Sounds of gunfire keep Modina Khatun awake every night in Cox’s Bazaar Bangladesh – the world’s largest refugee camp. She fears that spiralling gang violence there will make a widow of another Rohingya woman like herself, with young children to feed. By Anbarasan Ethirajan Ms Khatun’s husband, Bashir Ullah, became a grim statistic last June… Read More Rohingya: Gang violence stalks world’s largest refugee camp
First posted September 29, 2015 The appearance of the law must be upheld / specially when its being broken. Gangs of New York (2002) Before the Law by Franz Kafka Translated by Ian Johnston (NB: This parable first appeared in 1915, and became a part of Kafka’s book The Trial) Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this… Read More Before the Law. A parable by Franz Kafka
Vrinda Narain The second anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is fast approaching. Since then, Afghan women have been denied the most basic human rights in what can only be described as gender apartheid. Only by labelling it as such and making clear the situation in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity can the… Read More Taliban’s war on women must be formally recognized as gender apartheid
the law is the only thing capable of making people equal: The Judge (2014) Chris McGreal Mugshots define eras. Bugsy Siegel peering malevolently from beneath his fedora in a 1928 booking photo summed up the perverse romance of gangsters in the prohibition age. Nearly half a century later, mugshots of David Bowie, elegantly dressed but dead-eyed after his arrest… Read More Belligerence and hostility: Trump’s mugshot defines modern US politics
The twaite shad was once a common sight in Britain’s waterways. A member of the herring family, the small silvery fish with a single dorsal fin and a forked tail was once so bountiful it was sold as food locally and abroad. But in recent times, it has been harder to spot and today the… Read More Rare silver fish returns to its ancient spawning grounds – in pictures
First posted November 22, 2016 NB: Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist was written in 1922 and published in a collection also entitled A Hunger Artist. Here is a parable for our times. DS During these last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished. It used to pay very well to stage such great performances under one’s own management, but today… Read More A Hunger Artist. By Franz Kafka (1922)
Shah Meer Baloch Attaullah, 16, was travelling to school on Tuesday to collect his exam results, using a cable car to cross the ravine from his village – as he had done many times before. But when a cable broke and left him, five other children and two adults hanging precariously in the air hundreds… Read More ‘I thought I was dead’: Pakistan cable car survivors describe 16-hour ordeal
NB: This is one of the most moving tributes to Albert Camus that I have read. It is also crystal clear. DS He had succeeded in saying in his fevered way and in an argument as taut as a bow why, despite the fury and horror of history, man is an absolute; and he had… Read More ALBERT CAMUS: by Nicola Chiaromonte
The G20 poured record levels of public money into fossil fuels last year despite having promised to reduce some of it, a report has found Ajit Niranjan The amount of public money flowing into coal, oil and gas in 20 of the world’s biggest economies reached a record $1.4tn(£1.1tn) in 2022, according to the International… Read More G20 poured more than $1tn on fossil fuel subsidies despite Cop26 pledges – report
The perfected mafia state uses ostensibly legal procedures and insider loyalty to protect corrupt autocrats from accountability Jan-Werner Müller Could there be such a thing as Trump indictment fatigue? Every week seems to bring a new set of charges; one might be forgiven for losing any sense of what’s what in the four major cases… Read More Trump yearns to govern a mafia state. Fitting that he faces racketeering charges
After the truth-shower 