View Articles

Revolutionary activist, philosopher and professor Dr. Angela Davis is being inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame this year. The organization is the nation’s oldest membership group dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the achievements of women in the United States. Davis has a long history in the civil rights movement as an advocate for the oppressed, along with standing firm on issues such as racism, systemic oppression, and justice for Palestine.

There is an eerie similarity between President Donald Trump’s advice to the non-white women members of the US Congress to “go back to where they came from” and the occasional suggestions by the Hindutva apparatchiki in India to their opponents to “go to Pakistan”.

Beginning with the “ghetto riot” at the Stonewall Bar in Greenwich Village in 1969, an open gay liberation movement came into existence which has been a significant force in the larger peoples’ movements for almost a half-century. While most people identify gay liberation with the “New Left” of the 1960s, it, like the civil rights, women’s rights, and anti-war movements of the time, cannot be separated from the range of broad labor-left organizations that had been forced into a political closet with the onset of the Cold War, including the Communist Party.

The rainbow-emblazoned corporate swag has been ordered, the gay and lesbian employees dispatched to New York. The floats are all designed and constructed, ready to roll down Fifth Avenue—colorful billboards advertising just how LGBT friendly T-Mobile, MasterCard, TD Bank, Delta Air Lines, and other sponsors are these days.

28th June, 2019 marked the 50 years of the infamous riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York, where on 28th June, 1969, the New York police personnel had barged into a gay bar called Stonewall, and had mercilessly beaten up lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons, which then sparked off one of the first and biggest demonstrations by the queer community in the USA against police atrocity, and homophobic laws. To mark the occasion, ‘pride’ is celebrated in the month of June every year all over the world. In 1969, the world was just waking up to queer rights and activism. Britain had just decriminalised homosexuality in 1967, though the age of consent for gay men was still higher than the rest of the population, i.e., 21. Most of the European and United States had anti-sodomy laws, while the post-colonial Asian and African countries had happily retained the colonial law on sodomy. In fact, adult homosexual acts finally got decriminalised in all the States of the USA only in 2003! Just 16 years back!

Facebook’s proposed Libra coin has raised the prospects of cryptocurrency becoming mainstream. The burst of enthusiasm has manifested itself in the value of Bitcoin, which has jumped to an 18-month high, spurred by investor worries about geopolitical tension over Iran and the aggravating trade war between China and the US.

Statins, considered a panacea for all types of cardiovascular diseases, protection of heart health and prevention of heart attacks so far, is no longer a wonder drug as over 1000 law suits have been filed in the USA against Pfizer, the pioneering drug manufacturer worldwide, which is now marketed in different brand names by several pharmaceuticals, all claiming that Lipitor caused diabetics, loss of memory etc. Statin medications are ineffective for the vast majority who take it. It neither reduces heart attack nor mortality rate significantly. It’s side effect profile is unacceptable.

A harried father struggles hard to earn some meager amount of money to bring whatever goodies he could afford to buy for his demanding son. But the kid, driven by socio-cultural and peer pressures, contemptuously rejects whatever the father has brought and demands more. The angry father breaks into an outburst at his callous son not showing any empathy about his own travails. The upset mother goes and consoles the unruly son and pleads for some understanding even while urging her husband not to get angry.

Two Indians, a century apart have driven India to a new awakening to tell world that Indians are different people. In 1918 Mahatma Gandhi aroused the passions in minds of the Indian masses that had never entertained the concept of political freedom. A century later in 2018 another Indian inspired them with idea of ending the restricting borders of a family rule. Incidentally both came from same land.

There are few people more famous in the political song movement than Pete Seeger, whose 100th birthday was celebrated on May 3, 2019. Along with his contemporaries Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie, and others, Seeger represented the might of song in highlighting the common cause, strengthening courage, and inspiring resistance. For these singers, song was a weapon in the struggle for a fair, equal, and peaceful society.