By Blacklisting Huawei, US Escalates Technological War on China

THE latest round of US measures targeting telecommunications giant Huawei is an escalation of its war against China in the field of technology. Huawei has been the subject of US measures earlier too.

Another Airline Takes a Dive in India

IT is ironic that in India, the fastest growing air travel market in the world, yet another private airline, this time Jet Airways, collapses and folds up.

PepsiCo and Monsanto’s Bogus Court Cases is a War on Indian Farmers

THE PepsiCo case against nine potato farmers in Gujarat for violating its Intellectual Property Rights under Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers Protection Rights (PPV&FR) has brought out the threat that the US multinationals pose to Indian farmers. PepsiCo is claiming damages of Rs 1.05 crore from each farmer. It follows an earlier case in May last year in Delhi High Court where Monsanto has claimed patent rights over its Bt Cotton seed and sued a Telangana seed company.

Modi and Trump Want to Send Us Back to the Stone Age

EINSTEIN was once asked of the kind of weapons that could be used in a Third World War. He said he could not predict weapons that would be used in the Third World War, but he could easily predict weapons that would be used in the Fourth: “Bows and arrows”. A stone age – and that is the place a nuclear war would send us back to.

Free Julian Assange: Why we Must Raise Our Voices Against US Tyranny?

JULIAN Assange’s arrest by the UK police from the Ecuadorian Embassy after the Moreno administration withdrew his asylum, has drawn worldwide condemnation. Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire are among the leading figures who have condemned Assange’s arrest.

Digital Monopoly Platforms, the Modi Regime and the Threat to our Democracy

ON April 5, 2019, a joint platform of five civil society organisations released an urgent appeal signed by over two hundred eminent persons including two former chief election commissioners – N Gopalaswami and SY Quraishi – to the Election Commission and political parties. The five civil society organisations are Common Cause, Constitutional Conduct Group, Free Software Movement of India, Association for Democratic Reforms and Internet Freedom Foundation.

India’s Anti-Satellite Missile: Beyond the Euphoria

NOW, that the excitement and self-congratulatory chest-thumping over India’s successful testing of its anti-satellite missile (ASAT) capability on March 27, 2019 has passed, except of course for continuous misuse in political campaigns by PM Modi, it is time to take a step back and look at the event and its strategic implications with a clearer head and a broader perspective.As will be seen, the boast by PM Modi in his telecast that the test was a moment of “utmost pride”, would have impact “for generations to come”, and meant that India was “now a space power”, with Minister, Nitin Gadkari

Boeing 737 Max: Design Flaws, Regulatory Failure

THE second crash of a Boeing 737 Max8 aircraft on March 17 killing all 158 passengers and crew, this time operated by Ethiopian Airlines en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, six months after an earlier Lion Air crash in Indonesia, has since led to a worldwide grounding of all 737 Max8 aircraft.

Air strikes and Defence Preparedness

THE air strikes by India across the Line of Control (LoC) have been accompanied by much chest-thumping by the prime minister, by government and ruling party spokespersons, and camp-follower TV and other media personalities. This despite India’s reluctance or inability to release convincing evidence such as imagery of damage caused to and inside the targeted structures in Jaba Top, or evidence of a Pakistani F-16 fighter brought down during the Pakistani counter-strike. Pakistan has gone to town claiming that only a single crow was killed, and only a few trees were destroyed.

Tech for Democracy in a Brave New Digital World

WITH the elections in the offing, different groups – the Free Software Movement of India, Association for Democratic Reforms, Common Cause, etc – have raised a key issue: how to stop the Indian elections from being distorted by big digital platforms and the enormous influence they exercise over us today. And as “influence” on these platforms can be bought, will Indian elections, already plagued by money power, suffer even further? Added to this, is the enormous ecosystem of fake news, which the BJP, the RSS and its “parivar” has built over the last few years.

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