All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

I am still here

Petchary's Blog

Since our health crisis last month. I have been mentally (and physically) in a different space, and virtually unable to write. But they do say that life throws you some curve balls, just when you don’t expect them to come at you.

Tomorrow (all being well) I will start getting a few things off my chest, so to speak. A lot of stuff has been piling up that I am most anxious to write about – especially environmental happenings in and around our island (the good, the bad, and the rather ugly).

So, please stay tuned. There’s a lot to talk about. And Ukraine, you are in my thoughts.

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How the West Marshaled a Stunning Show of Unity Against Russia – The New York Times

President Biden, who had dialed in from the White House Situation Room, spoke up swiftly. Article 5 was “sacrosanct,” he said, referring to the “one for all, all for one” principle that has anchored NATO since its founding after World War II. Mr. Biden urged allied leaders to step up and send reinforcements to Europe’s eastern flank, according to multiple officials briefed on the call.

Within hours, NATO had mobilized its rapid response force, a kind of military SWAT team, for the first time in history to deter an enemy. It was one in an avalanche of precedent-shattering moves, unfolding in ministries and boardrooms from Washington to London and Brussels to Berlin. In a few frantic days, the West threw out the standard playbook that it had used for decades and instead marshaled a stunning show of unity against Russia’s brutal aggression in the heart of Europe.

A “new normal,” Mr. Stoltenberg called it.

Tears On The Sand

Weekend Stories by Trishikh

Under the fading silver veil of a moonlit night, in the last hour before the dawn of morning light, on the glittery shores of a once turbulent river, an eighteen-year-old low-caste boy tirelessly shovelled grains of rock and coral into a banged-up truck’s weathered wooden cradle. The driver handed over five shiny ten-rupee coins to the boy for his tribe’s night-long clandestine labour in the wilderness. Threatening to return after two days for another load, he drove off around the undulating paths of the secluded and dug-up beach. Crossing the jungle through the unnamed road, he got on a metalled highway to deliver his precious cargo at a construction site somewhere in the constantly morphing concrete landscape of the Kolkata metropolis.

For many generations, Bali’s forefathers had lived and worked on the golden sandbanks of the Damodar River at the edge of the Tildanga Forest in the Burdwan district of…

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