Siva Vaidhyanathan If you use Twitter, the service that not so long ago was the best way to take in breaking news and find audiences for serious conversations, you may have found it substantially less useful in the past year. Over this past weekend you found it almost unusable. On Saturday, everything melted down. Thousands of… Read More Twitter was locked in a chaotic doom loop. Now it’s on the verge of collapse
The eminent journalist’s fearless reporting on India under Narendra Modi cost him his job and freedom. Now broadcasting to millions on YouTube, he is the subject of a new documentary Tim Adams Ravish Kumar was born near the same Indian city – Motihari in Bihar – as George Orwell. In his early years as a TV journalist… Read More ‘Resistance is possible’: Ravish Kumar, the broadcaster risking his life to tell the truth about India today
My Jewish husband and I are being used as cannon fodder in BJP’s attempts to distract from Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Manipur. But there’s another reason I am being targeted. Sunita Viswanath On 28 June, I woke up to the news that my name was plastered across the Indian press. Many media outlets including Hindustan Times, Zee… Read More Not George Soros agent, I am a practising Hindu woman against Hindu nationalism
the spectacle is the guardian of sleep: Guy Debord Tom Bunyard The Society of the Spectacle was written, as Guy Debord once put it, ‘with the deliberate intention of doing harm to spectacular society.’ Following the book’s publication in 1967, he and the Situationist International (SI) declared that it sought ‘nothing other than to overthrow… Read More History and revolution in Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle
Last week, the Wall Street Journal’s Sabrina Siddiqui faced trolling after she asked Narendra Modi about discrimination against minorities in India. The White House on Monday said the online harassment of journalist Sabrina Siddiqui, who asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi a question at a press conference last week, was completely unacceptable. On June 23, Modi had taken… Read More White House condemns harassment of journalist who questioned PM Modi
Hamid Mir I am not a big fan of Imran Khan. I have long criticised Pakistan’s former prime minister, but now it is becoming difficult to do so. There is a de facto ban on referring to him in the media, meaning we are no longer allowed to mention his name or show his picture. Pakistani… Read More I literally cannot say Imran Khan’s name on Pakistani TV – this madness has to end
By ARNOLD R. ISAACS For many of us whose lives were touched by the Vietnam War, it’s a bit of a shock to count the years and realize that those events are now a half-century or more in the past. This year, we have been reminded of that war somewhat more frequently than in past decades,… Read More How the trauma of the Vietnam War led to the age of “alternative facts”
बिहार और यूपी का एक बड़ा हिस्सा लू की चपेट में है। स्थानीय अखबारों में लू से मरने वालों की संख्या तो होती है मगर उसी के साथ एक लाइन यह भी होती है कि प्रशासन ने कहा है कि लू से नहीं मरे हैं। लू से लोग झुलस कर मर रहे हैं और मरने… Read More यूपी-बिहार में लू से सैंकड़ों मौतें | Hundreds die due to loo in UP-Bihar
Consensus and respect are hard to monetise – but perhaps we can take back the power to redefine our world from the algorithms Peter Lewis Before our eyes, a political and media ecosystem algorithmically programmed to seek out and amplify conflict is gifting the no campaign something it has neither earned nor deserves: false equivalence.… Read More The Politico-Media Complex has turned ‘balance’ into an outrage machine
First posted May 27, 2016 RP 193 (Sept/Oct 2015) / Commentary Schneier, who was privy to Snowden’s troves before publication, lists four modes by which the peoples’ victory was secretly undermined by the NSA and GCHQ. First, their weakening of cryptographic algorithms. Second, their piggybacking of domestic surveillance applications through enforced secret back doors – for example,… Read More Daniel Nemenyi: Submarine state – On secrets and leaks
After the truth-shower 