2020

The nomination of Kamala Harris, a half Jamaican, half Indian American, as the running mate of Democrats’ Presidential nominee Joe Biden, for vice presidency of the United States of America (USA), is a decisive moment not just in the history of the United States but also for the White Europe.
The people of the United States with a history of enslaving the Africans and trading in humans, made significant progress in 2009 when they elected Barrack Husain Obama as their President (…)

by Murzban Jal
But an end which requires unjustifiable means is no justifiable end... Karl Marx, Debates on the Freedom of the Press.
At surface reading, when the global right-wing forces have created almost unassailable hegemony, where the parliamentary left is bewildered, almost enslaved to these reactionary forces, any spark that may lead to a prairie fire seems inspiring. In this sense when the parliamentary left behaves more like government clerks, any force that seems not to be a (…)

A new English translation of Bolshevik leader N.K. Krupskaya’s first published work, “The Woman Worker,”

by Loubna El Amine *
It was unimaginable that things could get worse in Lebanon. But they did. Weeks into the country’s worst economic crisis, compounded by the pandemic, 2570 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, stored in Beirut’s port, exploded on Tuesday. Because the blast was preceded by a fire, phone cameras were already trained on the port when the mushroom cloud went up. Most of the video footage lasts only a couple of seconds before the people taking it are knocked to the ground. Blurry (…)

Homophobic aggression in Poland is growing because it is condoned by the ruling party, which has chosen sexual minorities as a scapegoat with no regard for the safety and well-being of citizens.

by Jannat*
"There is no crueller tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice" - Montesquieu, French Philosopher
Could sloganeering like "Pakistan zindabad", supporting the Pakistan team in a cricket match, participating in a play that critiques the government, protesting the government policies or dissenting against the government be regarded as offences against the state? If the history of prosecutions under sec 124A of Indian Penal Code (…)

Alexander Laban Hinton. The Justice Facade: Trials of Transition in Cambodia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Illustrations, tables. xii + 282 pp. $34.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-19-882095-6; $110.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-882094-9.
Reviewed by Antonius Robben (Utrecht University) Published on H-Genocide (July, 2020) Commissioned by Ugur Ümit Üngör (NIOD: Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies)
“If a wound doesn’t hurt, don’t jab it with a stick,” commented a villager (…)

Self!
(in a lighter vein)
Under Corona shadows
what the real ‘self’ is now?
Is it selfless or selfish?
If the dreaded virus showing
Karuna embraces the ‘self’,
it finds ‘itself’ shrunk to its core:
isolated within and without,
a stigma tattooed on it.
There still may be care, affection,
but all from a distance.
If the ‘self’ finally succumbs
to the fatal embrace,
its body will lie shrouded
in the veil of a distance.
Not sure, if the final rites
can be properly (…)

Statement to the Supreme Court and to the Public of India at large.
We, the below named, practicing members of the bar in India, have noted with dismay, the judgment of the Supreme Court, in Mr. Prashant Bhushan’s contempt case. An independent judiciary consisting of independent judges and lawyers, is the basis of the rule of law in a Constitutional democracy. Mutual respect and the absence of coercion, are the hallmarks of a harmonious relationship between the bar and bench. Any tilting (…)

Respondent 1
I have gone through the judgment of this Hon’ble Court. I am pained that I have been held guilty of committing contempt of the Court whose majesty I have tried to uphold — not as a courtier or cheerleader but as a humble guard – for over three decades, at some personal and professional cost.
I am pained, not because I may be punished, but because I have been grossly misunderstood. I am shocked that the court holds me guilty of “malicious, scurrilous, calculated attack” on (…)