2021

by Awande Buthelezi and Vishwas Satgar *
Jacob Zuma is like Michael Jackson in Thriller, a master of the great disaster. He has played his endgame: you bring me down, I bring it all down.
The mass looting over the past few days is not a sign of revolution in our streets and on television. Instead, this is the coming to life of South Africa’s most scary nightmare: a society turning on itself in an orgy of large scale public violence.
More than 25 years of ANC misrule placed us on this (…)

by Michael R. Dietrich *
July 13, 2021
Richard Lewontin was a groundbreaking geneticist, best known for bringing molecular tools into evolutionary biology and for his advocacy against the use of science to rationalize structural inequity. Lewontin and his collaborators revealed how natural selection acts to shape variation, exploring its effect on genes, groups and individuals. Moving between mathematical and statistical analysis, fieldwork and laboratory experiment, they set the course (…)

July 22, 2021
Pegasus, the winged horse,
Sprang from Medusa’s blood,
When Perseus, the virtuous,
Detached the wicked Gorgon’s head.
Next it flew to the firmament,
And became a constellation bright,
Loved of Zeus, the all-mighty,
For spreading sweetness and light.
Think what in our fallen times
Has become of Pegasus;
Turned into a poisoned beep,
He is made to spy on us.

Come, Come, Pegasus,
snoop away, snoop away, into the dark
till we trace your master(s)
in remorseless hot pursuit to tick and mark
find you we shall up to the up-up
find you we shall down to the down-down
naked truth won’t let you hide for long
and soon you shall be sold for a song
Come, Come, Pegasus,
snoop away, snoop away, into the dark
wing carefully lest guardian dogs bark
you were in the Inner Temple Arms
you were in Gandhi’s and Nehru’s spurs
not in spyware tools and (…)

I am Danish Siddiqui And I am dead; I have been killed in Kandahar By the Taliban; They call it a casualty of war But I ask you, what is casual About losing my life, Turning my young wife Into a widow, leaving My little children bereft; What is left, are my photographs, Of the Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar, Desperately seeking refuge; A woman gasping as she reaches The shores of Bangladesh, Respite for her sunburnt flesh, And the amazing mesh Humanity has got entangled in. My photos of the (…)

The Concerned Citizens’ Group (CCG) made its ninth visit to Kashmir from July 5 to 7, 2021. The latest visit came in the wake of a meeting called by the Indian prime minister on June 24 of all the J&K political parties. While there was much expectation centred on the meeting, especially related to the restoration of statehood of J&K, it turned out to be more about the Centre seeking the support of the mainstream political parties from the Union Territory for the delimitation exercise (…)

On July 18, 2021, The Wire, as part of an international collaborative investigation titled “Pegasus Project”, revealed that the Israeli spyware firm NSO targeted “over 300 verified Indian mobile telephone numbers, including those used by ministers, opposition leaders, journalists, the legal community, businessmen, government officials, scientists, rights activists and others” through their spyware, Pegasus. The revelation was made on the basis of a leaked database accessed by Paris-based (…)

The Editors Guild of India
PRESS STATEMENT
July 21st, 2021
The Editors Guild of India is shocked by the media reports on the wide spread surveillance, allegedly mounted by government agencies, on journalists, civil society activists, businessmen and politicians, using a hacking software known as Pegasus, created and developed by the Israeli company NSO. The reports, which have been published worldwide over the last few days by a consortium of 17 publications, points towards (…)

The Editors Guild of India
PRESS STATEMENT
July 23rd, 2021
The Editors Guild of India is concerned about the Income Tax raids on July 22, at the offices of country’s leading newspaper group, Dainik Bhaskar, as well as a Lucknow based independent news channel, Bharat Samachar. They come against the backdrop of in depth reporting on the pandemic by Dainik Bhaskar, which brought to fore the gross mismanagement by government authorities and the immense loss of human lives. In a recent (…)

Communist Party of India
July 20, 2021
Press Release
The National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India issued the following statement today (on July 20, 2021) demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the snooping incident by Israeli spy software Pegasus:
The National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India is shocked to learn that Israeli spy software Pegasus has been snooping into number of phones of opposition leaders, journalists, activists and (…)