Bulletin

Articles

• Revisiting Ayodhya: A Multi-Religious Historical Site Turned into The Capital of a Majoritarian Hindu Religious Empire
  31 March, by Sumanta Banerjee

  Now that the foundation stone for the building of the Rama temple has been laid at his birthplace in Ayodhya, it is time to recall the history of Rama’s birth. The present hype over the occasion has blurred the origins of his birth as recounted by Valmiki in his ’Ramayana’ - the scripture which is the source for the Hindu devotees who are celebrating his birth and consecrating his birthplace. It is about time that we have a look at that original text of Valmiki’s ’Ramayana’, (composed and (...)

• Ethiopia: Between Famine and Military Stalemate
  31 March, by Pierre Beaudet and Paulos Tesfagiorgis

  During the liberation war from the mid-seventies to the early 1990s, Paulos Tesfagiorgis was head of the Eritrean Relief Agency (ERA), the central organism that organized the provision of goods in the liberated areas of Eritrea and supported the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) shadow state they had set up throughout the country until their victory in 1991. As a senior member of the EPLF, Tesfagiorgis was involved, along with Isaias Afwerki, in the core leadership until the end of (...)

• The Struggle for Water Justice is a Struggle for Gender and Racial Justice
  31 March, by Susan Spronk

  The essay is published in honour of World Water Day, which has been held every year on March 22 since 1993. The goal of this day is to celebrate water and raise awareness of the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water. Check out the Alternative World Water Forum (AWWF) – in French, the Forum Alternatif Mondial de l’Eau (FAME) for a calendar of events.
  COVID-19 has exposed deep, structural inequalities in the world today along the lines of class, gender and race – between (...)

• Accelerating Decay
  31 March, by Wolfgang Streeck

  Spring is in the air, and Brussels should be buzzing with activity. Remember von der Leyen’s Next Generation EU (NGEU for short), the €750 billion ‘Corona recovery fund’ borrowed from the owners of capital and divided according to an incomprehensible formula between the member states, all 27 of them? This was agreed in July last year, and one might have thought that the EU would now be busy selling debt to its favourite banks. These would then sell the debt on to the European Central Bank, with (...)

• Stop Fueling War in Yemen
  31 March, by World Beyond War

  On March 26, Members of anti-war organizations World BEYOND War, Labour Against the Arms Trade, and People for Peace London blocked railway tracks near General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, a London-area company manufacturing light armoured vehicles (LAVs) for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The activists are calling on General Dynamics to end its complicity in the brutal Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen and calling on the Canadian government to end arms exports to Saudi Arabia and (...)