The case of Kumar Gunaratnam (KG) is a typical example of justice turning into its opposite. The Kegalle magistrate gave his verdict on March 31 imposing one year imprisonment and Rs. 50,000 fine on Kumar Gunaratnam for violation of immigration law, i.e., overstaying visa.
It appears to be a simple technical issue. Mr. Noel Mudalige, an Australian citizen, was granted visitor visa to enter Sri Lanka. After a month, he refused to go back and expressed his willingness to stay in Sri Lanka even requesting dual visa status as a first step. He was arrested and the police filed a case against him for defying immigration law of Sri Lanka. Hence, one may argue that the verdict given by the Magistrate is absolutely valid and legal. However, the real story behind this case has revealed time and again the true nature of the Sri Lankan democracy in its neoliberal phase.
Reservation is an issue that only affects a small proportion of Dalits, says sociologist Vivek Chibber.
The ferment on campuses across the country following Rohith Vemula’s suicide and the recent crackdown on free speech at Jawaharlal Nehru University have drawn international attention, with many academics, students and activists across the world expressing solidarity.
In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Nelson Denis describes the horrendous economic situation in Puerto Rico and compellingly shows the source of the problem to be the continuing colonial exploitation of the island by the U.S. government acting on behalf of key U.S.
Critical Remarks on Taiwan’s Democracy and Its Aporia
Both inside and outside Taiwan, the research on Taiwan’s democratization has been overwhelmingly dominated by Western liberal discourses.
A quarter century has passed since the June Fourth Massacre that took place in Beijing, China’s capital, near the end of the last century. But the truth of this tragedy has to this day not been laid bare to the world, and the massacre victims, who have still not received justice, cannot rest in peace. This is a disgrace for the whole Chinese people, and a disgrace for all of civilized humanity!
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Three photographs in particular have come to define the decade-and-a-half-long U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. They show the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk, burnt children in tears as they flee an aerial napalm attack, and the Saigon police chief executing a captive in the street.
By: Dan La BotzDecember 11, 2014
The following statement from Left 21 in Hong Kong was written in early December as the pro-democracy activists there were being driven from the streets. – Dan La Botz, Co-Editor
From Hong Kong to Ferguson and NYC, we send you our warmest solidarity!
After Sunday night, when many people feared that there might be a crackdown on the protests after following several pleas for protesters to leave the sites and the government’s warning that civil servants must be able to return to work the next day, this week the protests have nevertheless continued.
By: Dan La BotzOctober 4, 2014
Today [October 3] Hong Kong’s rule of law and basic human rights were totally violated. In Mong Kok, Causeway Bay and Tsim Tsa Tsui fascist thugs and gangs to different extents attacked the peaceful occupiers, resulting in hundreds of injuries. We condemn this most severely. A variety of circumstantial evidence points to the conclusion that Beijing is the biggest suspect behind these thugs and gangs.
By: Dan La BotzOctober 3, 2014
The following is a report from an on-the-ground source in Hong Kong. – Editors
The government is mobilizing its mafia extensively. Since noon, the government has started mobilizing gangsters to provoke the public. It is hard to imagine that the government is lining up with the mafia but it now happens during the CY Leung’s administration. This is something expected and no need to be shocked about it.
Looking at the current situation, the government hopes to shift Occupy Central with Love and Peace into a massive riot and make the Hong Kong public angry with the protesters.
(An earlier version was translated by Bai Ruixue, but since then the Chinese version had been revised and partially translated by the author.)
Monday 29th September 2014/Occupy Central Day 3 – Occupy central continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
One of the most important issues in world politics today is China’s rise as a great imperialist power. Most left-wing writers consider China either as a “socialist country,” a “deformed workers’ state,” or as a “dependent capitalist country” exploited by Western monopolies.
Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story. Haymarket, April 2014, $15 paperback.
When you think of ghost stories, you may recall Henry James, Hamlet, or Banquo. Maybe you smell a camp fire, the story going around, the threat of the flame as you extend your arm and that impaled marshmallow over the heat. Or maybe you sense those dying embers, the cool of night taking its grip.
The U.S. in Central Asia After Afghanistan
"As we reassure our partners that our relationships and engagement in Afghanistan will continue after the military transition in 2014, we should underscore that we have long-term strategic interests in the broader region… As the United States enters a new phase of engagement in Afghanistan, we must lay the foundation for a long-term strategy that sustains our security gains and protects U.S. interests…" —US Senator John Kerry, Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, December, 2011.
[The following review of mine appears as Hardhats for Peace in the July 18 issue of The Indypendent, which calls itself with considerable justification "A Free Paper for Free People." An expanded version surveying a number of recent (and quite good) critiques of U.S. misadventures in East Asia from the Philippines to today, will appear in the forthcoming New Politics.]
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I admire Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the activist group CODE PINK, which has staged anti-war protests and promoted victims’ rights all over the world. Her recently published book, Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, focuses specifically on the relatively new phenomenon in military history of weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, the most common of which is the Predator drone. Having conducted a thorough—and dangerous—fact-finding mission to learn how U.S.
Toiling for $50 Per Month
In Bangladesh, the transnational corporations’ production system regressed into one of its most brutal manifestations. Most safeguards that could prevent or at least mitigate the exploitation of workers have been eliminated. While capital enjoys complete freedom, the working class, shackled by oppressive labor laws and a ruthless repressive apparatus, is struggling for bare survival.
One of the most inspiring examples of people fighting back against the predations of international capital is taking place in the Jagatsinghpur district of the Indian state of Orissa (also spelled Odisha).
The election last week of Xi Jinping to the chairmanship of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), together with six others who with Xi constitute the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the party, represents entrenchment of what the Chinese Marxist intellectual Au Loong Yu has called “bureaucratic capitalism.”[1] The bureaucratic capitalists, many of them princelings, that is, sons of the founders of China’s Communist government, have through their control of the state and crony state-corporation relationships come to dominate the heart
To call this feature-length film xenophobic, fear-mongering and hysterical almost understates the case. The whole thing is so over-the-top that, like a bad horror movie where you can see the strings moving the monster, it leaves us numbed and bored or perhaps laughing. Yet it’s not funny.
In trying to assemble my thoughts on comparing Korean and American schools, I have to start with my personal experience. In fact, please keep the following in mind: I am not better than you in evaluating education systems; I am just a middle-aged man who lives next door and has 9- and 11-year-old kids. This article does not aim to define the Korean school system or rigidly evaluate its pros and cons. My own analysis of some of the ideology behind the Korean school system is entirely based on experience, rather than any formal knowledge.
