IF even the Chinese are not safe here in Pakistan, who is? Because of CPEC and Pakistan’s national interest, the Chinese are the most privileged and protected of all foreigners. Multiple layers of police and specially created army units keep them from harm’s way. Also, they are advised to keep a low profile and minimise… Read More Pervez Hoodbhoy on Islamist radicalism in Pakistan
Nicole Goodkind, CNN Banks have pledged to go green, but last year they poured billions of dollars into expanding the capacity of fossil fuel production despite the accelerating climate crisis. Banks provided $673 billion to finance the fossil fuel industry last year, even as oil and gas companies made $4 trillion in profits, according to the annual Banking on… Read More The world’s biggest banks are still pouring money into fossil fuels
First posted November 19, 2011 NB: I wrote this article in the aftermath of the January 2011 judgement by two Supreme Court judges on the murder of Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa in 1998. The debate on religious questions is a secondary one. The first major point of my article is this:… Read More Terrifying implications of the Supreme Court’s Staines Judgement
NB: I have argued in a recent article that the rule of law in India (and indeed in all of South Asia) has been replaced by the rule of ideology. Those who celebrate lawlessness in the name of nationalism should bear in mind that this is the first step towards social and political disintegration. But… Read More Mahua Moitra on the killing of Atiq Ahmed: This is mobocracy
Here are some of the senior administrators I did not see joining us on the picket lines set up by striking teachers and staff at Rutgers University. Brian Strom, the chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, whose salary is $925,932 a year. Steven Libutti, the vice chancellor for Cancer Programs for Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences,… Read More Chris Hedges: American universities are appendages of the corporate state
A thorough dissection of America’s capitalist mythology reveals the sham to which lots of people continue to subscribe, despite growing nationwide suffering. Much of what is now a core part of the American psyche is a series of get-rich-quick schemes passed off as meritocratic necessities within a capitalist society. Key words and phrases like “the… Read More It’s Called the American Dream Because You Have To Be Asleep to Believe It
Mark Cocker Have we time enough and opportunity, we can attune ourselves to one of the greatest events of every April morning on our planet, since birdsong unfolds across all Eurasia and North America as daylight processes over those lands too. Think of it as the Earth rejoicing at the sun’s cyclical return. Mistle thrush… Read More Look up, listen, and be very concerned. Birds are vanishing – and their crisis is our crisis
Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law. Albert Camus; The Rebel (1956) Bharat Bhushan Support for harsh penal policies is often the result of two interconnected phenomena. One, viewing criminals as those outside of… Read More Death by ‘encounter’: Yogi Adityanath’s penal populism
NB: This is an extract from my novel Revolution Highway, published in 2010. This is a true story, related to me by my dear maternal uncle, Lt Col Ivo Pinto-Lobo, a few months before my manuscript went to press. I decided to include it in my book, which was also – in a way –… Read More Transcript of a conversation with a retired colonel in the Corps of Engineers
Xu Zhiyong’s dream is for China to become a democratic country that is “beautiful, free, fair and happy.” It is a simple wish, yet in the eyes of the authorities, his vision is dangerous and subversive. The 50-year-old human rights lawyer and champion of social equality was sentenced to 14 years in jail earlier this month, along with fellow… Read More How one man went from China’s Communist party golden child to enemy of the state
After the truth-shower 