Emine Saner It was when Mehret Biruk lost two hours of her life to Instagram that she knew the time had come to escape. What had she been looking at? She couldn’t even remember in the moments immediately afterwards. Instagram, she recalls thinking, was “winning the war on my attention”. The irony was that Biruk… Read More What it’s like to have a social media detox
Graeme Green Imagine the privilege of smelling a wonderful perfume that no one else alive on Earth has smelled before,” says the conservation photographer Eladio Fernandez. This year, Fernandez had that pleasure. After a challenging search in the cloud forests of northern Haiti, he located several Magnolia emarginata, a critically endangered tree with white flowers that hadn’t… Read More Lost and found: how a photographer sniffed out the magnolia species not seen for a century
A number of prominent journalists who have reported on Twitter and its new chief executive Elon Musk appeared to have been suspended or banned from the platform. The Twitter account for a rival social media company, Mastodon, where some Twitter users have migrated after Musk’s takeover of Twitter, also appeared to have been suspended. In a series… Read More The ‘free speech’ advocate suspends accounts of several journalists who had reported on Elon Musk
Over the decades, after much reflection and repair, from both within and outside the judiciary, those dark days have been seemingly left behind. But what worried us then has now re-emerged to torment us again. The present move — of attempting to undermine and discredit the judiciary, as seen in the comments — is part… Read More The attack on the last bastion: Justice A. P. Shah
First posted November 22, 2015 On November 6, 2015, I visited Naxalbari along with my old comrades, Rabindra Ray (Lalloo), who retired from the Delhi School of Sociology in 2013; and Achintya Barua, (Monju), proprietor of Wild Grass, a tourist resort at the wild life sanctuary in Kaziranga, Assam. Rabindra’s book, The Naxalites and their… Read More In Naxalbari, forty-eight years later
Bharat Bhushan Why did the vice-president (VP) and chairman of the Rajya Sabha, Jagdeep Dhankhar, criticise the Supreme Court in his inaugural speech to the Upper House of Parliament? He claimed that the undoing of the National Judicial Appointment Commission (NJAC) by the judiciary was a “severe compromise of parliamentary sovereignty” and a “disregard of… Read More Where is the confrontation with the judiciary possibly headed?
A new report by an American forensic firm shows that multiple incriminating documents were planted in the computer of Father Stan Swamy, the 83-year-old activist-priest who was arrested for alleged terror links in 2020 and who died in custody a year later. The report blasts a hole in the National Investigation Agency (NIA)’s charges against… Read More Evidence Planted On Activist Stan Swamy’s Laptop, Claims US Report
Stanislav Markelov First posted February 21, 2019 When a nation is filled with strife, then do patriots flourish: Lao-Tzu, Chinese Philosopher (601-531 BC) This is the last article written by Russian activist lawyer Stanislav Markelov before he was shot dead in central Moscow a decade ago. On 19 January 2009, as Markelov and Baburova walked… Read More Patriotism as a diagnosis
First posted May 26, 2013 By Dilip Simeon; published in Hindustan Times, 28 April 2008 The Supreme Court’s observations (March 31) regarding the armed group named ‘Salwa Judum’ affect not only the state of Chhatisgarh, where this group operates, but pose questions to major actors across the political spectrum. Admitting two public interest petitions on… Read More On the Salwa Judum (2008)
Fears are growing that Iran is preparing to execute scores more protesters after authorities hanged a 23-year-old man from a crane, in a public killing carried out less than a month after he was arrested and following a secretive trial. Majidreza Rahnavard was sentenced to death by a court in the city of Mashhad, a… Read More Scores of executions feared in Iran as 23-year-old hanged in public killing
After the truth-shower 