2020

The momentous decision taken by the President of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and Chief Minister of Odisha on 29th November 2020 in removing a sitting BJD MLA Shri Pradeep Panigrahi from the primary membership of the party on account of his anti-people activities constitutes a rare and exceptional event in the politics and public life not just of Odisha but of the whole of India. It stands in sharp contrast to the numerous examples of leaders and members of political parties getting expelled from (…)

by Joan Smith *
November 27, 2020
Too often we’re in denial about the fact that heroes – such as Maradona and Sean Connery – might also be abusers
Imagine a man hitting his partner. The picture that comes to mind probably involves a scruffy individual, his hand raised and his face contorted with fury. We can all condemn that, can’t we? But what if the angry face is familiar, seen thousands of times in a very different context? If it belongs, say, to the world’s most famous and admired (…)

by Martha Rosenberg
November 13, 2020
The role of China’s wet markets in producing Covid is ignored for two reasons. Vaccines that Pharma is developing with $1 billion of our tax dollars would be shown to be a fool’s errand as new animal strains erupt from the markets. And wild-eyed conspiracists, when they aren’t exposing Satanic cultists who eat babies, call the virus a “bioweapon” not an outgrowth of animal practices. (Were the animal originated SARS, MERS, Ebola, Avian Flu and HIV (…)

The biggest brands producing honey have been exposed — so has the food product many consumed for its health benefits. A study conducted by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) tested 22 samples of honey from 13 Indian brands. [ . . . ]
Read More at: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/video/health/it-s-not-honey-how-the-magic-syrup-beat-indian-testing-protocols-74496

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know But leechlike to their fainting country cling... —P.B.Shelley (sonnet England in 1819).
Two centuries ago, the great poet Shelley told the Peterloo protesters, Who were agitating for greater Reforms and who were confronted By the charging cavalry of King George: “Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you- Ye are many- they are few.”[1] Oh! Farmers, you feed the (…)

by L K Sharma
The poet teaches English literature, speaks at conferences, performs at literary festivals, restrains his daughter and takes his wife for a film after a scene.
Wearing a rehearsed smile and gold-rimmed glasses, guides a comely PhD girl who loves poems and poets. During the hour, he plays with thoughts that stay unsaid and gestures that are never made.
When time permits at night, he eyes the silvery full moon that quickly hides behind his large cost-benefit (…)

Johannes D. Enstad. Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 272 pp. $99.99 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-108-42126-3; $32.99 (paper), ISBN 978-1-108-43166-8.
Reviewed by Maris Rowe-McCulloch (University of Regina) Published on H-Russia (July, 2020) Commissioned by Oleksa Drachewych (Western University)
Johannes Enstad’s Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II is a history of the (…)

* Bengal CPI(M) hounded by the old nostalgic obsession | Arun Srivastava
* Bihar Elections, Owaisi and Political alliances | Ram Puniyani
* Universal Basic Income in India Too? | Pulin B Nayak and Mark Lindley
* South Africa: Migrant Labour After Apartheid Asanda-Jonas Benya

Letter to The Readers, Mainstream, November 28, 2020
November 26 which is the Constitution day was marked by a one day protest action by major workers organisations and trade union federations AITUC, HMS, CITU, INTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, among others, to oppose the Anti-Labour policies of the Modi 2.0 government.
Peasant organisations from Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttrakhand and UP, which have since September 2020 agitated against the Farm Bills passed by the Central Government, (…)

by Arun Srivastava
The echo of the Historical Blunder has started reverberating in the political circle, especially among the left parties. Some left intellectuals and activists have also started dusting the pre-Hyderabad party Congress comments of historian Irfan Habib, a CPM member since 1953, “party’s "absurd’’ tactical line on alliances, if adopted at the Hyderabad party congress next week, could push the Left movement to the sidelines of India’s polity.” In July 2016, he and his wife (…)