++++++Readers outside of India can donate hereto support Mainstream Weeklyhttps://tinyurl.com/2rsy4ss6++++++ In this issue: Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Dec 20, Dec 27, 2025 Metamorphosis of the Rural Job Guarantee Scheme | Arup Kumar Sen Census 2026 & the Delimitation Debate] | C R Annapurna 2025 Kerala Local Body Polls: Spectacular Show by The UDF | M R… Read More Mainstream, Dec 20 & Dec 27 2025
Shobhit Mahajan The Tribune, 16 December, 2025 Chat GPT and Google Gemini are rapidly becoming the go-to places for students. That by itself is not surprising-after all generations of students have found ways to avoid rigor and skirt around academic engagement. Champion Guides (which condensed the whole course into a pocket-sized paperback) were followed by… Read More As AI replaces thinking, learning is eroding
“Our study suggests that it is specifically social media that affects children’s ability to concentrate.” By Victor Tangermann A barrage of AI-generated brain rot is haunting children across numerous screens, from personal smartphones to school-issued laptops to televisions. Social media is adding significantly to that cacophony, making it harder than ever for kids to concentrate. Now, new research… Read More Social Media Is Absolutely Nuking Children’s Brains, New Research Finds
Tina Brown Jeffrey Epstein is the slug who will not die. His trail of slime sticks to everyone who ever crossed his path. The copious accretions have even buried Trump’s futile efforts to browbeat MAGA Congress members to vote against the full release of the Epstein files. In a total backflip to avoid the humiliation… Read More Why Trump Doesn’t Stand a Chance of Killing the Epstein Story
Mainstream media is ignoring the fact that the late sex trafficker was one of the world’s preeminent geopoliticians, which is why he entangled so many powerful people in his misdeeds. The human-trafficking sexcapades were not the main thing bringing him together with his pedo friends. It was money and power politics, forming a vital artery… Read More Jeffrey Epstein Was a Warlord. We Have to Talk About It
The fundamental problem is this: that most of the means of communication are owned or influenced by the very rich George Monbiot If this were just a climate crisis, we would fix it. The technology, money and strategies have all been at hand for years. What stifles effective action is a deadly conjunction: the climate… Read More Dark forces are preventing us fighting the climate crisis – by taking knowledge hostage
In a new memoir, journalist Lara Marlowe recalls the life she shared with her former husband Lara Marlowe When the British journalist Robert Fisk died of a stroke at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin on October 30th, 2020, we had been divorced for 11 years and separated much longer. In the year since Robert’s death,… Read More Life with Robert Fisk: I realised I would not be at peace until I wrote this book
NB: The phrase ‘the fundamental racism of their editorial line’, sums up what it feels to be the perennial object of dehumanisation by the Western establishments and a sizeable part of their populations. Lina Mounzer has said something very important here, and it has lessons not only for the West and Israel, but also for… Read More The Disaster Correspondent: Why I stopped explaining the Middle East to Americans
October 4, 2025 I was scheduled to give a talk at the National Press Club of Australia on October 20 called “The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.” It was to focus on the amplification of Israeli lies in the press, which most reporters know are lies, betraying Palestinian colleagues who are slandered, targeted and killed by Israel. But,… Read More Chris Hedges: The National Press Club of Australia, caving to the Israel lobby, cancels my talk on our betrayal of Palestinian Journalists
the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … no longer exists: Hannah Arendt NB: The author asks: If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live… Read More A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0
