An event for the launch of “From Nazneen to Naina”, based on the work of the Bollywood diva, held in Surrey on Sunday, November 28 was an eye opener for many who are unaware of the spill over effect of right wing politics of New Delhi on the Indian cinema. Authored by Canada-based author Gurpreet Singh, the book tries to[Read More…]
That way reciting the Constitution’s Preamble has been transformed from text to socially dynamic statement… Against this new method of agitation, authorities slapped various criminal charges including sedition, arrested several protestors and strongly opposed their bail petitions. *** We celebrated 72nd Constitution Day on 26th November 2021. Two months before Republic Day (26 January 1950), the Constitution was finalised and[Read More…]
To Smt Nirmala Sitharaman Union Finance Minister Dear Smt Sitharaman, I understand from news reports (https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/government-clears-sale-of-central-electronics-for-rs210-crore-11638195251682.html) that the PSU, Central Electronics Ltd (CEL) is about to be sold to a private financial intermediary company, Nandal Finance & Leasing Pvt ltd for an amount of Rs 210 Crores. By any stretch of logic, the manner in which CEL is being[Read More…]
On October 1, 2021, a month before the kickoff of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, I had the good fortune to spend an hour with Noam Chomsky for a video interview. (A week before the summit, TomDispatch published an abridged transcript of the interview.) At the time we spoke, it was already clear that the powerful governments and corporations[Read More…]
Britain, Germany and Italy confirm cases of Omicron while other countries suspect cases of their own. Chaos at a Dutch airport exemplified the scattershot response across Europe. A New York Times report (Covid News: Omicron Variant Puts Nations on Alert, Nov. 27, 2021) said: Scientists raced to study a new coronavirus variant as several cases were spotted in Europe and[Read More…]
At the G7 Summit last June, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, representing the U.S., United Kingdom and Australia respectively, met in private talks. The subject was how to contain China and its influence. In September these leaders announced the AUKUS Alliance, a defence agreement between the countries. Australian Prime Minister Morrison described it as “a forever partnership” and[Read More…]
“This war has to end,” President Biden intoned in his first major foreign policy address at the State Department in early February 2021. He wasn’t talking about the war in Afghanistan. Rather it was the bloody, mostly one-sided, six-year battering led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against the Houthi insurgency in Yemen. A war underwritten by U.S.[Read More…]
Repealing farm laws by the central government seems to be a political compulsion for upcoming state assembly elections, particularly in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh as the ruling central government could not popularize politically its agro reform decisions at larger level. Although, the government is well aware of its blunder decisions of farm laws as the long lasting movement against the[Read More…]
From an Irritatingly Orthodox Marxist Viewpoint [One] Whenever there is a discussion on Minimum Support Price of MSP of Agricultural products two things shadow our mind: Swaminathan committee report, and Remunerative price for rice, wheat, sugarcane, etc. For the first, some must-know issues are – what is that Swaminathan committee? Who made it? And who is that particular Swaminathan? Swaminathan[Read More…]
India’s responses to HIV/AIDS through the national AIDS Programme have been widely acclaimed as the most successful public health intervention in its history since the Independence. From 1992 onwards we have witnessed a concerted effort in all fronts to tackle the AIDS crisis in a radical manner by a participatory framing of health discourse and practice. An effective and active[Read More…]
When we know how to prevent HIV transmission, and how to keep every person living with HIV healthy, then how can one fathom deaths of at least 680,000 people due to AIDS-related illnesses in 2020 worldwide? And how can one explain, at least 1.5 million new HIV infections occurring globally in 2020? “Every new HIV infection is a reality check[Read More…]
The caste system in India has long been considered as “the most resilient and adaptive system of inequality and oppression ever invented, the most inhuman too, even excluding sections of people from the very domain of the human, of the moral and the spiritual, of sociality, fraternity, etc.” Joseph Tharamangalam, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Mount St. Vincent University[Read More…]
Historian Marc Bloch talks of a ‘Longue Duree'( long or protracted time) to describe an historical period where inherent contradictions of a socio-cultural system develop slowly,giving it almost a stagnant look.It can be characterized by certain common features. I think the term may be applied also to a crisis,like our present constitutional crisis. CJI Ramana, yearns to tread the long[Read More…]
A number of defence analysts are convinced that the United States of America, supported by Britain and Australia, is goading China to go to war over Taiwan. They point to constant statements by officials from the three countries pledging to come to Taiwan’s defence if it is attacked by China and the actual presence of US warships in the vicinity[Read More…]
This year has been one of the toughest. With the raging pandemic, climate crisis, wars, the failure in Glasgow….. We also have moments to celebrate with the victory of the farmers in India which was totally ignored by the mainstream media and they even tarnished the fighting farmers image and intent. We toil day and night for the betterment of[Read More…]
In a major victory for the agitating farmers in India, a bill to cancel the three contentious farm laws was passed in record time in both houses of the parliament. The government plans to get it signed by the President by tonight. The Farm Laws Repeal bill was passed in Lok Sabha within four minutes – it was tabled at[Read More…]
A historic Shetkari Kamgar Mahapanchayat took place in yesterday in Mumbai’s Azad Maidan on November 28th, with at least 100 organisations coming under one umbrella. Peasants, workers, agricultural labourers, women, youth and students of all religions and castes from all over Maharashtra culminated at the venue, like an army marching in to celebrate the victory in terminating the farmers bills..[Read More…]
At least 20 Sudanese troops have reportedly died following clashes with Ethiopian forces on the countries’ shared border. Media reports from the conflict area said: Sudanese soldiers fell into an ambush on Saturday after traveling across the Atbara river and being bombarded. However, Sudan’s army released a statement on Saturday reporting that it delivered “heavy losses of life” against Ethiopian troops and[Read More…]
As the Taliban completes its first hundred days in power, the Western powers are groping for a face-saving formula to engage with the authorities in Kabul with some modicum of dignity. The European Union is taking the lead role here. The European countries have a sense of urgency over potential refugee flow from Afghanistan. The EU intends to launch an[Read More…]
‘Those contractors who have been doing business all over the world in the name of “Kashmir shops”, do they realize what dilemma this nation is in at the moment? Isn’t it necessary to give them the message that a large segment of the public has long since awakened to your shops’? These were the expressions of a few Kashmiris in[Read More…]
Poor diet is responsible for more deaths worldwide than any other risk factor, and is a leading cause of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Global estimates suggest that almost 2.3 billion children and adults are overweight. The growing availability of ultra-processed foods, which contain high levels of sugars, sodium, saturated fats and refined carbohydrates, is a key contributor[Read More…]
To Shri Rajesh Bhushan Union Health Secretary Dear Shri Bhushan, While we are about to conclude that we longer have to feel concerned about a Covid surge for the third time, the discovery of Omicron and its own mutants with high rates of transmission in many parts of the world has put to rest any such feeling of comfort. Are[Read More…]
A Canada-based online magazine that covers alternate politics unveiled its annual calendar in Surrey on Saturday, November 27. Dedicated to the year-long farmers’ protest in India, the 2022 calendar bears important dates related to the struggle that eventually forced the right wing government in New Delhi to roll back controversial farm laws that prompted the agitation. The event began with[Read More…]
Resistance, as a way of life, can help change the current image portrayed by the political and security elites in all of the Arab countries … Image: “We don’t want to die of thirst but we don’t want to betray; normalization is a big betrayal.” “Let Wadi Araba Treaty fall.” [Rima Najjar] Yesterday, I participated in demonstrations in downtown Amman against[Read More…]
Russia hopes to blow new life into a proposal for a multilateral security architecture in the Gulf, with the tacit approval of the Biden administration. If successful, the initiative would help stabilise the region, cement regional efforts to reduce tensions, and potentially prevent war-wracked Yemen from emerging as an Afghanistan on the southern border of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf of Aden[Read More…]
Although unfamiliar with the details, most people recognize the purpose of stealth technology is to make aircraft effectively immune to radar detection at normal combat ranges. The question is, would it be possible, employing the same technology, to make stealth aircraft carriers? The answer, even with Japan’s undoubted technical prowess, is a decided no, at least not for the foreseeable[Read More…]
New Delhi, November 27th: A “Roundtable with Sewer Workers” was organized on 27th November, Saturday, 2021 in New Delhi from 2:00 pm- 5:00 pm in which sewer workers from Delhi came together along with Worker Unions and Government bodies. The workshop was attended by more than 100 sewer workers. The Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM) has worked on the[Read More…]
In an interview of Joseph Stiglitz that appeared in Investopedia on 23 April 2020 he said “Covid 19 reminds us that when we have a crisis we turn to collective action and to government.” What became very crucial in countering the pandemic are the collective actions in which civil societies were forced to keep aloof from its internal decay like[Read More…]
“Selective” advocacy of Rights violations?” “When daily incidents of hate crimes, lynchings, caste atrocities and state violations become common place, Every egregious violation deserves our attention” Dear Sir, You had in your speech on the 28th NHRC foundation programme on 12th October, 2021 made four assertions on human rights to which the PUCL, as one of the oldest civil liberties[Read More…]
(This article was written in January 2015 and published in Mainstream Weekly. The article is released again in the view of the ongoing farmers movement, and the frequent land acquisitions taking place all over the country in the name of express ways, smart cities, education cities, national-international airports etc.) The Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 (LARR Act 2013)[Read More…]
BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) commemorated the annual anniversary of Delhi Morcha at Pakaura Chowk, New Delhi with a huge historic public rally, constituting around 50000 persons. A most illustrative example of a festival of the masses and the consistency of revolutionary political practice of the BKU(Ugrahan) who exhibited the spirit of an army battalion. Without doubt one of the most outstanding[Read More…]
Rajasthan’s over 100 years old Pushkar Mela is one of the most famous and largest camel fairs in the world. Due to the Covid pandemic though, the event has taken a big hit with both low arrivals of camels for sales and plummeting prices for the animals. “ I have been coming to Pushkar fair continuously for 10 years. This is the first[Read More…]
It has been written about more times than any care to remember. Pliny the Elder, that old cheek, told us that Africa always tended to bring forth something new: Semper aliquid novi Africam adferre. The suggestion was directed to hybrid animals, but in the weird pandemic wonderland that is COVID-19, all continents now find themselves bringing forth their types, making[Read More…]
Nation for Farmers (NFF) announces the process for formation of a ‘National Kisan Commission’ Nation for Farmers and other collaborating platforms and organizations announce the process of formation of a ‘Kisan Commission’ to assess and report on the state of agriculture. As the challenges facing the farmers of all the different states and sectors encompassed by agriculture and allied sectors[Read More…]
While “anti-vaxxers” continue to clash with police in various European cities, a whole media discourse has been formulated around the political leanings of these angry crowds, describing them in matter-of-fact terms as conspiracy theorists, populists and right-wing fanatics. While it is true that populist, right-wing movements throughout Europe and elsewhere have actively exploited the anger, confusion and lack of trust[Read More…]
Crises deluge this region considered a sub-continent in Asia. The questions are: (1) Which crises? (2) Whose crises are these? (3) At which stage are these crises? A question, also, encounters a part of the progressives: Are the endeavors for a revolutionary change going through a crisis? The first three questions – which and whose, and which stage – help[Read More…]
If a bridge collapses soon after construction, the contractor would be blacklisted. If someone cheats a bank, they will not be allowed to manage public moneys, whether in a bank, mutual fund, insurer or even as a KYC processor. But if someone illegally mines our shared inheritance of mineral wealth, we wonder why there is no such prohibition. India’s National[Read More…]
Hasan Azizul Huq (1939-2021), one of the leading Bangladeshi writers, passed away on 15 November 2021, leaving behind him an exceptional body of works. He was mainly a short story writer, but he also wrote three novels and many essays. His first book, Samudrer Swapna, Shiter Aranya, a collection of short stories, was published in 1964. Each volume he published[Read More…]
How sad the rain sounds On the cardboard roofs How sad that my people live In cardboard houses The worker is coming down [from the hills] Almost dragging his feet From the weight of suffering Look how much he suffers Look how much the suffering weighs Above he leaves his pregnant wife Down the hill is the city[Read More…]
It is a picture postcard scene of Goa’s big, best-selling beaches like Calangute, Anjuna and Vagator, overflowing, with Indian tourists herding together, eating and drinking, and frolicking in the sea. The flip-side of these colourful visuals is reflected in the state’s small villages and tourist beaches, especially with local and fishing communities struggling to make ends meet since the last[Read More…]
The progressive Odia daily newspaper ‘Dharitri’ has organised ‘Odisha Youth Conclave on Climate Change’ while celebrating its 48th birthday on 24th of November 2021. In a profit driven mass media industry with its rent seeking family ownerships, it is rare these days for newspapers to think about people and planet. The ‘Dharitri’ and its family deserves all appreciation for being[Read More…]
Food prices rose to a 10-year high last month, hitting peak since July 2011 and extending the 30% increase recorded last year, according to a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report. The surge was led by increases in cereal crops like wheat and vegetable oils. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks the international prices of food commodities, is up 3.9 per cent from September, rising for a third consecutive[Read More…]
The Constituent Assembly of India finalized the Constitution of India on November 26, 1949 which is celebrated as the CONSTITUTION DAY. This Constitution promised new born Indian Republic a polity based on democracy, justice, egalitarianism and rule of law. However, RSS was greatly annoyed. Four days after the historic event of approval of it, the RSS English Organiser in an[Read More…]
The 97th death anniversary of Abadi Banu Begum passed subduedly and unobtrusively, much like every other year in the past. Bi-Amma, which was the popular sobriquet bestowed upon her by comrades, was a stand out marvel of astonishing courage and patriotism in India’s independence saga. She broke the religious taboo for feminist activism to inspire thousands of Muslim women to take to[Read More…]
A small riot. Unrest. Risk of collapse. All given a ballooning effect and inflated for policy makers across the ocean. Before much time elapses, Australian security forces are skirting off to restore order in their vast watery neighbourhood. It is a reminder that such relations in the Pacific region are a mixture of intervention, forcible charitable guidance and, at times,[Read More…]
by Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young About four million years ago, we departed from our closest ancestors – the chimpanzees. This allowed us to become what we are today: human beings, the upright walking homo erectus and homo faber – the toolmaking hominids. Crucially, this also means that we are descendants of the chimpanzees and not of the neighbors next door – the bonobos, who were mistakenly also known as[Read More…]
In a recent exchange with a leading publisher of an ethnic Indian newspaper, I inquired why he hasn’t carried a news item on the Indian Americans protesting before the United Nations where Prime Minister Modi was addressing the General Assembly. The answer came swiftly back in a query whether the demonstration was anti-India! I responded in kind, saying protesting Modi[Read More…]
by Sandeep Pandey, Seema Muniz and Gopal Krishna Verma Some people are disheartened with the disruption in children’s education due to the menace of Covid and the successive lockdowns. While a number of children are getting used to attending online classes, their counterparts from the weaker socio-economic backgrounds continue to struggle either because of unfamiliarity with technology or because of [Read More…]
The Supreme Court has made a strong recommendation for organizing community kitchens in various parts of country wherever these are needed to prevent hunger. This is the most direct way of reducing hunger which should be widely welcomed. I remember visiting a community kitchen at the peak of the drought some time back in Bundelkhand region. The hunger here was[Read More…]
Nehru is now the favourite punching bag for all who call for change.Time was when he was nothing short of a demi-god.But now there has been such a volley of attacks on him as would seem to demand consigning him to the scrap-heap.As though he is guilty of all mishaps that have befallen us. But such demands are somewhat dubious[Read More…]
The PUCL is monitoring with extreme concern the precarious health condition of Atiq Ur Rehman who was unjustly accused and arrested by the UP police in early October, 2020 for daring to go with journalist Siddique Kappan to Hathras (UP) to report on the rape incident of a 19-year old Dalit woman. Atiq, Kappan and 2 others were charged under[Read More…]
Bangalore, April 18-19, 2016. That Bangalore which forgot the heydays of working class fight there in late 1970s – early 1980s, and those Bangalorians who were more connected to the USA and west went frantic. They could never imagine those invisible rustic suburban millions who make the ‘things’ (not the gigabytes) that create trillions could stop their cars for hours[Read More…]
The 12th ministerial conference (MC12) of the World Trade Organization will take place from June 12, 2022 at Geneva, Switzerland.The negotiation note distributed on the different issues on the agenda shows that the WTO is a developed countries’ club. Developing and least developed countries will be the losers if they align with this organization. The WTO and Free Trade Agreements [Read More…]
Amazon employees worldwide are planning to strike on one of the busiest shopping days of the year The strikes are set to take place at factories, warehouses, data centers, corporate offices and oil refineries across the world, including sites in Minnesota, California, Boston and New York City. The plan is to organize the work stoppage for Black Friday in more than 20 countries[Read More…]
Fidel Castro died five years ago, but I feel like decades have passed in Cuba since November 25, 2016. Trump arrived and passed slowly with his string of sanctions that have felt worse than ever because of the pandemic. Then came Biden with his faint-hearted court, reeling us each day with veiled or direct threats, without daring to fulfill his[Read More…]
The impact of agriculture on climate change is significant. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the agriculture sector is responsible for 10 percent of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, after transportation (29 percent), electricity production (25 percent), industry (23 percent), and commercial and residential usage (13 percent). However, according to Peter Lehner, managing attorney for EarthJustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm,[Read More…]
On November 19, 2021, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “[W]e have decided to repeal all three agricultural laws.” The prime minister was referring to the three agriculture laws that were rushed through the parliament in 2020. During his speech to announce the rollback, Modi told the farmers that they “should return to [their] homes, fields and to [their] families. Let’s make a[Read More…]
The three farmer laws, that were once named “reform package,” will go out of statute book through a cabinet resolution and a bill to repeal in Parliament, as promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. That should have been the end of agitation. The best course for the farmers leaders is to go to negotiation table and press for real reforms[Read More…]
At a recent New York event, the President of the Foreign Press Association Ian Williams declared, before an approving audience, that it is time “to reclaim the narrative on Palestine”. This phrase – ‘reclaiming the narrative’ – is relatively new to the Palestinian discourse. Years ago, the concept, let alone its implementation, were quite alien: the pro-Israel crowd refused, and[Read More…]
Khurram Parvez, a leading human rights defender and President of the Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), was arrested yesterday, on the 22nd of November 2021. The arrest was carried out by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) after the day-long raid carried out at the JKCCS office in Amira Kadal and Parvez’s house in Sonwar, Srinagar Kashmir. Parvez[Read More…]
After the acceptance of the demand for the repeal of three farm laws, the minimum support price (MSP) issue is now the main remaining issue between the government and the farmers’ movement. Unlike the simpler issue of repealing or not repealing the three controversial laws the MSP issue is a more complex issue which needs to be more carefully integrated[Read More…]
The financial crisis induced by the Covid lockdowns and closure of public gatherings has severely affected the protection and promotion of more than 375 historical forts, caves, museums and other heritage sites in Maharashtra. The Maharashtra Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, responsible for the upkeep of these sites, is working at half its staff capacity and stopped all new recruitments[Read More…]
Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable. — Mark Twain Counter Currents gave me some space on Oct 30, a piece was published “Tripura after Bangladesh – Curious Turn of Events”. That article contained some interesting facts and chronologies which were and still are usually not discussed in the media. It took much time to collect those, and[Read More…]
The United Socialist Party (PSUV) landed a comprehensive victory in Venezuela’s regional and local elections, winning 83% of the governorships. According to initial results from the National Electoral Council (CNE) on Sunday night, PSUV, the ruling party, secured at least 19 of the 23 governorships, and the important Caracas mayoralty. The PSUV also successfully overturned rightwing incumbents in Mérida, Táchira[Read More…]
Protests were held in Turkey’s largest city Istanbul and the capital Ankara on Nov. 23 after the lira’s historic crash. Protesters were demanding the resignation of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government over skyrocketing inflation. The protests come amid an escalating currency crisis. The Turkish lira has gone from $0.1 to $0.078 in value just over the past week,[Read More…]
We need to change our ways! Unless you’ve been living in a cave in the last 40 years or so, you’d be getting a pretty strong message about that pretty much every day. No more “blah blah”, no more excuses, no more pseudo airy fairy technological fixes, we have to stop polluting, we have to stop destroying habitats, in other[Read More…]
There is widespread agreement that a number of very serious environmental problems together threaten the future of our planet. These problems inter-act with each other, are related to each other and at a practical level, we and other species have to bear their combined burden at the same time. Despite this rather obvious reality the response to these problems[Read More…]
While the need for checking climate change is being re-emphasized with a great sense of urgency, at the same time the inadequacy of the existing response and efforts to check climate change is also emerging clearly. Hence here we present a very different approach to checking climate change. This approach is based on a common program for the entire world,[Read More…]
Our World Is Increasingly Like a Science-Fiction Novel Who knew that Martians, inside monstrous tripodal machines taller than many buildings, actually ululated, that they made eerily haunting “ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla” sounds? Well, let me tell you that they do — or rather did when they were devastating London. I know that because I recently reread H.G. Wells’s 1898 novel War[Read More…]
PUCL calls for the immediate release of Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez, who was arrested on 22nd November 2021, by the National Investigating Agency under various provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and Indian Penal Code. PUCL condemns the relentless use of UAPA by the Indian Government to arrest, detain and jail human rights defenders for long periods[Read More…]
“In the first and second wave of the Covid pandemic, ministers and MLAs were sitting in their homes. They avoided common people and crowds. Had virtual meetings. Continued their rhetoric via Twitter and Facebook. Not one rupee was deducted from their salaries. Whereas, we government employees worked round the clock. We did not get time to go home, could not[Read More…]
Major portions of the Amazon rainforest have shifted from a carbon sink to a carbon source. This shift has severe planet-wide negative implications. Studies of the Amazon Rainforest over the past decade have shown telltale signals of an impending shift from a carbon sink of heat-trapping gases to a source of greenhouse gases. It’s a dangerous shift that will destabilize[Read More…]
To Shri Narendra D Modi Prime Minister Dear Shri Modi, I understand that the government has recently directed ONGC to hive off 60% of its Mumbai High, Bassein & Satellite oil/gas fields to foreign oil companies (https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/x-121110100853_1.html), ostensibly to enhance hydrocarbons production from those fields. The proposal, in my view, is highly imprudent for the following reasons. Mumbai High, Bassein[Read More…]
Salman Khurshid, a former Union Minister, is one of the prominent leaders of Congress and also is the well known lawyer of Supreme Court. He recently came out with a book, “Sunrise over Ayodhya: Nationhood in Present times”. The book is publicized as “…the Supreme Court… cleared the way for the construction of a Ram temple… If the loss of[Read More…]
Political uncertainties are continuing in Sudan as 12 Sudanese ministers have resigned in protest of deal with military. Media reports said: The cabinet ministers on Monday submitted their resignation to Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, in protest of a political deal with the country’s ruling military council. On Sunday, Hamdok was reinstated after signing a political agreement with the head[Read More…]
by Shobha Shukla, Bobby Ramakant When medicines become resistant, even curable diseases are at risk of becoming incurable Antimicrobial resistance occurs when microbes such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites no longer respond to medicines. This makes common infections harder to treat and increases the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death. That is why India and other[Read More…]
WITNESS: THE RED RIVER BOOK OF POETRY OF DISSENT, 2021, Edited by NABINA DAS RED RIVER, an independent poetry press run by the intrepid Dibyajyoti Sarma has spearheaded recent poetry publications in India – of diverse tenor and fine aesthetic value. Red River has very recently published this staggering anthology of ‘dissent’ poetry to counter the tyranny of our system,[Read More…]
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies The border between post-coup Ukraine and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, based on the Minsk Agreements. Map credit: Wikipedia A report in Covert Action Magazine from the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic in Eastern Ukraine describes grave fears of a new offensive by Ukrainian government forces, after increased shelling, a drone strike[Read More…]
They send a hundred RCMP to go protect a pipeline and not protect people’s lives so we need to push back. They put industry, they put fracking, they put gas and oil over everyone’s lives. — Eve Saint, a Wet’suwet’en land defender In the nineteenth century, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat, a colonial official, wrote an account — The Nootka: Scenes and[Read More…]
Like many others I also scanned closely the video of the Prime Minister making the ‘historic’ announcement on the farm bills. But I did not find a speck of sincere contrition and remorse in it.His eyes distant and his tone studiedly lofty,he was expressing a strategic and perhaps temporary withdrawal.Explaining the repeal as a failure to convince a minority of[Read More…]
I wholeheartedly salute the victory of the farmers in resisting the iron feet of oppression confronting the three Agricultural bills enforced by the neo-fascist Bharatiya Janata party .To me it will win a permanent place in the annals of Indian history amongst the struggles withstanding tyranny, resurrecting the spirit of the anti-colonial Struggle. The farmers took grit and courage to[Read More…]
The following article on the life of President John F. Kennedy, and his assassination on this date, November 22, 1963, is the lead piece in the eighth issue of Garrison: The Journal of History and Deep Politics that has just been published: “The Political Assassinations of the 1960s.” From JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X, to Hammarskjold and Lumumba, the 1960s were[Read More…]
Sudan’s ousted Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has been reinstated following last month’s coup when he was put under house arrest. But uncertainties remain in Sudan’s politics. Hamdok has appeared on TV to sign a new power-sharing agreement with coup leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan amid continuing mass protests. But the civilian coalition that nominated Hamdok as PM two years ago[Read More…]
Tensions have been rising in Gurugram, just outside of Delhi for some weeks on the matter of Muslims offering Namaz in the open in public spaces, sometimes blocking traffic. On the face of it, the whole business of offering prayers on the streets appears to be a needless provocation until it comes to light that there are just not enough[Read More…]
As a Navy spouse of 10 years and counting, my life offers an up-close view of our country’s priorities when it comes to infrastructure and government spending. Recently, my husband, a naval officer currently serving with the Department of Energy, spent a week with colleagues touring a former nuclear testing site about 65 miles north of Las Vegas. Between 1951 and 1957, the U.S.[Read More…]
Recently there has been much discussion about the teaching of US history. In the past and perhaps slightly less so in the present, the full story of our history and of the founding fathers hasn’t been presented. The founders’ inspirational and impressive accomplishments have been highlighted. The fact that many of the founders were slave owners was downplayed or ignored.[Read More…]
by Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo On October 21, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced the issuance of a military order designating six prominent Palestinian human rights groups as ‘terrorist organizations’. Gantz claimed that they are secretly linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a socialist political group that Israel considers, along with most Palestinian political[Read More…]
In recent months, hardly a day goes by when the Japanese media, as well as their Western counterparts, don’t comment on the increasingly dangerous security situation surrounding Japan. Needless to say, the two nations identified as responsible for the increased danger are China and North Korea. But are they really the cause? It is certainly true that North Korea continues[Read More…]
From Pink Floyd’s song Eclipse from the 1973 album ‘ Dark Side of the Moon’ it ends with ” There is no dark side of the moon really… It’s ALL dark!” So it is with our current nation, the republic that is supposed to stand for true democracy, rotted to the core by this flavor of Neo Nazi Fascism. How[Read More…]
Tamil Nation existed until the British conquered Sri Lanka [then called Ceylon] and amalgamated the Sinhala Nation in the South with the Tamil Nation in the North and East in 1833. Before that Jaffna Kingdom was ruled by Tamil Kings. There are several historical records to prove this fact. The British in 1948 gave independence to Sri Lanka [Ceylon] without[Read More…]
Gautam Navlakha, nearly 70, is one of the oldest of the Bhima Koregaon arrestees, who was shifted to the “Anda Circle” (high security) from the barracks on October 12, 2021. Additionally, his telephone calls to me and his lawyers, his lifeline to the outside world, have been discontinued on the pretext that physical mulaquats have resumed in jail. I, his[Read More…]
The Corona crisis was becoming more dangerous with every passing day. At that time, I was living in my dormitory in Moscow. I was planning to come to India in March 2020 to attend Holi. By the time I started to look for flights, the crisis had already changed travel policies. Two weeks quarantine upon arrival with very less clarity[Read More…]
One of the major accusations against the historians in India is that of neglecting and ignoring the role of the marginalised in the freedom struggle. Most of the time, we were ‘informed’ that there were some ‘heroes’ and ‘villain’ of the freedom movement and then there were historians fighting the ‘political battle’ of ‘history’ and interestingly all of them belonged[Read More…]
At last that day has arrived for which lakhs of farmers were undergoing trials with patience and resolute determination for the past one and a half year. The Prime Minister himself had to announce the acceptance of their most prominent demands. This announcement was listened most attentively by the peasants of the country and all the working people sympathetic to[Read More…]
Seizure of books before publication is a worst restriction than pre-censorship, which is not permitted under fundamental rights of our Constitution. But it happened recently in Telangana. Right to think, right to write, right to read and right to publish are significant components of freedom of speech and expression which cannot be deprived of without approved constitutional grounds. Prohibition of[Read More…]
by Thomas Klikauer and Norman Simms In 2021, Germany’s population is about 84 million. A total of 73.9 million people in Germany could be vaccinated and a Covid-19 vaccine is available to them. Yet by the middle of September 2021, only 55.3 million Germans have been vaccinated at least once (66%). This means that there are over 18 million Germans[Read More…]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi finally apologized to the nation when he announced on TV to repeal three Farm laws that he vociferously defended for the past year saying “Today, I apologize if some farmers did not understand what we wanted to do through the farm laws. We have decided to repeal the three farm laws. We will withdraw all these three[Read More…]
When Kingsley Amis encountered the works of D. H. Lawrence, he was left unimpressed by yet another great denouncer and missionary the English send “themselves to tell them they are crass, gross, lost, dead, mad and addicted to unnatural vice.” With little charity, Amis suggested leaving the didactic novelist on “on his pinnacle, inspiring, unapproachable and unread.” Leaving aside matters[Read More…]
Without radical action, there is no “reforming” ingrained issues of supremacy and racism in the US Image: Several hundred people march on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn on Friday to protest the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse by a Wisconsin jury. (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News) Upon watching the news of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict on CNN with my family in Amman,[Read More…]
The implications of the Baghuz Massacre should deeply underscore the integrity, morality, and vital importance of WikiLeaks and its heroic publisher and political prisoner Julian Assange. The Baghuz Massacre was a failed cover-up by the United States. WikiLeaks is the journalistic enterprise that shines a spotlight on the egregious crimes of states. Assange is imprisoned under tortuous conditions because he[Read More…]
Introduction: The Hindutva school has been in power since 2014. It wants to rule India forever. Actually it was never out of power in another sense of the concept, power. As an organization–the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)– that came into existence in 1925 was controlling many nerve centers of India’s socio-spiritual structures of the Hindu system. Ideological browbeating of Muslims[Read More…]
During 1963-68 the USA was shaken by assassinations of its three most promising and popular leaders. The overall impact was in terms of a big loss to forces of peace and civil rights, and a boost to forces of foreign aggression and domestic injustice. The three lives lost were those of President John F. Kennedy followed by the loss 5[Read More…]
Our farmers know the way, go the way and show the way! Thanks to their relentless struggle and their great sacrifices, for all of us – the three anti-farmer laws have finally been repealed. For more than a year now – with blood, sweat, toil and tears, their protest has continued unceasingly. In heat and cold, in the pouring rain[Read More…]
The announcement for repealing the three notorious farm laws that were passed by Parliament, by the Prime Minister is definitely a big victory for the farmers movement and those who have been protesting against these unjust laws for the last one year. The government failed to the extent that BJP lost one of its oldest allies Akali Dal at that[Read More…]
Dear Shri Yogendra Yadav, Let me first convey my solidarity and compliments to you and your compatriot farmers for the historic victory against what can be termed as an “anti-people”, undemocratic attempt on the part of today’s political elite to suppress dissent and take unilateral decisions! In a way, the farmers’ victory shows that no power on the earth should[Read More…]
The government has decided to repeal all the three agricultural laws. The government will also have to clarify its role regarding MSP. This is a great achievement of an unprecedented peaceful movement. On this decision of the government, Rakesh Tikait has said that the agitation will not be withdrawn immediately, let’s wait for the day when the agricultural laws will[Read More…]
She hesitated and fumbled, vacillated and dithered, When the Magistrate announced, “go for ADR, counseling and mediation”, MeeLord, he promised he will not beat me when my parents intervened, she squeaked, Though I may be naïve and inept to speak, yet I must tell you, He assured he will not hit me when the neighbors intruded, but violence never stopped,[Read More…]
Expectations for the 2021 COP26 climate summit were always low. They had dimmed even further by the time the prominent climate activist Vanessa Nakate of Uganda spoke from the main stage on the Glasgow conference’s next-to-last day. Nakate chided her audience for sleepwalking toward catastrophe: “We see business leaders and investors flying into COP on private jets. We see them[Read More…]
by Thomas Klikauer & Meg Young By early November 2021, Germany’s Corona infection numbers reached new highs. Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) registered 40,000 new infections within 24 hours, the 7-day average climbed to 30,000, the 7-day “incidence” (infection rate) to 232.1 – that measures infections per 100,000 people. German officials use simple numbers – they are not percentages. This infection rate[Read More…]
Fanon had written that the colonized belonged to a higher cognitive category than the colonizer for a simple reason: The colonized have to be able to think of themselves and their masters as human whereas the colonizer thinks of his subjects as merely “things” or chattel. I have thought about this with regard to two peoples with whom I have[Read More…]
Instances of disrespect shown to the national flag, constitution and the National Anthem, prompted parliament to enact prevention of insults to the National Honour Act, 1971. The said Act stipulates that whoever in public place or in any other place within public view burns, mutilates, defaces, defiles, disfigures, destroys, tramples upon or otherwise shows disrespect to or brings into contempt[Read More…]
I watched Vir Das’ performance with a sense of awe. His words were pure poetry, poignant and powerful. He had chosen each word carefully, with precision and perfection in every word, the essence of those words deeply disturbing yet patriotic. The video was equally communicative, and the loud applause followed by an eery silence at the end was extremely impactful,[Read More…]
To Shri Sushil Chandra Chief Election Commissioner Shri Rajiv Kumar Election Commissioner Shri A C Pandey Election Commissioner Dear S/Shri Sushil Chandra, Rajiv Kumar and Pandey, A Press release by PMO on November 18, 2021 (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1772883) indicates that the Prime Minister and the Home Minister will be holding the 56th All India DGP Conference at Lucknow during[Read More…]
On November 19 the Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi announced the important decision of repealing three highly controversial farm laws. This decision should be widely welcomed cutting across narrow narrow political divides. The Prime Minister has been full of praise for his government’s farm policies and in fact even for the farm laws even while agreeing to repeal[Read More…]
The Prime Minister of India Mr Narendra Modi announced the Government of India’s decision to repeal all three anti-farmer, pro-corporate black laws first brought in as Ordinances in June 2020. He chose to announce this on Guru Nanak Jayanti. Samyukt Kisan Morcha welcomes this decision and will wait for the announcement to take effect through due parliamentary procedures. If this[Read More…]
Little Muthu was used to her mother returning late and narrating issues and causes that none of her friends mothers are even aware of. She was slowly and steadily understanding the meaning and reason for her mother to be near the oppressed and the needy. This time she closely followed the issue because it involved the rights of a baby[Read More…]
Protesters in Sudan have vowed to escalate demonstrations after the deadliest day since a military coup deposed the country’s civilian-led transitional government last month. Street clashes again shook Khartoum as internet services returned to Sudan on Thursday, a day after 15 protesters were killed in the bloodiest violence since the country’s October 25 coup. At least 39 have been killed since the military[Read More…]
It was Sunday, November 13 in 2016. We had gathered at Holland Park in Surrey to protest against the growing attacks on religious minorities and political dissidents in India under the current right wing Hindu nationalist government in New Delhi. The keynote speaker at the event held by Radical Desi was the visiting[Read More…]
by Shobha Shukla and Bobby Ramakant Medicines which aim to relieve pain and suffering, may cure us of diseases and avert untimely deaths, are at increasing risk of becoming ineffective against disease-causing microbes. Antimicrobial resistance occurs when microbes such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites no longer respond to medicines. This makes common infections harder to treat, more expensive to[Read More…]
There are many news channels both domestic and foreign who propagate that China is facing a lot of trouble due to hike in corona pandemic recently. Most of them do not understand the strategy of China. The reports in Global times CN also use the words “out break” , “resurgence of covid” etc., but their concept is totally different from[Read More…]
On Wednesday, October 20, I joined “Vrede Scheppen,” “Create Peace,” about 25 peace activists from the Netherlands, Germany and Austria at the airbase at Volkel, Netherlands, making a plea for an end to nuclear weapons. This base is home to two Dutch F16 fighter wings and the United States Air Force 703rd Munitions Support Squadron. In violation of international and[Read More…]
New Delhi, November 18, 2021: A Press Conference was organized by The National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) at Press Club today on the betrayal of Delhi Development Authority (DDA) in allotting houses to the families who were residing at Kathputli Colony. Kathputli Colony is majorly a colony of artists of national and international reputation. Around 4,000 families were living[Read More…]
There are several aspects of nature protection to consider. Science is one among them which has been playing a major role to protect nature from all the threats. But a scientific understanding of nature is not only enough to protect nature and its components. There are also a few things that are beyond scientific understanding. Similarly, a close relationship between[Read More…]
The most glorious saga of resistance to British imperialism in pre-independence India comes from the Mysore state of the south, where Tipu Sultan, the son of Hyder Ali, the chief commander of Mysore king Krishnaraja Wodeyar II proved to be the Englishman’s most petrifying dream. Tipu was an agile ruler who made sure that his forces were at the leading[Read More…]
Since the annual U.S. Veterans Day holiday honoring military veterans was just observed on November 11, it seems more than appropriate to suggest the creation of a U.S. Victims Day, just as in a similar effort at truth in labeling, the Defense Department should be renamed the Offensive War Department. For the victims of American terrorism far outnumber the American[Read More…]
When the leaders of more than 100 nations gathered in Glasgow for the U.N. climate conference last week, there was much discussion about the disastrous effect of climate change on the global environment. There was, however, little awareness of its likely political impact on the current world order that made such an international gathering possible. World orders are deeply rooted global systems[Read More…]
During a meeting with the French President Emmanuel Macron held in Paris on Wednesday, Brazil’s former President Lula da Silva denounced that malnutrition, hunger, and poverty have increased in Brazil since rightist Jair Bolsonaro came to power in January 2019. “A few weeks ago, Bolsonaro was ignored because the French president refused to receive him at the government headquarters. Today, Lula[Read More…]
A new freely downloadable book Today the world is facing several threats, and to avoid them we need to act. The greatest threats are catastrophic climate change and thermonuclear war, but a large-scale global famine also has to be considered. I would like to announce the publication of a new book, in which these problems are discussed The book may[Read More…]
November 19, Friday is Guru Nanak Jayanti. The great saints of Bhakti movement combined in their personality and work very precious aspects of social reform and deep spirituality. Their message of social reform was often much ahead of their times and the strength of deep spirituality was needed to take this forward. When confronting tyrants and oppressors Guru Nanak and[Read More…]
A two-day seminar cum webinar convened by the World Buddhist Culture Trust brought together a select group of academics and researchers as well as concerned citizens to discuss what is “human mind”, its descriptions as portrayed in various spiritual texts, its functions in tandem with other faculties and problems facing humanity. The elusive “mind”, it was noted, has been sought[Read More…]
We must continue to demand that international climate negotiations focus on the experiences of those most affected by the climate crisis and their solutions to mitigating it while ensuring that those who speak out against climate-damaging activities are not subjected to repression or violence. COP26 ended last weekend and with it, hopes that the negotiations would meaningfully address the needs of[Read More…]
The only breakthrough that can be ascribed to the virtual meeting between the US and Chinese presidents, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, on Monday / Tuesday is that there has been an easing of visa restrictions on the accredited journalists of the two countries. But here too, a caveat must be added, namely, that “a three-point consensus on their visa policies” was[Read More…]
The role of the parliamentarian, historically, is one of service. The desire to hold two jobs, or more, suggests that such service is severely qualified. In the quotient of democracy and representation, the MP who is ready to tend to the affairs of others is unlikely to focus on the voter. I represent you, but I also represent my client[Read More…]
by Vijay Prashad and Zoe Alexandra Two major gains took place at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) in Glasgow, Scotland, which concluded on November 13: the first was that there would be another COP in 2022 in Egypt, and the second was that the world leaders expressed their aspiration to keep global temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius alive.[Read More…]
After more than two weeks of negotiations during the United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, diplomats from almost 200 nations finally agreed on two major points: ramp up the fight against climate change and help at-risk countries prepare. Specifically, governments agreed to meet again next in 2022 with more robust plans to slash carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent by 2030,[Read More…]
The revelation, a few years ago, that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been conducting mass surveillance on millions of Americans has reignited the conversation on governments’ misconduct and their violation of human rights and privacy laws. Until recently, however, Israel has been spared due criticism, not only for its unlawful spying methods on the Palestinians but also for[Read More…]
Overview On the 8th of October 2021, France organized a Montpellier conference, claiming a new approach to its relationship with Africa. The conference took place in the background of growing anti-French sentiments across several Francophone West African states. For example, the new military junta in Mali indicated their intention to seek military support from Russia, a role traditionally reserved for[Read More…]
The corona crisis has shown us a stark reality that was otherwise ignored for a long time. Our health systems and healthcare facilities are inadequate, overly expensive, and largely out of reach. When someone in our families falls sick then we get bothered about familial health. Running between doctors, pharmacies and pathologies our budgets get imbalanced, yet we do not[Read More…]
“The President’s been shot!” he shouted, clamoring his way down the stairs in the dorm. The upper-classman! I was making my way to the third floor, and he was rushing down, letting our small world know—startled, young faces peeping from behind closed doors, aghast and in wonder. I got to my room, and my 2 freshman roommates were staring[Read More…]
Tens of thousands of supporters of Sri Lanka’s main opposition party rallied in the capital Colombo to protest the nation’s economic woes. This is the first major campaign against Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government since it swept to power last August. Defying heavy sporadic rains, tightened Covid-19 guidelines and court orders, supporters of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya — led[Read More…]
Greta Thurnberg, the famous Swedish climate change activist, summed up that the deal reached at COP26 at Glasgow on Saturday was “very, very vague” with several loopholes. She told the media in Glasgow that the pact only “succeeded in watering down the blah, blah, blah”. “There is still no guarantee that we will reach the Paris Agreement. The text that it is now,[Read More…]
“If you build it, they will come,” said Kevin Costner in the Field of Dreams. In Cuba, they didn’t come. Dissidents on the island, with their U.S. backers, had been working feverishly for months to turn the unprecedented July 11 protests into a crescendo of government opposition on November 15. They built a formidable structure, with sophisticated social media (including an[Read More…]
The Hindi film industry in Bombay has contributed immensely in the growth of peace, solidarity and secular nationalism, and progressive popular culture in India. The actors, directors, singers, artists, producers and writers of Bollywood have challenged power and stood behind people and their citizenship rights by upholding highest traditions of art and cinema. The market driven commercial culture motivated by[Read More…]
Himachal Pradesh has been experiencing several adversities in recent times including erratic weather conditions. The year 2021 started with a prolonged drought spell and unseasonal, widespread forest fires. After this there have been several spells of very heavy rain concentrated in a short span, sometimes accompanied by hailstorm, which have caused extensive damage to seasonal crops and horticultural produce from[Read More…]
Who is America’s god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we speak proudly of One Nation under God, but in the aggregate, this country doesn’t serve or worship Jesus Christ, or Allah, or any other god[Read More…]
As sectarian nationalism is becoming more assertive and dominant the narrative about our freedom struggle and how we got freedom are being twisted to suit the currently surging religious nationalism. So far communalism was constructed by the communal vision of medieval history in particular. To add on to that now the narrations related to the period of freedom movement are[Read More…]
Mannu Bhandari, the eminent and popular Hindi writer is no more. She passed away on Monday November 15 at Gurugram, near Delhi, at the age of 90. Apart from her countless readers, she will be missed by many teachers and students, particularly those at Miranda House, Delhi University where she taught Hindi literature for a long time. She won early[Read More…]
Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden in a virtual meeting on Tuesday discussed strategic and fundamental issues on the development of bilateral relations. The first face-to-face virtual meeting between the top two leaders lasted more than three hours. They opened their talks on a friendly note. Chinese observers said that the meeting will inject certainty into the[Read More…]
Refugee crises are often manufactured by governments. They can be done at the source: war, famine, rapacious institutions. They can also be manufactured by the refusal of governments to accept those seeking asylum, sanctuary and refuge. The latter is very much in evidence in Europe: governments of the European Union are staring down desperate humans keen to travel into the[Read More…]
To Shri Rajiv Gauba Cabinet Secretary Govt of IndiA Dear Shri Gauba, I have come across disturbing reports (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/sand-minerals-mining-modi-govt-private-sector-7585816/) that the government is making moves once again to permit private companies to mine and trade atomic minerals located in the beach sands of AP, T. Nadu and Kerala. It appears that this step is a part of a 60-point “Action Plan”[Read More…]
Climate vulnerable countries were bitterly disappointed with the watering down of language on coal and lack of finance to cover permanent losses from climate change they are already suffering. A last-minute amendment to the Glasgow climate change deal further watered down wording on phasing out fossil fuels, leading to dismay from countries on the frontline of climate breakdown. Earlier during[Read More…]
One of the most controversial fixes for global warming is the use of woody biomass, cutting trees, burning trees to achieve “carbon neutral” status in the worldwide battle to conquer climate change/global warming. The term carbon neutral (which is not the same as zero carbon and not a scientific term) when used to distinguish a plan to reduce greenhouse gas[Read More…]
This past weekend former US Army General and Trump ally Michael Flynn spoke at a Reawaken America rally in Texas. Flynn, a right wing conspiracy theorist, was ‘ front and center’ with the election fraud AKA Big Lie and of course the January 6th insurrection riot. One needs to wonder how many other ex military officers and lower level personnel[Read More…]
Nearly three years ago, as US-led coalition forces trapped a remnant of the Islamic State (IS) in a small enclave near the Syrian town of Baghuz, the US military committed a horrific atrocity. As Air Force officers watched the scene via drone cameras in real time, US warplanes murdered at least 80 unarmed women and children with 500- and 2,000-pound[Read More…]
Image: Masar Badil–Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement Now that news about Masar Badil is beginning to surface, some Palestinians and their allies may be a bit confused. How does this movement differ from initiatives out there, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) and the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), that have already achieved some traction on the international[Read More…]
BUJ and DUJ Condemn Arrest of Journalists in Tripura; Welcome Bail; Demand Withdrawal of all Cases and End to Intimidation of Journalists covering Tripura violence The Brihanmumbai Union of Journalists (BUJ) and the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) have strongly condemned the arrest of Samriddhi Sakunia and Swarna Jha, two journalists from HW News Network, by Tripura police on Nov[Read More…]
To: The Hon’ble Chief Justice of India Supreme Court of India Tilak Marg New Delhi-110001 Subject: PENDING CONSTITUTIONAL MATTERS Respected Hon’ble Chief Justice of India, We, the undersigned, are concerned citizens from various fields, approaching you regarding non-listing as also pending adjudication in the Hon’ble Supreme Court on several urgent matters affecting citizen’s fundamental rights, as also matters[Read More…]
To Shri Rajiv Gauba Cabinet Secretary Govt of India Shri Rajiv Gauba, I understand (https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/centre-brings-ordinance-to-extend-tenure-of-cbi-ed-chiefs-up-to-5-years-121111400884_1.html) that the government has issued an Ordinance extending the term of the Director of CBI and Director of Enforcement to five years. If such a decision has been taken, in my view, it is an imprudent one. Making the benefit of the extended term of the[Read More…]
Abstract Kerala, the South-Western State in India with a population of 35 million was in the global limelight for successfully flattening the covid curve and for the lower case-fatality ratio (CFR) during the first year of the pandemic. Ten months down the line, the State is again in the media glare for successfully implementing the covid vaccination drive. Kerala’s vaccination[Read More…]
Hundreds of protesters marched from the Thai capital Bangkok’s Pathumwan intersection to the German embassy on Sunday to submit a petition in response to a recent court ruling which determined that calls for reform of the institution was akin to treason. It was the largest protest the country has seen in months. Media reports said: The demonstrators gathered in response[Read More…]
Words can provide sharp traps, fettering language and caging definitions. They can also speak to freedom of action and permissiveness. At COP26, that permissiveness was all the more present in the haggling ahead of what would become the Glasgow Climate Pact. COP26, or the UN Climate Change Conference UK 2021, had a mission of “Uniting the world to tackle climate[Read More…]
Image of the recent destruction of Hindu Temple in Comilla, Bangladesh. Source: The Free Press Journal Image of destruction of Muslim properties during the 2020 anti-Muslim riot in Delhi, India. Source: Al Jazeera In Bangladesh, former East Pakistan where bulk of Pakistan’s Hindus belonged once, violence against its minority, mainly the Hindus (9% or 14.7 million of its total population[Read More…]
As the world prepares to depart 2021 and head into 2022, it is clear that the United States is a declining economic power and that China continues its rapid upward trajectory. While homelessness and poverty sully the debt-laden US, China has eliminated extreme poverty. What is the American response to economic disparities domestically? Institute a guaranteed minimum income? Andrew Wang[Read More…]
In a provocative recent essay in the New York Times, the political historian Jon Grinspan places the distemper currently afflicting American politics in a broader context. In essence, he contends that we’ve been here before. Grinspan describes the period from the 1860s to 1900 as an “age of acrimony,” with the nation as a whole “embroiled in a generation-long, culturewide war over democracy.” Today,[Read More…]
Only a National Pension Plan can provide a suitable and secure financial arrangement for retirees. Fortunately, Social Security already has the framework for a National Pension Plan. Financial constraints indicate that Social Security (SS) has a precarious future. Ignored is that Social Security history shows built-in failures that cannot be constantly repaired. Only a National Pension Plan can provide a suitable[Read More…]
“Climate change” describes a change in the average conditions — such as temperature and rainfall — in a region over a long period of time. Earth’s climate is always changing over long periods of time and has been hotter and cooler than it is now, but the pace of change has sped up significantly in recent decades. Scientists are deeply concerned about the changes they’ve observed since the Industrial Revolution.[Read More…]
As if we needed any more evidence of the sorry state of our political system, the long-running battle over the ‘Build Back Better’ bill has provided it. As Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out, an early version of this bill included many proposals that would help Americans live with a sense of security. In addition, these proposals were strongly supported by[Read More…]
The just ended climate summit COP26 has largely disappointed the people around the world in taking bold steps to avert rapid global warming. Despite the urgency to halt catastrophic climate change, the pact approved at the end of the summit, compromised continued use in coming decades instead of phasing out coal and other fossil fuels agreed to their. The ambitious [Read More…]
If policies of crony capitalism, plunder of people and imperialist exploitation dominate the economic regime of a country, then along with the overall decline of the economy it is inevitable that workers of that country will have to suffer a lot. In such a situation workers and their unions will also have to assert themselves to protect their rights but[Read More…]
The UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team helped to push the public towards accepting the COVID narrative, restrictions and lockdowns. It is now working on ‘nudging’ people towards further possible restrictions or at least big changes in their behaviour in the name of ‘climate emergency’. From frequent news stories and advertisements to soap opera storylines and government announcements, the message about[Read More…]
Of all the speeches and political grandstanding at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26), the words of Mexican President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, were the most profound and least hypocritical. Lopez Obrador raged against the “technocrats and neoliberals” – world leaders who hold the future of humanity in their hands. This was a direct reference to[Read More…]
The COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow has failed to requisitely respond to the worsening Climate Crisis with national action pledges promising a catastrophic plus 2.4 degrees Centigrade temperature rise. However COP26 has at least identified the worst culprits. Thus, unveiled at COP26, the 2022 Climate Change Performance Index has ranked climate criminal Australia worst in the world out[Read More…]
Human history as cultural history We need to reform our teaching of history so that the emphasis will be placed on the gradual growth of human culture and knowledge, a growth to which all nations and ethnic groups have contributed. A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which presents many aspects of[Read More…]
North and East Tamils traditional & historical homeland In Sri Lanka for the last 72 years, the intent and goal of all Sri Lankan Governments and Buddhist Clergy [without exception] have been to secure the Island as a SINHALA BUDDHIST STATE. The current Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapakshe is latest and very active leader who is determined to achieve this[Read More…]
The Assam Human Rights Commission closed on 10.3.2021 the case filed by Hirak Jyoti Bora,former General Secretary,Cotton College Students’ Union and now a member of the Assamese nationalist party AJP ,against the allegedly unprovoked police firing during the night of 12 December 2019 in Assam that had killed Sam Stafford and four other youthful protesters against the passing of CAA.[Read More…]
Thanks to a Vancouver-based body of literary awards, the Dhahan Prize for Punjabi Literature, Balbir Madhopuri’s Mitti Bol Peye has received this year’s award in the “novel” category. Based on the Dalit resistance movement in Punjab, the novel is a powerful commentary on the oppression of the so-called untouchables in a caste-based Indian society. The story of Gora, a Dalit[Read More…]
Great solidarity songs never die. There will always be more struggles where these will be hummed and sung to strengthen resolve and unity. This is certainly true of the five great songs from classic Hindi films we discuss here. Decades after these were created, these songs still continue to inspire. Songs of solidarity often tend to be sung together and[Read More…]
On September 20, letters began to arrive at eight Cuban municipal or provincial government headquarters announcing the holding of “peaceful” marches on November 15 by a group called Archipiélago. The motivation for these marches was a call for change. The letter was not a formal request to occupy the busiest streets of some cities in Cuba, but rather a notification by the group[Read More…]
The present world is a world based on high levels of glaring inequality, domination, violence and injustice (IDVI), all these four serious problems being related to each other at various levels and responsible for most of the distress. Such a world is now additionally faced by a very serious threat of climate change (and other related environmental problems) which even[Read More…]
by Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young Ten years ago, one of Germany’s most violent post-war Neo-Nazi killing squad, the so-called National-Socialist Underground or NSU-network came to light when their caravan exploded and their Neo-Nazi hideout was set on fire to eliminate all evidence. This occurred in the former East-German city of Zwickau. Recently, a secret government file on the NSU was leaked. The 150 page report talks about Neo-Nazis engaging in military-style war[Read More…]
Image: Samidoun España activist Jaldia Abubakra — capture from video “Masar Badil on the March in Madrid” “The history of the world is always weak people fighting strong people. Of weak people who have a correct case fighting strong people who use their strength to exploit the weak.” — Ghassan Kanafani Masar Badil, Conference of the Alternative Palestinian Path: Towards a new revolutionary commitment, was[Read More…]
As the pandemic has demonstrated, global supply chains with multiple dependencies are extremely fragile and collapse easily. This has been particularly the case for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), that has seen the prices of medicine skyrocketing. The need of the hour is not only to build alternative and localized supply chains which are also environmentally sustainable, but also to draw[Read More…]
In recent years, the Tamil cinema has seen a flurry of films mainstreaming Dalit narratives that bare the underbelly of a regressive caste driven society. As Dr. Biju, the Malayalam director of “Veyil Marangal” fame had posted on Facebook that the Tamil filmgoers, unlike their Malayalam counterparts, receive anti-caste narratives with great fervour and essential gravitas. Written and directed by T[Read More…]
Letter to the Prime Minister on the occasion of the Janjatiya Gaurav Divas (national Tribal Day) on November 15, 2021 To Shri Narendra D Modi Prime Minister Dear Shri Modi, Janjatiya Gaurav Divas on November 15, 2021 The Centre and the States should “walk the talk”! I understand (https://indianexpress.com/article/india/pm-modi-to-lead-first-tribal-day-celebrations-7620370/) that you will be leading the first-ever Janjatiya Gaurav Divas on[Read More…]
Last week, at the UN climate negotiations, the International Energy Agency announced that pledges made thus far could hold warming to 1.8 or 1.9°C. Yet an investigation published on Sunday by The Washington Post found that countries’ pledges are based on faulty data. And a report released on Tuesday by Climate Action Tracker, a research group that monitors action on greenhouse gas emissions reductions, found[Read More…]
Condemn the firing on fishworkers by Pakistan’s maritime security agency that resulted in the death of Shridhar Ramesh Chamre –Put an end to the violence inflicted on fishworkers by armed forces On Saturday, the 6th November 2021, around 4 pm off the coast of Gujarat, Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) troops converged on two Indian fishing boats. The Pakistan government[Read More…]
Prominent cartoonist Satish Acharya’s illustration in early October provided quite the insights into the recent gruesome developments in Kashmir. The piece features Shraddha Bindru, a Kashmiri Pundit, who’s holding the body of her murdered father, addressing the unknown killer –coward. The cartoon does justice to the mainstream media’s portrayal of the ‘Muslim terrorist’. The bearded man with a gun in[Read More…]
Rarely is the pragmatist admired. Be it in policy or politics, such a figure induces suspicion, a concern that principles will have to be subordinated to broader goals. True dreamers and visionaries, for all their glaring faults, can take the accolades; the pragmatists can be given lower pegging. These differences have proven stark with the late FW de Klerk, South[Read More…]
As the world watches what transpires at COP26, the United Nations climate summit taking place this week in Glasgow, the U.N. has blasted governments and businesses for utterly failing to meet their climate obligations. There’s a sense that time is running out and radical change is the only hope–including a sweeping transformation of industrial agricultural practices to more sustainable and regenerative ones. At the same time, Indigenous peoples from[Read More…]
Untimely snowfall, migration of workers following terror attacks and the overall political uncertainty has added to the woes of apple farmers in the Kashmir Valley, already reeling from the impact of the Covid pandemic. The untimely snow on October 23-25, has caused extensive damage caused to apple trees resulting in destruction of at least 40 percent of the fruit. The districts[Read More…]
Mark Carney, Chief Financer Advisor to COP26 & Glasgow Financial Alliance (GFANZ) COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland is where the petal should hit the metal and all the foot-dragging must stop, but it won’t. “Just follow the money!”, as the old saying goes. In this case follow Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England,[Read More…]
On the sidelines of the climate change COP 26 meetings, a lot of background information came out in the limelight. The information is not new, would have been known to those working in the field for a long time but hasn’t received the attention it should. It is no doubt true that the Climate Change agenda is being driven by[Read More…]
For the last ten days I have opened the COP26 daily programme website each morning to search for the events that may interest me. And I have been overwhelmed by the deluge that hits me. They run mostly like this: Presidency Event: The role of parliaments in climate and nature policy, Meeting Room 4; Multilateral Assessment (MA) working group Part[Read More…]
Think of it this way: what we don’t know will hurt us. And water — yes, water — is an example of just that. Even at a time of such angry political disputes, you might imagine that, in a wealthy country like the United States, it would still be possible to agree that clean water should be not just a right, but[Read More…]
Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori* It is never sweet to die. Death ends all. There is no sweetness in dying. Sweetness is only for the living. Is there a Heaven? Was there ever a Heaven? Or, is this all a make- believe by those who seek the ultimate gift from mankind, their lives, to perpetrate hate and[Read More…]
“There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.” Last week (2021-11-04), Independent Jewish Voices (IJV – Canada) presented a webinar (“From IDF to IJV”) telling the story of three Jewish members who were former Israeli Defence Force (IDF) participants, but over the years and through similar yet varying experiences, ended up working with IJV Canada. The host for the[Read More…]
A team of Congressman Tom McClintock’s constituents visited him on 8 November to register dissent against US Ambassador Atul Keshap’s recent meeting with the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary with a violent and powerful presence in India. McClintock, a Republican from the Greater Sacramento area of California, spent the better part of an hour hearing the group’s[Read More…]
The members of Punjabi Press Club of British Columbia (PPCBC) have unanimously condemned the continued incarceration of the journalist and author under inhuman conditions in the Indian jail. Gautam Navlakha was arrested on trumped up charges in April 2020, and is currently lodged in jail near Mumbai. His only crime is daring to question the powerful, and always standing up[Read More…]
‘Cheering for any team is not illegal’: Justice Deepak Gupta. But Sedition cases booked against three students in UP simply for hailing the winning team Virat Kohli and Mohammed Rizwan, Captains of Indian and Pakistan cricket teams share a hug at the end of the T20 World Cup game in Dubai on October 24, 2021, while Babar Azam exults at[Read More…]
The white capitalist cannibal has always fed on the world’s black peoples. White capitalist imperialist society is profoundly and unmistakably racist. Walter Rodney White supremacy and racism cannot be dissociated from capitalism. It was racism and white supremacy that provided the cultural justifications for slavery and the concomitant slave trade, for European colonial expansion and imperialism, without which capitalism[Read More…]
Desert travel writing tends to evoke feelings of excitement, enthusiasm and surprises. In an article in The Times Literary Supplement, Caroline Eden wrote that deserts “offer a cultural and geographical otherness that suits travel writing.” Calling Ethiopian-born British military officer Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands “a classic of travel literature,” Eden quotes his words on desert adventuring: “Your morale improves…the hypocritical[Read More…]
A seven-member team of Ganatantrik Adhikar Surakhya Sangathan, Odisha had visited Semiliguda and Patangi block of Koraput district for two days on October 31 and November 01. The objective of this fact finding was to know about the reason of massive arrests happened after Public Hearing held on 22nd September for Mali Parbat bauxite mining of HINDALCO. The team firstly[Read More…]
Former Australian prime ministers tend to be less conspicuous in public life than their counterparts in other countries. Occasionally, they make an appearance at political functions and events to remind us that they are still alive, their estate still breathing, their lawyers still working. For the most part, the pronouncements are less than profound, let alone relevant. But there are[Read More…]
In the town of Bolpur, in the land of Tagore’s Shantiniketan, there lived a 28-year-old Raju Thandar from Dalit (Dom) Community at his in-laws’ house at Muchipara/ Darjipara with his wife and a girl child. Raju was a native of Durgapur in Burdwan district, 60 km away from Bolpur. Since 2006, Raju settled in Bolpur and made his living through[Read More…]
It is becoming increasingly clearer by the day, and confirmed further by COP 26 deliberations, that the climate change crisis cannot be resolved without accompanying strong commitment to peace and justice. At a time when it has become increasingly important to explore all sources of potential reduction of GHG emissions, how can we expect to succeed when possibly[Read More…]
Facebook’s announcement has implications about digital life and work—provided it can attract younger users and gamer skeptics and overcome the hate speech and disinformation problems that could still plague Zuckerberg’s vision. On October 28, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched a new company brand, Meta, at the annual Facebook Connect event. According to Facebook, “Meta… brings together our apps and technologies under one[Read More…]
Those who are not familiar with how Israel, particularly the Israeli military occupation of Palestine, is actively and irreversibly damaging the environment might reach the erroneous conclusion that Tel Aviv is at the forefront of the global fight against climate change. The reality is the exact opposite. In his speech at the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow, Israel’s[Read More…]
If Americans could only imagine what it was like for the citizens of thirteen much smaller nations to have been bombed and invaded by the American veterans who are celebrated on Veterans Day in the USA every November 11. How would Americans take its own countryside being high altitude carpet bombed the way Laos, South Vietnam, North Vietnam and Cambodia[Read More…]
President Gotabaya’s latest Presidential Task Force headed by a convicted, jailed and pardoned Gnanasara Thero who is the founder of Bodu Bala Sena {Peoples’ Power Force] is entrusted to “Make a study of the implementation of the concept of “One Country One Law” within Sri Lanka and prepare a draft Act for the said purpose, to study the drafted Acts[Read More…]
In the early days of World War II, activism was in a state of suspended animation on the political front in India. Nearly the whole of the Congress leadership was in jail and their followers were lying low. British forces had suffered reverses everywhere; they had been driven out of Europe and thrown out of their far Eastern[Read More…]
Observations indicate that instances of vigilante groups taking the law into their own hands for various reasons connected with inter-faith matters, are on the increase. At the same time, terrorism is a subject of daily reportage. Both these matters affect everybody directly or indirectly, and bear discussion. ‘V’ for Vigilantism A vigilante is “a member of a self-appointed group of[Read More…]
As the intensity of communalism is on the rise the use of communal symbols, icons for present political goals are on the rise. Icons are also projected and highlighted to give the messages of the agenda of particular politics. As the fulcrum of Indian politics is tilting more towards ‘divisive politics’, more and more political personalities/parties are resorting to this[Read More…]
by Kumi Naidoo and Richard von Weizsäcker The most outrageous injustice is that the same people who lack access to water and sanitation are usually the ones most vulnerable to the effects of climate change—and the least responsible for causing it in the first place. As the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) is swiftly moving to its conclusion on Friday, climate[Read More…]
The stunning disclosure late Tuesday in Brussels that the US is working on a “road map” for according recognition to the Taliban Government will take a lot of people by surprise but it could have been expected sooner rather than later. The US has a consistent record of rethinking its strategies once it realises that the policy has landed in[Read More…]
A Government Order (GO) is an administrative decision of the government regarding a policy, programme or official activity. The Right to Information Act 005 under Section 4 mandates governments to maintain all their records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner and the form which facilitates the right to information under the Act and facilitate access to such records. Public[Read More…]
Desperate times call for desperate measures, as the saying goes. As scientists, policymakers and politicians keep one increasingly startled eye on climate change’s ticking clock and the other on the ongoing, upwardly mobile trend in greenhouse gas emissions, it’s no wonder possible solutions that have been long dismissed as fringe slices of science fiction are making their way into the mainstream. Enter[Read More…]
When Surya Sen sacrificed his life at the age of only 40 for the freedom of India in 1934, he had already succeeded in inspiring a very large number of youth to devote their life to the freedom movement. Although he had been subjected to extremely painful torture before being hanged on 12 January, he was completely unwavering in his[Read More…]
by Mandy Smithberger and William D. Hartung Even as Congress moves to increase the Pentagon budget well beyond the astronomical levels proposed by the Biden administration, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has outlined three different ways to cut $1 trillion in Department of Defense spending over the next decade. A rational defense policy could yield far more in[Read More…]
The author is growing in disasters. Her journey is sad and strange. Years later, she portrays it in her book Rumours of Spring. The reading of the book is delightful. It comes from the tragedies that are naturally expected in the writings of a woman, if she chooses Kashmir as her subject. Farah Bashir does justice even to those expectations.[Read More…]
This is a fascinating and beautiful book, one of those gems you serendipitously discover and shake your head at your good fortune. Although it is new and I received it as a gift, it reminds me of a few books I have discovered over the years while rummaging through used bookstores that have startled me into a new perspective on[Read More…]
As the global climate summit COP26 drags out to its miserable end this week in Glasgow, Scotland, the major capitalist powers and the banks and corporations that call the shots in national and world politics have largely failed in their efforts to use the summit to provide a semblance of “progress” in resolving the global climate emergency. The rival powers[Read More…]
The increasing emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuels should be very widely welcomed, but the entire environmental issue cannot be reduced to just this. It is much wider. However our systems have suffered often from a one-point approach to solving complex problems, or may be they are not yet capable of a holistic approach. In the present[Read More…]
On 28 October, over a 100 interns at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhopal went on a day and night hunger strike. They were demanding that the hospital management pay them the Rs.1000 for every 8 hours of overtime duty promised to them at the peak of the Covid pandemic earlier this year. A promise that was never[Read More…]
It’s apparent; Climate extremes are real. The last six years have been the hottest years on record. Megafires, polar melting, very severe cyclonic storms and other extreme weather events made half of the world population suffer. The Scientific community has warned the global leaders to take necessary steps to keep temperature rise below 1.5 degree Celsius. Countries have been forced[Read More…]
Wall Street investors have hit the jackpot. Soon they’ll be able to buy, own, and dictate The Commons, public lands, the world of Mother Nature. In fact, a pilot project is already in the works with ecosystems up for sale as Wall-Streeters anxiously prepare to gobble up the valued benefits of Mother Nature. According to the NYSE PR Dept. they’ll[Read More…]
As a baby boomer who had a few neighbors of mine killed in Vietnam AKA ‘ The Shit ‘ as the soldiers called it, veterans celebrations piss me off! Since the Vietnam debacle we have had many other foreign interventions’ that sacrificed American military lives… for no justifiable reasons. Of course, the most heinous one was our illegal and immoral[Read More…]
In a society divided along caste and class lines, violence against the marginalised groups either does not attract the attention of society at large or the oppression per se tends to be seen as normal. The pattern of silence is in favour of the dominant groups. There is no abnormality seen in violence perpetrated by the dominant groups either directly[Read More…]
Note: This article is based on a presentation made on 25 October 2021 at the Congreso de Salud Socioambiental organised by the Instituto de Salud Socioambiental, Rosario, Argentina It is a very fundamental truth that many seem have forgotten in the times we live in. That, most ordinary mortals have no choice except to live with the bodies they are[Read More…]
Immediately after registering its thumping great victory in Delhi elections, Aam Aadmi Party set out to make quick forays into the ideological terrain of its sworn enemy, BJP. Subsequent to oath taking ceremony of CM, Kejrewal and his Council of Ministers, it opened up its own account of political Catholicism to make one more significant entry in its wholesale ledger[Read More…]
In a modest effort to disrupt the global spyware market, the United States announced last week that four entities had been added to its blacklist. On November 3, the US Department of Commerce revealed that it would be adding Israel-based companies NSO Group and Candiru to its entity list “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to[Read More…]
When President Biden first unveiled the Build Back Better agenda, it appeared that this country was on the path to a new war on poverty. In April, he told Congress that “trickle-down economics have never worked” and that it was time to build the economy “from the bottom-up.” This came after the first reconciliation bill of the pandemic included the child tax[Read More…]
Hegemony requires a coordinated mechanism to be in place for a belligerent entity to designate enemies, attack the leader(s) of the designated enemy, control the narrative (i.e., lie), launch unprovoked attacks that murder a citizenry, destroy the economic basis of the named enemy, loot its resources, topple the enemy’s leadership, and replace the leadership with one deemed acceptable to the[Read More…]
Alok Sharma, the President of COP26, the mega make or break climate negotiation event currently underway in Glasgow, in a speech given at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on October 12 warned “Paris promised, Glasgow must deliver.” He ends his opening speech to COP26 on October 31 on a hopeful note saying, “We can launch a decade of ever increasing ambition[Read More…]
Withdraw the charges against the Fact-Finding team and social media users and prosecute the perpetrators of violence in Tripura! On November 3rd, the Tripura Police sent notices to four Delhi based lawyers charging them under several sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). These lawyers, Advocate Ansar Indori, secretary of National Confederation[Read More…]
Single party rule at the centre has come after a gap of around three decades. Three decades ago the roles were in a reverse configuration from the present. The political party that was then in the opposition is in power today. And the party in the opposition today was the sole custodian of power at that time. However, there[Read More…]
If politicians continue to use money as a guide in making decisions, we will lose the battle to save human society and the biosphere from the catastrophic long term effects of climate change. A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book which presents the reasons why we urgently need to reduce the role[Read More…]
Even though the outbreak of the global Covid epidemic seems to be slowing down these days, its ill effects on society and families are now emerging, giving rise to new problems. One of these problems is related to divorced women. The outbreak of Corona has pushed a large number of employees, especially those working in the private sector, into severe[Read More…]
Islam is one of the great religions of the world, whose followers are found in every country and continent. As an egalitarian belief system, it introduced the concepts of universal brotherhood and non-discrimination among Muslims on the ground of sex or race. Islam gave the women fundamental rights and championed all movements to improve the status of women, at a[Read More…]
The Conference of the Parties(COP)-26 started on October 31, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland and will continue till November 12. The main objective of this conference is to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050 so that the earth’s temperature does not exceed 1.5 degree Celsius above the Pre-Industrial Revolution Period temperature by the end of this century to save humanity[Read More…]
As the development model implemented in India in recent decades has involved the displacement of a large number of people, millions have faced eviction and displacement. As the suffering people and those who have come close to them know only too well, the overwhelming majority of displaced people have been denied justice and their rehabilitation effort has been extremely unsatisfactory.[Read More…]
Currently incarcerated under trumped up charges in the world’s so called largest democracy, Sudha Bharadwaj is one of the dozens of scholars and activists locked up in the Indian jails. Bharadwaj, who turned 60 on November 1, is a lawyer who has been advocating for the rights of the poor and marginalized, especially Adivasis or the Indigenous peoples of India[Read More…]
A law enacted by the previous UPA Government in India to provide rural employment guarantee proved to be a significant help in reducing the aggravated distress of the rural poor in pandemic times last year. However while the pandemic related distress had not yet abated, the union government with undue haste reduced the budget for this important program, leading to[Read More…]
And climate change begins . . . “Three or four thousand years ago the gods began a migration from the lakes, forests, rivers, and mountains into the sky, becoming the imperial overlords of nature rather than its essence.” So writes Charles Eisenstein in Sacred Economics, defining a transition in human existence that has finally begun to haunt us — haunting some of us[Read More…]
The US climate envoy John Kerry is getting down to the real business at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow after President Joe Biden has had his photo-ops, made his idiosyncratic public remarks and flew back home. The Xinhua new agency reported that Kerry and the Chinese delegation will “continue their dialogue and exchanges” at Glasgow[Read More…]
During his eventful time in office, US President Donald Trump took much delight in reflecting about the lethal toys of his country’s military, actual or hypothetical. These included a hypersonic capability which, his military advisors had warned, was being mastered by adversaries. Such devices, comprising hypersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, have been touted as opening a new arms[Read More…]
Pope Francis is an excellent communicator! Like his Master Jesus, he also uses stories, real life examples, the burning context and even parables! Gifts are also parables. Jesus illustrates this so powerfully in the widow’s mite! The generosity to give of one’s all! Gifts, we know, speak volumes. We all experience this in our daily lives: the material cost of[Read More…]
For the last five years or so heated discussion on violence committed on minorities in Assam has risen to such a fever-pitch that any plea for a reasonable assessment of the Assamese concerns has been virtually ruled out of court.The Assamese,or a section of them,have been grave violators of human rights.But that by itself should not justify ruling out any[Read More…]
Eva Orner, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker for her movie Taxi to the Dark Side comes up with a burning issue this time through her latest documentary, Burning. That’s about the recurring bushfires happening in Australia which no longer can’t be ignored. The film that had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival -2021 last month will certainly spark[Read More…]
Born 1949 June 1 – Died on 2021 Sep 29 Com.P.Suryanarayana, President, Organisation for Protection of Democratic Rights-OPDR, Andhra Pradesh (AP). Nearly 25 leaders of Girijan, rural poor, teachers, and other organisations paid rich and revolutionary tributes to Com.PSN in an inspiring meeting to pay homage to him held on 10th October 2021 in Srikakulam and that indicates[Read More…]
The PUCL strongly condemns the Tripura Police for registering a FIR dated 03rd November, 2021 under the UAPA and other draconian provision of the IPC against a team of advocates from Delhi, the “Lawyers for Democracy”, for conducting a Fact Finding Enquiry into communal violence incidents in Tripura in mid-end October, 2021. It is clear that the police have[Read More…]
The invocation of UAPA charges against members of a fact-finding team shortly after they released its findings on the communal violence in Tripura, is shocking and condemnable. Besides S. 13 of UAPA (punishment for ‘unlawful activity’), a slew of IPC offences has also been invoked: 153 A and B of IPC (promoting enmity and anti-national activities), 120 B, 503, 504[Read More…]
Review of “First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat” by Christopher W. Shaw. Foreword by Ralph Nader. Open Media Series. City Lights Books. Herodotus said this of the Darius’s Mail Couriers, “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these courageous couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Over a century[Read More…]
by Will Morrow and Alex Lantier In a press conference yesterday, World Health Organisation (WHO) director for Europe Hans Kluge issued an urgent warning: Europe and the republics of the former Soviet Union are now the epicentre of the pandemic. Kluge warned that there could be 500,000 more coronavirus deaths in Europe in just the next three months, beyond the[Read More…]
Waste, sanitation workers and safai karamcharis across the country have been perhaps the worst-hit community among India’s vast unorganized labour force due to the Covid pandemic and repeated lockdown. When the first wave of the pandemic arrived in the summer of 2020, they were left to their cruel fate across the big cities, as thousands of emaciated migrant workers walked[Read More…]
One day, some animals — Tigers, lions, jackals, Zebras, monkeys, camels,…. — Decided to meet and exchange Views on climate change! Tigers and lions said, ‘let us all be united In these times of crises And devise ways To stop deterioration Of our environment condition!’ Each one spoke at length With unabated breadth On the subject for long Till late[Read More…]
The only effective way to control carbon emissions, as well as related problems of pollution and biodiversity loss, is to address “overshoot,” the unconstrained use of energy and material resources well beyond planetary limits, particularly in the richer parts of the world. Since the nineteenth century, human society has experienced extraordinary but uneven economic growth thanks to the energy unleashed[Read More…]
The Glasgow summit on climate change has been a media extravaganza. The ruling elites from all continents cooped up in their national capitals due to the raging pandemic, finally got a break to throw away their masks and take to their private jets to fly off to “Global Britain” to display their leadership qualities. There are some noble exceptions of[Read More…]
In 2009 a commitment was made by rich countries to create an annual fund of 100 billion dollars to help the Global South in climate change mitigation and adaptation by 2020. Leaving aside the loans, the grants provided in the year 2020 under this fund actually amount to just about 16 billion dollars or so. Considering that climate change is[Read More…]
Amid numerous discussions about the future of Ukraine – a country that has been unable to form a single nation in 30 years of independence, and is torn apart by interethnic, linguistic and economic contradictions, Europe should ask itself just what Ukraine really means to it. And the answer will be the same – a buffer zone, because this clearly[Read More…]
I waited almost three months for some acknowledgement, but it never came. Not a bottle of champagne. Not a congratulatory note. Not an email of acknowledgement. Not one media request. Authors wait their whole lives for I-told-you-so moments like these. But mine passed without accolades, awards, or adulation. Being way ahead of the pack is supposed to bring honors and rewards,[Read More…]
On July 28, French President Emmanuel Macron landed in Tahiti and said that France owed a “debt” to French Polynesia. The debt was related to approximately 200 nuclear tests France conducted in the 118 islands and atolls that comprise this part of the central South Pacific, which France has controlled since 1842. These tests were conducted between 1966 and 1996. Macron did not apologize[Read More…]
There is a chance we can prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis, but world leaders must hold businesses accountable and listen to Indigenous communities. It would be an understatement to say that there is a lot riding on COP26, the international climate talks currently being held in Glasgow, Scotland. Officially, the gathering marks the 26th Conference of the Parties[Read More…]
The international uproar in response to Israel’s approval of a massive expansion of its illegal settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian West Bank may give the impression that such a reaction could, in theory, force Israel to abandon its plans. Alas, it will not, because the statements of ‘concern,’ ‘regrets’, ‘disappointment’ and even outright condemnation are rarely followed by meaningful[Read More…]
We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved[Read More…]
The United Nations is currently sanctioning groups in Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Libya, Guinea-Bissau, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Mali. Sanctions in Non-African countries include Iraq, Yemen, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lebanon, and North Korea. The Security Council states that “since 1966, the Security Council has established 30 sanctions regimes, in Southern Rhodesia,[Read More…]
On November 1, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres opened his remarks at the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, with these words: “The six years, since the Paris Climate Agreement, have been the six hottest years on record. Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: either we stop it, or[Read More…]
For most of civilization physical labor, that labor which creates a tangible object, has been seen as an unfortunate task done merely for the sake of acquiring the necessaries of life. The Greeks and Romans in large part relegated this sort of work to slaves. The Middle Ages tell stories of kings, philosophers, theologians, and priests, but not of workers.[Read More…]
[This is an expanded version of testimony delivered to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation, November 2, 2021.] My thesis: The pornography industry does the worst to women and brings out the worst in men. Let me explain this claim. I am a retired University of Texas professor who began studying the pornography industry in 1988, which[Read More…]
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies COP Twenty-six! That is how many times the UN has assembled world leaders to try to tackle the climate crisis. But the United States is producing more oil and natural gas than ever; the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere and global temperatures are both still rising; and we are[Read More…]
As global connections continue to develop in the twenty-first century under the conditions of globalization, periphery and semi-periphery nations try to adapt to the norms of core countries with the aim of developing a similar global influence as developed nations. Throughout history, people of different cultures have migrated to countries with cultures different from theirs. As people move from location[Read More…]
The story of contemporary Indian society is mired by the regular outburst of violence against its religious minorities. As the Prime Minster is hugging Pope, back home the anti Christian violence is on the constant rise, though in low intensity endemic form. Muslims as a community have been the prominent victims with violence against them erupting at diverse places. The[Read More…]
In the twentieth century nothing represented the working class culture more than the bicycle did. That is why the film ‘Bicycle Thief’ (1948, Italy, Director: Vittorio De Sica) remained the best film ever made for many years and still is one of the ten best films ever made. Jamshedpur with a population of 1.34 million is the largest and most[Read More…]
In the beginning, it would seem Mankind knew a thing or two about anthropology. Then came religion to manipulate it. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has boasted of Hindutva (a concept of Hindu supremacy) as India’s national identity. This would seem convincing to a foreign tourist who visits Taj Mahal, photographs people on the Ganges, sun bathes on Goan beaches,[Read More…]
With climate crisis, what roles can an individual play? An individual has much scope to play role in facing the crisis. An ABC News report — COP26: This is what individuals can do to slow down climate change, according to experts — by Julia Jacobo (November 1, 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/US/cop26-individuals-slow-climate-change-experts/story?id=80799029) said: “As the leaders of the world gather in Glasgow to[Read More…]
by Vijay Prashad and Taroa Zúñiga Silva On October 18, 2021, Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency for 60 days. This declaration led to the constitutional rights of Ecuadorian nationals being suspended and heavily armed troops flooding the streets in Ecuador. The immediate reason for the declaration was the murder of an 11-year-old boy named Sebastián Obando, who was killed in[Read More…]
When I started reading Vanessa Nakate’s new book, A Bigger Picture (HarperCollins 2021), I didn’t immediately understand the connection between the title and the event that first introduced me to the Ugandan climate activist. It was January 2020 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She and four other youth activists were there to encourage attendees to take the climate crisis seriously.[Read More…]
Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate was famously cut out of an AP photo taken with her White colleagues at Davos. In this excerpt from A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis, she explains the importance of visibility and real participation for advocates from the Global South, where the climate crisis is a[Read More…]
by Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young A few days ago, President Biden was urging climate action when saying, we don’t have much more than 10 years. Fighting global warming is inextricably linked to what Bill McKibben and others call climate justice. Commonly, many like to distinguish between climate justice and ecological justice. Ecological justice is about non-human beings and the wild unspoiled by human interference. It is about animals[Read More…]
As climate change leads humanity’s march to Armageddon, data surfacing during late 2021 suggests that the march could be much briefer than previously thought. “Nature is starting to emit greenhouse gases in competition with cars, planes, trains, and factories,” asserts Robert Hunziker. The Amazon has switched from soaking up CO2 to emitting it. Likewise, the Arctic has flipped from being[Read More…]
On February 17, 1941, less than 10 months before the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor and the U.S. found itself in a global war, Henry Luce, in an editorial in Life magazine (which he founded along with Time and Fortune), declared the years to come “the American Century.” He then urged this country’s leaders to “exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes[Read More…]
Facing diminished hopes ahead of what many see as world leaders’ last chance to combat the climate crisis, Britain’s Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, on Monday called for a “warlike” effort as he opened a key United Nations climate summit. Prince Charles has suggested the audience during his speech at the COP26 climate conference that world governments had[Read More…]
On the 4th of October, 2021, an attempt was made to kill a woman in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan by calling her a ‘witch’. The victim is a resident of Ulela village of Jahazpur block. This is not the first incident of women being accused of being ‘witches’ and even killed in Bhilwara district, nor will it probably be the[Read More…]
When I first saw Julian Assange in Belmarsh prison, in 2019, shortly after he had been dragged from his refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy, he said, “I think I am losing my mind.” He was gaunt and emaciated, his eyes hollow and the thinness of his arms was emphasized by a yellow identifying cloth tied around his left arm, an[Read More…]
inssan abhee tak zinda hae, zinda hone per sharminda hae! Human beings are still alive; they are ashamed to be alive! [Shahid Nadeem’s Urdu couplet on the silence of the civil society against communal violence. He received forty lashes for writing and singing these lines by the Zia regime in Pakistan] For almost last four decades, on every anniversary of[Read More…]
Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies As of July 2021, only $366 million of the total required, around $1 billion, humanitarian assistance fund for the Rohingyas has been disbursed. The disbursement has declined to 34 percent, which used to be within the range between 72 to 75 percent of the total required funds in the first three years of[Read More…]
What are western values? One often hears a representative of a western country praising its western values. In a 2017 statement Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau adumbrated Canadian values as “openness, compassion, equality, and inclusion.” Given the psychological torture that Julian Assange has been subjected to over the years at the hands of western nations like the Britain, the United[Read More…]
by Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young Germany’s anti-vaxxers are people who refuse to be vaccinated against, for example, the Corona virus. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and others, there are six common delusions about vaccines. Anti-vaxxers believe that Covid-19 is in a decline and not dangerous. Therefore, they do not need to be vaccinated. They also think –[Read More…]
Ecological wisdom emanates from a deep awareness that, while humans are unique among all animals, they remain utterly dependent on their biophysical environment to sustain human life, and therefore must strive to live in harmony with the entire community of creation in order to ensure their own wellbeing. This is not what we are doing. We now face a situation of ecological overshoot due to[Read More…]
Judging by the latest statements coming from European politicians, Ukraine has fewer and fewer allies in Europe. European politicians do not support corruption and crime, and the absence of any successful economic reforms. That is why Ukraine as a country is often mentioned in the European media – in a negative sense. Recently, The United States and the European Union[Read More…]
Image: Writer and activist Khaled Barakat and Charlotte Kates, Co-coordinator of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network at Masar Badil’s march for Palestine in Madrid, Oct 31, 2021 We have long been trained on Facebook and elsewhere to moderate our emotions and hopes for Palestine, so much so that the much-needed uncompromising clarity of Masar Badil’s political response to the current stage[Read More…]
“Could China’s economy collapse?” was the title of an October 15 article published by QUARTZ magazine. The article makes an ominous case of a Chinese economic crash and its impact on China’s and global economies. This is one of numerous reports appearing in recent weeks in Western mainstream media, all motivated by recently published economic indicators pointing to less-than-expected growth[Read More…]
Does fascism indicate the institutionalization of a particular form of majoritarian bigotry or does the correctness of that characterization hinge on particular violent outcomes? Should all real fascism result in ethnic cleansing, genocide or concentration camps, or can fascism attain a stable equilibrium in a functioning democracy? What are the different ways in which countries as different as France,[Read More…]
In the first week of October the Banjara Market of Gurugram, a place of livelihoods as well as housing for a marginalized community, was demolished. In recent years this had become a popular place for purchasing crafts, house décor items and furniture at reasonable rates. More sensitive authorities would have instead taken steps to help these small entrepreneurs and seen[Read More…]
On the 37th anniversary of the 1984 Sikh Genocide, South Asian activists gathered in Surrey to raise their voices for a jailed Indian scholar, who was behind documenting the tragedy and exposing those involved. Gautam Navlakha was arrested on trumped up charges in April 2020, and is currently lodged in jail near Mumbai. His only crime is daring to question[Read More…]
Sudha Bharadwaj marks her fourth birthday in prison today, November 1st, 2021, when she completes 60 years. She has been in jail along with the other BK-16 accused as undertrials, with the state neither commencing the trial nor releasing her on bail. Sudha’s life is a testament to a passionate concern to redressing injustice and redressing injustice is nothing, if[Read More…]
More than 400 private jets carrying politicians and business executives to this week’s conference will belch out 13,000 tons of carbon dioxide, exceeding the emissions of 1,600 average Scots for a full year, according to an estimate by the Scotland’s Daily Record (Private jets flying to COP26 in Glasgow will blast more CO2 than Scots pump out in a year, by John[Read More…]
Just days before world leaders meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), a new report has revealed just how far off course we are to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and limiting the impacts of global warming. From October 31 to November 12, the leaders of the world are gathering in Glasgow for[Read More…]
There is deepening concern worldwide at the increasing threats from climate change and the ongoing Climate Summit at Glasgow is in the middle of examining these serious issues. Scientists are giving increasing attention to finding smarter ways of climate change mitigation and adaptation. However adequate attention is not yet being given to properly tapping the potential contribution which ordinary[Read More…]
The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is a man in a hurry. The president expects him to produce foreign-policy success stories. Success stories are desperately needed as post-Afghanistan, the superpower has become laughing stock universally. The trans-Atlantic alliance is seriously disoriented and Russia is on the prowl in the heart of Europe with natural gas to sell. The Iranians[Read More…]
I know, I know. It’s the last thing you want to hear about. Twenty years of American carnage in Afghanistan was plenty for you, I’m sure, and there are so many other things to worry about in an America at the edge of… well, who knows what? But for me, it’s different. I went to Afghanistan in 2002, already angry about this country’s misbegotten[Read More…]
The UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow October 31st thru November 12th may be the most significant climate conference of all time. The fate of the planet is on the line. Prior to that august event, hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers evidenced an alarming fact that the climate system is broken, endangering all complex life. This fact is supported[Read More…]
The climate is changing. Clouds thunder protests for trees turned to paper. Lightnings throw bolts on vehicle-filled roads. Viruses clog veins with fear, fear of what is to come. Life as we knew is threatened. Poppies whisper from weapon strewn fields: No point complaining. The climate is changing. The climate is changing. Ice caps are melting. Floods[Read More…]
Joseph Maliakan is a veteran journalist who worked with Indian Express at the time when Delhi was burning in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination. Mrs Indira Gandhi was assassinated on October 31st, 1984 at her official residence in Delhi by her own security guards, who happened to be Sikhs. Though the incident happened at around 9 am in the[Read More…]
France’s Global Warming Predicament 
The Spark 
Vanishing of Many Stretches of Aravalli Hills Will Prove Very Costly 
The End of Title 42 and the Triumph of the Border-Industrial Complex 
A New Direction for the World Bank? 
Conspiracy! Whose Conspiracy? 
Wrestlers’ struggle for justice : Will it endure? 
‘Digital India Bill’: Some things to worry about 
Electricity wasted in Mumbai as energy supply is cut off for hours in towns 
Samalkha Nestle Workers Union stage protest against preventing formation of Union 
Odisha rail accident- BSNL’s commendable performance- Should India diminish its public sector, allow private oligarchs to profiteer? 
Wildfire Smoke Chokes Canada and Eastern US 
Terracidal But Ignored Carbon Debt From Gas Exploitation By The World & Climate Criminal Australia 
China and Palestine: No To ‘Piecemeal Crisis Management’ 
Can China and the United States Establish Mutual Respect to Lessen Tensions? 
How Empire Fabricates Atrocities 
For Balanced Progress, Indian Railways Must Get Their Priorities Right 
Determining Scheduled Area: An Update 
The new Parliament house may be dangerously undemocratic 
Ranajit Guha: A duality of literature and history 
DIPAM’s hasty moves to disinvest the government’s residual share in HZL highly imprudent and against the public interest 
A Climate of Betrayal 
Deserving Each Other: The PGA Tour-LIV Golf Merger 
The World Economy Is Changing—the People Know, but Their Leaders Don’t 
Tribute to Chris Hani on 30th martyrdom Anniversary 
Proper Treatment of Rail Accident Victims Demands Long-term Commitment and Support 
What the Kailasa Con Job Reveals About the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh Release activists incarcerated in Bhima Koregaon Case 
The writing is on the wall: Farmers warn Parliamentarians 
The End Stage of American Empire 
End the culture of impunity and arrest accused Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh now 
Brasilia summit: Lula and Maduro reboot regional integration 
Steaming Ahead: Sikkim’s First Rail Project to Boost Connectivity by 2024 
Five years behind bars for five activists 
Five Years Since The First Arrests In Bhima-Koregaon Case 
Diluted Sovereignty: A Very Australian Example 
Conflict, Migration, and Demography in Russia and Its Border Regions 
Railway Safety Has Been Short of Funds, Needs Early Increase 
Notes on two recent sensations 
A shocking picture of health apathy….. 
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…]
