Rob Hirst Whistleblowers get a raw deal in Australia. They risk their health, careers and reputations to bring the rest of us the truth about Australia bugging East Timor during critical oil and gas negotiations, about SAS war crimes in Afghanistan, about US gunship murders of civilians in the Middle East. Like the other songs… Read More The Strongest Memory
Carole Cadwalladr The last time a journalist won a Nobel prize was 1935. The journalist who won it – Carl von Ossietzky – had revealed how Hitler was secretly rearming Germany. “And he couldn’t pick it up because he was languishing in a Nazi concentration camp,” says Maria Ressa over a video call from Manila. A Novaya… Read More Nobel Peace Laureate: ‘We journalists are the defence line between dictatorship and war’ (2021)
France has been accused of an unacceptable attack on press freedom after the arrest of an investigative journalist who reported on leaked documents that alleged French intelligence was used to target civilians in Egypt. Police arrived at the home of Ariane Lavrilleux at dawn on Tuesday and took her into custody after searching her property.… Read More France accused of attack on press freedom after journalist arrest
Deepa Parent Young Iranians have taken their protests against the authoritarian regime underground one year on from the death in custody of a 22-year-old woman detained for allegedly wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly. The death of Mahsa Amini on 16 September last year led to the largest wave of popular unrest for years in Iran and a brutal crackdown… Read More ‘We never stopped protesting’: Iran’s youth take freedom fight underground
As Julian Assange continues to fight extradition to the United States to face prosecution under the Espionage Act, a growing chorus of voices is rising to demand an end to his persecution. Hounded by US law enforcement and its allies for more than a decade, Assange has been stripped of all personal and civil liberties… Read More Chris Hedges: Craig Murray on the ‘Slow Motion Execution’ of Assange
By Katherine Mangan The first clue that the trajectories of their doctoral studies were about to veer off course was in July 2022 when emails to their longtime adviser suddenly bounced. The second, for Tanner Dulay, Rosa McGuire, and Madeline Cowen, erased any doubt. It came in the form of an email, on July 8,… Read More When Your Professor Disappears and No One Will Tell You Why
Kaya Genç Power to the powerful, contempt for the weak: in replicating this rule of Turkish politics, the opposition CHP differs in no way from Erdoğan’s AKP. Indeed, in persecuting all critics of the Turkish state, the Islamists are simply re-enacting the republican legacy. Pessimism derives from pessimus, the Latin for ‘the worst’. In the days leading… Read More Power over principle: Turkey’s skin-deep opposition
The mindset of the university’s leadership is telling Zainab Firdausi NB: A timely reflection by an ex-student. The article speaks for itself. I will add some remarks about a scenario in which founders make sweeping public statements which subtract from the dignity of the Vice Chancellor and the academic community. To contrapose ‘Bhagat Singh’ with… Read More Ashoka University’s Reluctant Politics
“We tolerated all the rules of repression and censorship as far as our conscience allowed. We stayed alone and wrote. But they did not tolerate the same and harassed us for thinking and writing… even if we don’t write, they will bother us. Because we still think. Because we know the truth and adhere to… Read More Iranian liberal Majid Tavakoli set to be sent back to prison
NB: A recurring bad dream.. Here’s relevant correspondence from the time a senior scholar was forced out of Ashoka University in 2021. University authorities should protect their faculty from ideologically motivated attacks, not undermine them. If you dont stand up to such bullying there will never be an end to it. You may as well… Read More Significance of Ashoka University’s Teachers Calling for a Strike Over Academic Freedom / Solidarity with faculty of Ashoka University by the international academic community
After the truth-shower 