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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'India'
Where does one even begin?
On May 21, the US Ambassador to India, Nancy Powell, addressed the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Kolkata. She told the eager crowd of businessmen that “if India is to grow again, support for policies that are necessary for ...
Suicide rates among Indian farmers were a chilling 47 per cent higher than they were for the rest of the population in 2011. In some of the States worst hit by the agrarian crisis, they were well over 100 per cent higher. The new Census 2011 data reveal a shrinking farmer...
Undoubtedly, Pakistan is now a “democracy”, that is, the Western style democracy where the elections are held, people vote, and the people ...
Mumbai.
He is dead now. India was pleading for the life of a man dying in a government hospital in Pakistan. A prisoner on death row, ...
There are nearly 15 million farmers (‘Main’ cultivators) fewer than there were in 1991. Over 7.7 million less since 2001, as the latest Census data show. On average, that’s about 2,035 farmers losing ‘Main Cultivator’ status every single day for the last 20 year...
New Delhi.
A clamour is up to name Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate at India’s general election next year. His backers say he should be judged for bringing development to his state. His oppo...
Although I lived and worked in India for two years (Peace Corps) and spent much of that time paying attention to important things, I never became an “expert” on anything. While India was a magnificent country, populated by a wonderfully vibrant and generous people, ...
On April 2, the four major student union federations jointly held a protest against the withdrawal of campus democracy in West Bengal. They wanted elections to be held for the student unions in their colleges. A tsunami of neo-liberal reforms in higher education had made ...
London.
Consistent with the unjust, decaying economic model of our deficit times, the commodification of everything and everyone proceeds apace in India. The commercialisation of the land is shattering the lives of millions of India’s poorest, hungriest ...
At one end of Delhi, in the verdant campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, scholars gathered to update one another on the current trends in Historical Materialism. At the other end of Delhi, in Ashok Hotel, on April 4 Nehru’s grandson, Rahul Gandhi, delivered the keynot...
“I want a happiness without a hole in it, I want the bowl without a crack”
–From ‘The Golden Bowl’
Mumbai.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s screenplays did not scream, or even appear to make profound st...
One of the least discussed and least reported issues is the Obama administration’s effort to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement to the forefront, an oppressive plurilateral US-led free trade agreement currently being negotiated with several Pacific Rim countr...
On 28th February 2013, India’s Finance Minister P Chidambaram proposed a transaction tax on the commodity futures trading under the direct tax provisions in the Union Budget 2013-14. The commodity transaction tax (CTT) would be levied at 0.01 percent (Rs.10 for transact...
Forbes has just added an ‘errata’ to Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s budget speech. The minister had found a mere 42,800 people in the country with a taxable income in excess of $184,000 a year. Forbes, the Oracle of Business Journalism, does not list taxabl...
Narendra Modi is a big man. He does not seem his 62 years – energetic and brash, larger than life. There is something in him of Bhima-parakrama, of terrible prowess. It is this edge that makes many uneasy with him. It also earns him the enthusiasm of those who fa...
Bamutia, Tripura.
During the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Lecture in 2011, the Swedish novelist Henning Mankell recounted an incident from Mozambique, where he lives for part of the year. During the worst days of South African apartheid and the civil war in Mozamb...
Delhi.
Early this morning, on the busy bylanes of Zamrudpur (Delhi), I passed a young girl being taken to school on a cycle-rickshaw. In her lap she held fast to her day’s homework. It was a three dimensional representation of “my town,” made with wh...
Leaving the scandal of horsemeat contamination of processed meat products behind, the British prime minister David Cameron flew to India for a three-day visit (February 18-20), boasting the largest-ever trade delegation he had led to a foreign country. The aim of youn...
Upon a foundation of deep spirituality and philosophical treasures, proclaiming unity, justice and service, New India, horns honking in violation of the good; is racing, no time to spare towards the Alter of Materiality and Market Fundamentalism.
Under the careful ...
Believe the War on Terror has been an unmitigated disaster? Find it difficult to wrap your head around the Long War’s long list of horrors? Think the Obama administration and Congress’s willingness to wage the War indefinitely is murderous myopia? Think again: the War...
Spring announced itself in Delhi on Saturday. The sun was out, and the law took its course. Just before breakfast, the government of India secretly ...
Mumbai.
Everyone is singing the Kashmir tune. An all girl-band has been banned. Most of us outside and many in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, had never heard about them until this happened. The problem is not that one should refrain from opposing such c...
Two recent rapes of young women in India, one of which ended murdered by her rapists, provoked worldwide condemnation. It is difficult to equate India’s rapid economic and technological development with such barbaric practices. The problem of systematic abuse of women, ...
“The rearing and guiding of a civilization must depend upon its intellectual class.”
B. R. Ambedkar, Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah, 1943.
Delhi.
I. Arrest.
States are clumsy wit...
India has the largest number of smallholder farmers in the World, 600 million by some estimates. From this army of workers one impoverished desperate man, or indeed woman, with a noose of debt around their neck takes his or her own life on average every thirty minutes, A ...