My book The Blogging Revolution was released recently in an Indian edition. It’s been receiving positive reviews (including this one in Calcutta’s Telegraph). Here’s another one in The Tribune by Abhishek Joshi: The Blogging Revolution by Australian freelance journalist Antony Loewenstein is a striking account of the writer’s investigation of the web’s role in repressive…
Showing all posts tagged India
Another mining company that isn’t helping people prosper
Early this year I visited Papua New Guinea to investigate the exploitation of resources by Western multinationals under the guise of development. Tragically, similar things are happening across the world, often away from the mainstream media’s gaza. Bianca Jagger travelled to India and found this: When I arrived at Biju Patnaik Airport, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, I…
If India is the future, worry about its 1%
India is often heralded as the great hope of the democratic state in the 21st century. Let the wonderful Arundhati Roy, writing in Outlook, show you otherwise: Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamont Road in Mumbai,…
What the internet can (and cannot) do to hasten revolutions
My book The Blogging Revolution was recently released in India in an updated edition.… Here’s a pretty good review of it by J Jagannath in a leading Indian newspaper, Business Standard: The little spark that the Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi ignited in December 2010 to torch himself in retaliation against corruption has engulfed the…
The out of control drone future
So this is where our supposed civilised world is heading. A disturbing piece in the weekend’s New York Times: At the Zhuhai air show in southeastern China last November, Chinese companies startled some Americans by unveiling 25 different models of remotely controlled aircraft and showing video animation of a missile-armed drone taking out an armored…
This is how writers with spine relate to the real world
Literary events aren’t devoid of real world politics (well, they shouldn’t be, anyway). The recent cancellation of a proposed Kashmir literature event was a stunning example of such issues being brought into the public domain. One of the key players behind protesting the event, Basharat Peer, writes wonderfully in The Hindu about why he acted…
Kashmir writer’s festival over before it began
As someone who believes in the responsibility of artists and intellectuals to take a stand against tyranny, this news is positive: Indian-administered Kashmir’s first major literature festival has been cancelled after local writers and artists said it would give the false impression that basic freedoms are allowed in the troubled region. The Harud literary festival…
Killing fields of Sri Lanka
Here is the devastating Channel 4 in Britain documentary on the brutal civil war in Sri Lanka. Assisted by China, Israel, India and the US, Colombo murdered over 40,000 Tamil civilians. We will not forget. And we will demand accountability: