The politics of the hangman’s noose: Judge, jury and executioner
By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – A spike in state-sanctioned executions worldwide – including in Iran, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and more recently Myanmar – has triggered strong condemnations from the United Nations and several civil rights and human rights organisations. As Covid-19 restrictions that had previously delayed judicial processes were steadily lifted in many [...]
Orwell’s 1984 repeats itself in Lanka 2022
George Orwell in ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ writes a story of a ‘Non-Party’ man (Winston) being tortured by Party Man (O’Brien) who is trying to make him accept that if all records pertaining to the past are destroyed; his memory is erased permanently and the only source of information about the past is what the Party says, [...]
The end of contemporary history
By Joschka Fischer, exclusively for the Sunday Times in Sri Lanka I cannot recall a time during the past 75 years when there has been such a massive accumulation of major and minor shocks. The world today is dealing with intensifying climate change, a pandemic, major wars, surging inflation, disruptions to international trade and supply [...]