NB: What remains to be said about Indian justice? When an 84 year old Jesuit father with Parkinson’s disease and loss of hearing is repeatedly denied even a medical bail hearing, kept in jail without trial during a deadly pandemic, and is now found infected with Covid, what may we think? All he ever did… Read More Father Stan Swamy tests positive for coronavirus after being moved to private hospital
Tens of thousands of protesters have poured on to the streets of Brazil’s largest cities to demand the impeachment of President Jair Bolsonaro over his catastrophic response to a coronavirus pandemic that has claimed nearly half a million Brazilian lives. The demonstrators turned out in more than 200 cities and towns for what is the biggest anti-Bolsonaro… Read More Tom Phillips: Tens of thousands of Brazilians march to demand Bolsonaro’s impeachment
The tiny island of Tean was once home to a single resident, a modest chapel, diminutive grazed fields and a dwarf pansy smaller than the tip of a pencil. All these things vanished from the 0.16 sq km Scilly island in the years after it was abandoned by humans seeking larger things. But now the dwarf pansy… Read More Dwarf pansy blooms on tiny Scilly island after 16-year absence
Colonel Ivo Pinto Lobo (1929-2021), retired of the Bombay Sappers breathed his last this morning May 29, 2021. My mother‘s younger brother, Col Ivo P Lobo, who was in the Bombay Sappers, passed away this morning. He was 92. He was commissioned in the very first batch of the Indian Military Academy in independent India… Read More Lt Colonel Ivo Pinto Lobo (1929-2021). Farewell beloved Uncle
Today, May 27, is Jawaharlal Nehru’s 57th death anniversary. Jawaharlal (1889-1964) was an anti-fascist activist, fighter for India’s freedom, Mahatma Gandhi’s chosen political heir, India’s first & greatest Prime Minister &, above all, a decent human being. I recall being a 14 year-old schoolboy, in Sainik School Kunjpura, on a trek to the Pindari glacier, when… Read More Jawaharlal Nehru's 57th death anniversary / ‘हिंद के जवाहर’ का जाना…
“By academic freedom, I understand the right to search for truth and publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right also implies a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognised to be true.” – Albert Einstein Sign the petition: http://chng.it/7b2b6CDY Dr Gilbert Sebastian, an Assistant Professor at the… Read More Petition re Suspension of academic in Kerala because he talked about fascism and Sangh Parivar
On May 8, 2021, as a deadly second wave of the COVID pandemic was ripping through India, an imprisoned doctoral student made an urgent appeal to the Delhi High Court. Incarcerated by the Indian government since May 2020 on dubious terror charges, Natasha Narwal asked for interim bail to see her father, agricultural scientist Mahavir Narwal, who was… Read More Chitrangada Choudhury: Modi Is Worsening the Suffering from India’s Pandemic
Until Camp David in 1978, Egypt had been Palestine’s main ally and the strongest military power in the region after Israel. The peace treaty returned Sinai to Egypt in exchange for recognition of Israel. With that normalisation, Egypt closed the door to any sort of Arab military assistance to the Palestinians for ever. We inherited… Read More Nesrine Malik: Abandoned by governments, Palestinians rely on the kindness of strangers
Om Gaur is in the middle of the most heart-wrenching story of his career as a journalist. Earlier this month, Gaur — the national editor at Dainik Bhaskar, one of the world’s biggest-selling newspapers — got a tip that dead bodies had been spotted floating in the Ganges River in Bihar, a state in eastern India. Given how… Read More Diksha Madhok: Indian journalism and the Corona Pandemic
Back in 2000, the right-wing Israeli politician Ariel Sharon marched into the Al-Aqsa Mosque with a detachment of bodyguards. The provocation sparked the second Intifada, which lasted until 2005. Sharon was the leader of the opposition Likud party at the time. The fighting that erupted after his visit also stoked the flames of populism and nationalism in… Read More Shir Hever: The war that Israel lost
