinet and a rabble rousing chief minister from neighboring state is campaigning in Delhi. The focus is on Pakistan and ‘terrorism’ and not the basic amenities of the people. It is deeply shocking the way BJP leadership has turned the Delhi elections into an[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled India
A Warrior mother!!

A Warrior mother!!

I carry some wounds and hurt with my self indeed! Not a mere woman I’m,you must know me, Rather a warrior mother,who fought a unique battle…without any weapons in her hands, Nor I am like Goddess Durga,who decorated herself with so many arms! The battle I faced and fought lone indeed, For they didn’t recognise me to my child, Another[Read More…]

by 03/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
united kingdom exit from europe relative image

Brexit Day

London: Parliament Square is the site, muddied by rain, trodden by hundreds who have made it their celebratory space.  The Leave Means Leave official website had been busy for weeks, thrilled about January 31 and the fact that that Britain would finally be leaving that beastly collective they know as the European Union.  Those who promised to be in attendance[Read More…]

by 01/02/2020 Comments are Disabled World
SARS, Wars And The Farce

SARS, Wars And The Farce

Note: The global hype and scare around the coronavirus outbreak is reminiscent of similar panic over SARS, avian flu and swine flu in the last decade and half. Driven by half-truths, poor quality data, sensational media coverage these are pandemics of idiocy at best and geopolitical conspiracies at their worst. In this context we are reproducing an article on SARS,[Read More…]

by 01/02/2020 1 comment World
Breaking News: Rama Denied Citizenship Based On NRC + CAA!

Breaking News: Rama Denied Citizenship Based On NRC + CAA!

            “Minister, we have some stunning news,” the secretary panted out as he rushed into the minister’s office. The minister was not pleased at this abrupt entrance. It was a busy day, and as the person in charge for enforcement of the new Citizenship Amendment Act, he had a lot to do. “What is it,” he curtly asked. “Sir, this[Read More…]

by 01/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
Brexit, History & Ballot Choice

Brexit, History & Ballot Choice

In a mistaken version of Trump’s catch-cry “Make America Great Again” Make America Great Again, some British voters might have been led to believe that Brexit will Make Britain Great Again. They were convinced that the – never really – good old days of the British Empire would return by voting for Brexit. This is not to be. Capitalism and[Read More…]

by 01/02/2020 1 comment World
Centenary of Mook Nayak:  Young Ambedkarites Should Take Charge of New Media

Centenary of Mook Nayak:  Young Ambedkarites Should Take Charge of New Media

Today mark the centenary of the publication of ‘Mook-Nayak’, founded by Baba Saheb Ambedkar. Exactly on January 31st, 1920, Baba Saheb Ambedkar launched this fortnightly to give voice to the voiceless as reflected in its name. I wont go into much research of this as many scholarly articles of already appeared on it commemorating a century of it. It is[Read More…]

by 01/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Annihilate Caste
Death Penalty And The Anti-Thesis Of It

Death Penalty And The Anti-Thesis Of It

There is always a debate on whether capital punishment, to be specific death penalty, should be abolished or retained for ordinary crimes. In my opinion, it should be abolished. In this view of mine, I don’t stand alone.  As of 2018, 142 countries have abolished death penalty either in law or practice. Whereas, 56 have retained the power, in which[Read More…]

by 01/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Human Rights
The deity of a destroyer!!

The deity of a destroyer!!

I’ve been locked for thousand days, threatened by your guns,and you think you banished me in front of my children.. I born with an oath,not to be defeated ,you don’t know, In a dark corner of tge green hills,I write your Last Supper.. In that corner,I raise a fire,that reached all through my children, They keep the fire in their[Read More…]

by 01/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
If there is peace

If there is peace

  If there is peace- where does it live? how does it look? when to look for it?   Is it in the lathis of police or the iron rods of the bajrang goons?   Is it in being mob lynched for carrying a surname in a plastic bag?   Is it in the dead bodies of ganeshguri  blast whose[Read More…]

by 01/02/2020 Comments are Disabled Arts/Literature
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