By Ankur Paliwal In a pristine forest in central India, the multibillion-dollar mining giant Adani has razed trees – and homes – to dig more coal. How does this kind of destruction get the go-ahead? In a lined notebook, Bhole Nath Singh Armo, a lean 28-year-old man wearing a blue shirt and matching baseball cap, drew a… Read More ‘It was a set-up, we were fooled’: the coal mine that ate an Indian village
The PR firm advising the UN on climate change campaigns has been accused by US lawmakers of helping BP “greenwash” its fossil fuel investments, openDemocracy can reveal. Internal BP documents released to the US House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee and published last week show Brunswick created a strategy in 2017 or 2018 to help “reframe… Read More Secret files reveal how UN climate advisers ‘greenwashed’ for BP
John P. Ruehland – Globetrotter On November 1, the deputy director of Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation downplayed remarks made on October 30 by an agency official, who warned of Western weapons bound for Ukraine being smuggled into Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Nonetheless, the affair generated significant attention and reflected previous concerns expressed by European authorities over… Read More How organized crime plays a key role in the Ukrainian conflict
Papyrus by Irene Vallejo review – how books built the world What do you give the queen who has everything? When Mark Antony was wondering how to impress Cleopatra in the run-up to the battle of Actium in 31BC, he knew that jewellery would hardly cut it. The queen of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt… Read More The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
By Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn / CounterPunch All through the 1980s and 1990s, professorial mountebanks like James Q. Wilson and Charles Murray grew plump from best sellers about the criminal, probably innate, propensities of the “underclass,” about the pathology of poverty, the teen predators, the collapse of morals, the irresponsibility of teen moms. There… Read More Neoliberalism and Its Discontents
NB It is evident that the Taliban’s version of orthodox Islam treats women as second class beings, as children of a lesser God. All believers ought to either renounce these beliefs as inhuman, or hang their heads in shame. DS Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have ordered an indefinite ban on university education for the country’s women,… Read More Taliban ban Afghan women from university education
Jonathan Watts For anyone who cares about the Amazon rainforest, there will be an extra reason to celebrate the new year countdown in Brazil on 31 December because the first stroke of midnight will mark the last moment in power of Jair Bolsonaro. The defeat of the ultra-right former army captain, who unleashed a wave of… Read More Seven reasons to be cheerful about the Amazon in 2023 – and three to be terrified
A summer of extreme heat and drought around the world has been a reminder that water scarcity is a pressing issue and one that will only get worse with climate change. Already, more than two billion people worldwide lack easy access to clean water, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). For some countries, desalination plants offer… Read More How sunlight could turn seawater into freshwater for coastal communities
Mrinal Pande Writers are incurable fabulists. But lying sleepless in the dark encourages one to mull over the inflexible image of Hindutva, which is today less of a religion and more of a war cry against all non-Hindus. As elections in crucial states draw close and electoral rallies become vast, frenzied affairs, Hindutva is placed… Read More What today’s peddlers of Hindutva don’t understand about Hinduism
Bharat Bhushan Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) completed 100 days last Friday, covering two-thirds of the planned route. As the BJY threads its way across North India, it is in danger of becoming like Indian Premier League cricket, where cheerleaders enhance viewership, but serious cricket suffers. Recent events make it increasingly doubtful… Read More Who walks with Rahul Gandhi and why it matters
After the truth-shower 