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A Case against India's farm bills

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Farmers are fighting in India. It’s been ten months since the current BJP government fast-tracked three new bills to change the regulatory environment of India’s agricultural markets by opening it up to private players. The government’s position was that this would give farmers more freedom of choice to connect directly with non-traditional private suppliers. However, many of India’s farmers felt that this was just another step in this government’s agenda to corporatize the country and that it paved room for big businesses to dictate the price of their products, at the expense of their incomes and livelihoods.   And so, from all across villages and towns in India, they began their long march to Delhi. At the peak of the movement in December and January 2020, our nation’s capital barricaded itself with wires and spikes, physically separating itself from its citizen’s calls of distress with the threat of pain. There were (and continues to be) violent acts of police brutality, an...
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The tragic comedy of Taliban rule (again)

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  They say tragedy and comedy are two sides of the same coin. Right now, August 18 2021, it’s the two sides of a nice, round afghani coin. In the past two days I have done heaps of research (so in this economy, I’m practically an expert), and oh, what a terrible, hilarious situation it is.   First, some background. In the 1980s, the United States of America funds the mujahideen in Afghanistan in its 9-year fight against Soviet invasion. After the Soviets are kicked out, there’s chaos. In 1994, the Taliban forms, comprising of bearded men with no sense of humour and some mujahideen, who’ve had humour beaten out of them. This band of guerrilla fighters decide, hey we’d love to have some real orthodox Sharia law governing this land and declare Afghanistan an Islamic Emirate. In 1996, they win control of the country. What follows is a brutal regime of oppression, violence and suffering.   Then on September 11, 2001, a few planes crash into some towers in America and...
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Black Lives Matter- Choosing What to Stand for

America is burning.  Riots have erupted all across the country in protest against the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year old African American man at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. The police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 48 seconds, suffocating George until he breathed his last. This incident is only the latest in a series of incidents of police brutality towards African Americans. However, it was a spark that rekindled memories of vicious incarcerations, unfair trials and the perpetual fear and discrimination perpetuated against this specific group of people in the supposed ‘land of the free’. Martin Luther King once said, ‘a riot is the language of the unheard’. And that is exactly what is happening as African Americans and others who believe in their cause are taking to the streets, raising their voices, crying out against the disgusting racism that still flies without consequence. Meanwhile, law enforcement and the National Guard h...
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