NB: The Iranian theocracy has banned happiness, in Gods name. I wonder what they understand of the promised paradise. DS An Iranian court has handed jail sentences of more than 10 years each to a young couple who danced in front of one of Tehran’s main landmarks in a video seen as a symbol of… Read More Iranian couple filmed dancing in Tehran are jailed for 10 years
It was early evening, and people had gathered at a local pandal in Moe Dar Lay village, in Myanmar’s Sagaing Region, to prepare for a Buddhist novice ordination ceremony the following day. Just as they began to cook, fighter jets appeared in the sky. Then the sound of explosions boomed through the air. “The jets… Read More Myanmar junta increases airstrikes on civilians
Polly Toynbee Today’s Brexit anniversary marks three years of political mayhem and economic calamity. It is also 50 years since Britain joined the EEC. Ten years ago this month, David Cameron made his shameless Bloomberg speech pledging a referendum to placate his party and Ukippers, who he had previously called “fruitcakes”, “loonies” and “closet racists”.… Read More Three years on from Brexit, all UK voters are left with is a bitter taste of regret
By Albert Parry CENSORSHIP existed even be fore literature, say the Russians. And, we may add, cen sorship being older, literature has to be craftier. Hence, the new and re markably viable underground press in the Soviet Union called samizdat. The word is a play on Gosizdat, which is a telescoping of Gosudarstvennoye Izdatelstvo, the… Read More Samizdat: Russia’s Underground Press (1970)
First posted November 1, 2013 NB: On the 70th anniversary of his assassination, the Mahatma still haunts us, almost as if in answer to Sarojini Naidu’s broadcast of February 1, 1948: My Father, Do Not Rest. Given that the politics of his assassins grips a section of our ruling class and that malicious propaganda against him continues unabated, we would be doing ourselves a… Read More Gopalkrishna Gandhi: How the Indian cricket team reacted to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
“What Trump has done is quite arguably the worst crime against the United States that a president could commit.” Martin Pengelly in New York The conservative judge who convinced Mike Pence he could not overturn the 2020 election has predicted “the beginning of the end of Donald Trump” – the former president who incited the January 6 insurrection… Read More Judge who told Pence not to overturn election predicts ‘beginning of end of Trump’
Matthew T. Huber, Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet (2022) Reviewed by Casey Williams The US Congress passed its largest ever investment in clean energy in August – the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – and yet it remains impossible to shake the feeling that, as Matthew T. Huber puts it, ‘the climate… Read More Climate Change as Class War
Sarah Shaffi Rushdie’s Twitter account was inactive for a period following the attack, but the author begun posting again at the end of last year. He has also supported friend Hanif Kureishi’s recovery from a fall and spinal surgery, with Kureishi tweeting: “My friend Salman Rushdie, one of the bravest men I know, a man who has… Read More Salman Rushdie will not promote new novel after attack
Katie Hunt, CNN On the Galapagos Islands, a ground finch that usually munched on small, soft seeds was forced, during a drought, to eat harder, larger ones. Within the space of a few generations, the bird evolved a larger but shorter beak better suited to cracking large seeds. The Galapagos medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis).… Read More The man who has transformed our understanding of evolution
After the truth-shower 