Posts

Showing posts from November, 2021

क्या यूपी की राजनीतिक हवा बदल रही है? - UP POLITICS / Why did the Modi government run away from debating the farm laws? / Kisan mahapanchayat in Mumbai calls for BJP's defeat in polls

  क्या यूपी की राजनीतिक हवा बदल रही है?। UP POLITICS । UP ELECTIONS /  क्या यूपी की राजनीतिक हवा बदल रही है?। लगातार आ रहे सर्वे और विभिन्न अंचलों से मिल रही प्रतिक्रिया से लग रहा है कि यूपी की हवा बदल रही है .यह बदलाव बीते एक महीने में ज्यादा महसूस किया जा रहा है .ऐसा क्यों हुआ .इसी पर आज की जनादेश चर्चा शाम सात बजे . Due to the continuous survey and feedback from different areas, it seems that the air of UP is changing. This change is being felt more in the last one month. Why did this happen? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqk1afIe-hc संयुक्त किसान मोर्चा : श्री नरेंद्र मोदी , प्रधानमंत्री , भारत सरकार - राष्ट्र के नाम आपका संदेश और आपके नाम किसानों का संदेश Kisan mahapanchayat calls for BJP's defeat in polls The kisan mahapanchayat organised here on Sunday called for the defeat of BJP in all the upcoming assembly elections and vowed to continue the fight for a law guaranteeing the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops and other demands including the withdrawa

Book review: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece is finally appearing

In the mid-1970s, exiled from the Soviet Union for exposing its vast crimes against humanity, and having won the Nobel Prize in Literature for that endeavor, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) turned his back on the lionization that awaited him in New York and other cultural capitals of the West and instead settled with his family in the woods of Vermont. Avoiding visitors for the better part of the next two decades, he churned out half a dozen or so books, averaging roughly 750 pages each, that together tell the story of the Russian Revolution and its antecedents. This act of sheer energy, self-discipline and renunciation of the conventional worldly pleasures bestowed by the literary elite was in the spirit of Russia’s own eastern monasticism. It made Solzhenitsyn, a conservative traditionalist who died in 2008, not merely a great man of literature, but one of the great men of the twentieth century. The Red Wheel  series Reviewed by Robert D. Kaplan The Red Wheel  series consists of

Jill Lepore: Is society coming apart?

Forging stronger bonds in a post-pandemic world... will require acts of moral imagination that are not part of any political ideology or  mission statement , but are functions of the human condition: tenderness, compassion, longing, generosity, allegiance and affection. These are the only answers to loneliness, alienation, dislocation and disintegration. But the fullest expression of these functions... requires both society and government... a new social contract for public goods, environmental protection, sustainable agriculture, public health, community centres, public education, grants for small businesses... funding for the arts.  It won’t be a new New Deal. The dangers are graver because decades of a world, both real and virtual, shaped by Reaganism and Thatcherism, has left the waters rising, all around us, and the forests on fire. Governments rest on a social contract, an agreement to live together. That contract needs renewing. But the problem, in the end, isn’t with society, o

Gordon Brown: A new Covid variant is no surprise when rich countries are hoarding vaccines

Despite the repeated warnings of health leaders, our failure to put vaccines into the arms of people in the developing world is now coming back to haunt us. We were forewarned – and yet here we are. In the absence of mass vaccination, Covid is not only spreading uninhibited among unprotected people but is mutating, with new variants emerging out of the poorest countries and now threatening to unleash themselves on even fully vaccinated people in the richest countries of the world. On Thursday, the UK’s Department of Health, which has placed a travel ban on southern Africa, warned that the B.1.1.529   “Omicron” variant was the  most “complex” and “worrying”  seen so far. And yet with 9.1bn vaccines already manufactured and 12bn expected by the year’s end – enough to vaccinate the whole world – this was the “arms race” that we could have won. No country should be facing yet another winter with the uncertainty of a new wave of Covid hanging over us… https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr

Aryaman Jain, Irina Cheema - Farmers’ Movement in India: A Moment for Collective Introspection / Gallery: One Year of Kisan Andolan

With the Narendra Modi government, the American empire finally has at India’s helm, a reliable handyman unperturbed by factors such as the sufferings of common people. What previous governments since 1991 had failed to deliver... Modi has delivered with decisiveness. Since 2014, the government has dutifully gone about following the diktats of a fraudulent ranking system created by the World Bank to facilitate ‘ease-of-doing-business’ at the expense of India’s ecological security, indigenous communities and farmers. Protections for the environment, for workers and farmers have been peeled away layer by layer.  In India, the federal structure under the Constitution lays down agricultural policy as a matter to be legislated by the states. Recognising this to be the case, the Central government has been bringing ‘Model Acts’ on agriculture and ‘cajoling’ states to adopt these, knowing well that direct intervention would earn it the unpleasant ire of India’s vast farming population. However

Winners of the 2021 Historical Photographer of the Year contest

Image
This annual contest recognizes photos of some of the world's most historic spots.  Click through to see the rest of 2021's acclaimed images. Entries were judged on "originality, composition and technical proficiency" as well as the context of the image and the story behind it. The year's overall winner was Steve Liddiard's image of Wales' Whiteford Lighthouse.  https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/historical-photographer-of-the-year-2021/index.html More posts on/with photos

RAJARAMAN SUNDARESAN: How Odisha Government Kept The Public Out Of A Public Hearing For A Bauxite Mine

How is this a public hearing? Who are they hearing? The police or the barbed wires they h ave put to keep us out?   See video “In Mali Parbat we grow ice,  mandia ,  kaangu  (millets), harvest roots, tubers. Because of its mountain streams, our paddy ripens, our millets ripen.  We are able to collect firewood and produce to take to the market and sell. How can the government give away our jungle like this to the company?” Laxmi Khillo, 22,  was angry as she explained how she should have been at a 22 November public hearing called by the state government. That hearing was a legal requirement, supposed to give a voice to locals as part of a process by which the  ministry of environment, forests & climate change  would decide if it should grant a new environmental clearance to a now-defunct bauxite mine.  The company Laxmi referred to was  Hindalco Industries Ltd , a part of the Aditya Birla Group and India’s largest aluminium company. The project in question was the Mali Parbat mine,

I am an Indian child worker. Hear me

I am Rohith Sakthi, a Vidiyal Child Rights Movement member in Madurai, Tamil Nadu.   Covid-19 and lockdown forced us into desperation and poverty. Before the pandemic, I was doing a part-time job, but I took up a full-time job to support the family's income. When I see a child under 14 working in hazardous occupations, I report it to ChildLine, which helps children by providing suitable rehabilitative solutions. If a child must work to support their family, we ensure that the child is in a safe environment and gets adequate wages by involving a facilitating organisation. I want my children’s movement to support both education and work. There should be a balance between both, so that the child can earn and support their family while continuing their education. The government must provide education for all children below the age of 18. Poverty is the root cause for many children taking up jobs, so the government should design programmes to eliminate poverty for children. This would

Ron Jacobs: A Land Where Justice is a Game

Another right-wing vigilante walks free in the USA. The fact that I was even mildly hopeful Kyle Rittenhouse would get some prison time only proves my eternal optimism. Once again, that optimism was misplaced. After all, it is the United States of America that I’m talking about; a nation whose history is replete with stories of white men walking free after murdering individuals who made them afraid. It is the United States of America; a nation whose history is replete with stories of Black men lynched, executed, or imprisoned for crimes the state knew they didn’t commit. It is the United States of America; a land where the defense of property takes precedence over human life in the courts and in the streets. Especially when that property is owned by a white man. Nothing could be more typically American than Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder spree and its aftermath. From the shooting itself to his courtroom defense that he “was only defending himself,” the entire scenario reeks of arrogance a

BRAD REED: The walls appear to be "rapidly closing in" on Donald Trump / Chris Hedges - America’s Fate: Oligarchy or Autocracy

Investigators are  ramping up criminal probes  into  former President Donald Trump , and two legal experts argue that Trump may not even be able to count on his few remaining lawyers to help him.  Writing in the Washington Post , legal experts Donald Ayer and Norm Eisen argue that Trump's decades-long evasion of legal accountability may now finally be coming to an end thanks to the multiple investigations he's facing. Although Trump in the past has employed top-notch lawyers to get him out of trouble, they write that the president's remaining "legal enablers" may have difficulty staying with him given their own mounting troubles. "Judge James E. Boasberg of the D.C. District Court recently referred attorney Erick Kaardal to a court grievance committee for potential punishment because Kaardal filed an allegedly bogus case attacking the November election results," they write.  "Giuliani is beset with even greater challenges: Late last week, news rep

संयुक्त किसान मोर्चा : श्री नरेंद्र मोदी, प्रधानमंत्री, भारत सरकार - राष्ट्र के नाम आपका संदेश और आपके नाम किसानों का संदेश

21 नवंबर 2021 श्री नरेंद्र मोदी ,  प्रधानमंत्री , भारत सरकार ,  नई दिल्ली .   * विषय : राष्ट्र के नाम आपका संदेश और आपके नाम किसानों का संदेश * प्रधानमंत्री जी , देश के करोड़ों किसानों ने 19 नवंबर 2021 की सुबह राष्ट्र के नाम आपका संदेश सुना। हमने गौर किया कि 11 राउंड वार्ता के बाद आपने द्विपक्षीय समाधान की बजाय एकतरफा घोषणा का रास्ता चुना , लेकिन हमें खुशी है कि आपने तीनों कृषि कानूनों को वापस लेने की घोषणा की है। हम इस घोषणा का स्वागत करते हैं और उम्मीद करते हैं कि आपकी सरकार इस वचन को जल्द से जल्द और पूरी तरह निभायेगी। प्रधानमंत्री जी , आप भली - भांति जानते हैं कि तीन काले कानूनों को रद्द करना इस आंदोलन की एकमात्र मांग नहीं है। संयुक्त किसान मोर्चा ने सरकार के साथ वार्ता की शुरुआत से ही तीन और मांगे उठाई थी : 1. खेती की संपूर्ण लागत पर आधारित (C2+50%) न्यूनतम समर्थन मूल्य को सभी कृषि उपज के ऊपर , सभी किसानों का कानूनी हक बना दिया