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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
(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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
“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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
(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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
” 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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
“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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
“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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
“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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
‘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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
“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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
At least 40 immigrants dead in fire at US-Mexico border 
Contemporary Anti-Semitism – A Jewish View from Germany 
In memory of 40th Anniversary of Military Dictatorship in Argentina 
Poor work conditions, non-compliance with Constitutional provisions seriously impact adolescent girls in workforce 
Take action against K Surendran for insulting Women 
Calculated Exoneration: Command Responsibility and War Crimes in Afghanistan 
DOJ Called Upon to Investigate Environmental Activists Abuses 
The World’s Coffee Shops Have Emerged as Plant Milk’s Front Line 
Lara Sheehi’s ordeal, like Steven Salaita’s, is not quite over 
“Facing Clear Evidence of Peril” in a Country of Lies 
The case of Kashmir: A Gandhian Resolution 
Non-Availability of Badly Needed Funds for Dalit Students Increases Their Difficulties 
A bureaucrat-turned- minister in a mess 
Hundreds Of Thousands Of Workers’ 24-Hour Mega Transport Strike Halts Germany 
Oldest Interfaith Organization in America Calls for Children to Have More Rights Than Guns 
What’s the Best Way Out from the War in Ukraine? 
How Indigenous Land Management Practices Are a Blueprint for Climate-Resilient Agriculture 
In memory of Hugo Chavez on 10th death Anniversary 
Xi’s ‘Chilling’ Remarks: A Multipolar World Offers Challenges and Opportunities to the Middle East and Africa 
Ukraine War – US-China Relations And the Doomsday Clock 
Anti-Rahul Defamation Card Has Its Limitations! 
Questions We Should Ask to Understand Real Impact of Poverty Reduction and Welfare Schemes 
Punjab: Democracy Under Siege? 
Declaration excessive dividends by the Board of HZL may not be in compliance with Section 123 of the Companies Act 
Men, masculinities, and gender equality 
EU Warns After Russia Plans To Place Tactical Nuclear Weapon In Belarus 
A Hazardous Decision: Supplying Ukraine with Depleted Uranium Shells 
Media and the March to War 
The Basic Issue is not of Taking Sides in Superpower Rivalry, it is of Durable Peace to Save Earth’s Life 
The Pentagon’s Budget from Hell 
“…I want poetry to be detonated like a bomb!” -Nathalie Quintane 
Bundelkhand Must Choose its Priorities Carefully 
Citizenship: Beyond the Forked Vision 
Caste-wise census is necessary for balanced development 
Tribal woman murdered after rape in Rohtas and strong protest demanding punishment of culprits 
Why Avoiding Catastrophic War is the Biggest Priority Today 
Labor in market, and the mainstream economics 
Serbia Shall Never Forget NATO Aggression, Vows Serb President 
Kerala’s New Public Health Bill 2023: Subservient to Market Forces rather than Deliberative Democracy 
The Piracy of Development – The 3-Ds: Dispossession, Displacement, Destitution 
Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
