Are we preparing for a totalitarian world currency?
Norbert Häring’s latest book discusses how digital transactions facilitate surveillance and could herald a cashless dystopia
By: Sankar Ray Are we unwittingly subjugating ourselves to a “Totalitarian World Currency in the Making”? Norbert Häring’s latest book, Brave New Money: PayPal, WeChat, Amazon Go, lucidly narrates how digital transactions bring us under automatic surveillance. The democratic order thus gives in to a totalitarian monetarism — the mirage of cashless utopia. Along with […]
Modi’s Hindu nationalism is stumbling
Hindu nationalism as an electoral strategy can only go that far in India.
By: Uday Chandra When Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to victory in the 2014 elections, it was the first time that a party had achieved an outright majority in India’s parliament since 1984. It seemed that the era of caste and region-based coalitions had ended, and a new era of religious nationalism […]
Facts do not back government’s assertion about economic recovery
BY: Yashwant Sinha While inaugurating the Indian Post Payments Bank on September 1, the prime minister attacked the Congress after awarding a gold medal to himself for the economy recording a growth rate of 8.2 per cent in the first quarter of the current fiscal. Speaking about bank NPAs, he said that 12 big defaulters […]
Seeking a managed exit
A year after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his new Afghanistan policy, the stalemate continues
By: Rakesh Sood Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani was in New Delhi on September 19 for a day-long working visit. A short press release indicates the low-key nature of the visit. The reason is simple — the growing sense of uncertainty that prevails. Presumably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took up the issue of seven engineers working […]
It happened, though nothing happened
Back to the beginning when NothingHappened, for an inventory of what happened
By: Sankarshan Thakur Some things we need not be told. Or need not be told at a time. Or be told at another time. When there is the need for them to be told; it’s what some folks also call being told on a need basis. Those needs, it is becoming apparent, have begun to […]
Palestine: Diary of an UNRWA kid
Beyond its shoddy schools and stale bread, we, Palestinians see UNRWA as a symbol of our inalienable right to return.
By: Ramzy Baroud Maintaining one’s dignity while living a dismal existence in a refugee camp is not an easy feat. My parents fought hard to spare us the daily humiliations that come with living in Nuseirat – Gaza’s largest refugee camp. But when I turned six, and joined the UNRWA-run Nuseirat Elementary School for Boys, […]
In Pieces: The Right to Peace
How does one observe yet another International Day of Peace?
By: FR. CEDRIC PRAKASH SJ On Thursday September 20, four people were killed in Maryland, USA in a workplace mass shooting spree; it was the third workplace shooting in the US in less than 24 hours. Earlier that day in Uttar Pradesh, two men were killed in an ‘encounter’. Since March 2017, sixty-six persons have […]
India’s Silent Majority and the Battle for 2019
A threat similar to 1977 stares back at us. Will the present generation of Indians, far more educated in numbers, reasonably more resourceful than before and wiser from the benefit of hindsight, rise up again eight months from now to reclaim liberty?
By: Bishwadeep Moitra “My interest is not in the capture of power, but in the control of power by the people”-Jayaprakash Narayan, 1977 In independent India, people’s verdict ‘to overthrow or substitute by another governed’ – definition of a revolution – has happened nine out of 16 times since the first general elections in 1952. […]
HUSSAIN (A.S) AND KARBALA
By: Sameer Fida Hussain The battle lines have been drawn. Hussain ibn Ali (a.s) has refused to pledge allegiance to tyrant Yazid ibn Muaviya. In the face of an imminent attack, Hussain (a.s) calls his companions and tells them that it was his life that Yazid wanted and that they can leave. Displaying exemplary loyalty, […]
Failing Afghan women – again
The targets described in the task orders and grant reports are not always the real goals.
By: Rafia Zakaria THE war in Afghanistan, the world was smugly told, was to save Afghan women. Laura Bush announced it during a radio address, and Hillary Clinton repeated it ad nauseam. Even as late as 2012, when the war was in its second decade, these mantras were ubiquitous, repeated by nodding interpreters at the […]
