On 15 January an unprecedented scene was witnessed in the Kashmir Press Club (KPC) when a few journalists accompanied by government forces entered into the premises and appointed themselves as the new “interim body” to look after the club affairs. Many journalists termed the incident a “coup” and condemned the arbitrary takeover of the club… Read More Junaid Kathju: Lockdown of Kashmir Press Club
Hundreds of journalists killed or arrested, rising numbers of female media workers targeted, floods of misinformation and hate speech and ineffectual or hostile governments unable or unwilling to protect the public’s right to know. The 2021 press freedom index released recently by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) makes for grim reading. The report reveals that 488… Read More Dina Matar – 2021: a grim year for Free Speech as hundreds of Journalists are arrested in an increasingly authoritarian World
Gospel, a word from Old English, is a compound that means “good news.” And it’s gospel that’s been in short-supply as we head into the Christmas season. Whenever this fact gets me down, I remember that finding evil, malfeasance, and even suffering in the headlines is just a sign that the press is doing its… Read More Edward Snowden – Everything Going Great: Bad Faith, Worse News and Julian Assange
Assange committed empire’s greatest sin. He exposed it as a criminal enterprise. He documented its lies, callous disregard for human life, rampant corruption and innumerable war crimes. Republican or Democrat. Conservative or Labour. Trump or Biden. It does not matter. The goons who oversee the empire sing from the same Satanic songbook… The execution of… Read More CHRIS HEDGES – The execution of Julian Assange: He exposed the crimes of empire; and that can't be tolerated
The plea said that “if the quest for truth and reporting thereof itself is criminalized then the victim in the process is the idea of justice” and that “such circumstances strike at the very foundations of a participative democratic society as it curbs the ‘free flow of information and ideas’… The Supreme Court Wednesday asked… Read More SC restrains Tripura Police from arresting 2 lawyers, journalist booked under UAPA
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk is being investigated by the Turkish state for “insulting” the founder of modern Turkey and ridiculing the Turkish flag in his new novel Nights of Plague. Pamuk, who denies the accusations, published the book in Turkey in March. Set on a fictional Ottoman island during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the early 1900s,… Read More Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk charged again with ‘insulting Turkishness’ / Complaint filed against Indian comedian Vir Das for his allegedly anti-India show
If Assange is extradited and found guilty of publishing classified material, it will set a legal precedent that will effectively end national security reporting, allowing the government to use the Espionage Act to charge any reporter who possesses classified documents, and any whistleblower who leaks classified information, under the Espionage Act. For the past two… Read More Chris Hedges: The most important battle for press freedom in our time
An alarming report by the news agency Reuters quotes corporate India to say “everyone is scared” of the Narendra Modi government and does not want to run afoul of it. It reported several industry executives claiming that “a public diatribe against two Indian business giants by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s officials and his ideological allies… Read More Bharat Bhushan – Fear factor: Corporates must resist intimidation
An academic conference in the US addressing Hindu nationalism is being targeted by rightwing Hindu groups, which have sent death threats to participants and forced several scholars to withdraw. The conference, titled Dismantling Global Hindutva, which is co-sponsored by more than 53 universities including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, the University… Read More Hannah Ellis-Petersen: Death threats sent to participants of US conference on Hindu nationalism
The withdrawal of Dr Hari Singh Gour University in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, from an international seminar on “Cultural and Linguistic Hurdles in the Achievement of Scientific Temper” due to bullying by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the local police must not be treated lightly. The university had approved the topic, the collaboration and the speakers,… Read More Apoorvanand; Gauhar Raza: The bully that is destroying India’s academic culture
After the truth-shower 