THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

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Nepal's Ayurvedic Masterplan

Ayurveda and traditional healing traditions from around the world are dismissed as “pseudo-science.” The justification for this arrogant condescension is: “Herbs haven’t gone though a clinical trial.” This argument is lazy. You can find medical research literature of herbs like gurjo, hibiscus, and timmur, in the Western scientific tradition, archived online. I have read these research articles via the US National Library of Medicine at the National Institute of Health. People do not bother to read this research, although they are only a click away. The Kathmandu Post ran an article about Kathmandu traffic police planting tinospora cordifolia or gurjo at the Tinkune Park. Gurjo is thought to prevent coronavirus. The traffic police, one of our most vulnerable frontline workers, were grateful to have this healing herb. This article called it an “untested herb.” There are over 300 scientific research articles about the herb and its usages, including for osteo-arthritis to HIV/AIDS, from r

Decolonizing the planet

America's crimes against humanity

Annapurna Express, 17/6/2020 Fifty-four African nations have called on UN Human Rights Council to have an urgent debate on police brutality and racially inspired human rights violations. The letter asks for the debate to be held next week. The militarization of the police and imprisonment of African-Americans go back to slavery. White supremacy—the notion of white culture being supreme over others—is part of the hegemonic cultural narrative of the USA. This narrative has enabled militarized violence over minority groups, including Native Americans and Latinos. Black Lives Matter has opened the door. The UN should now open an extended investigation into America’s crimes against humanity. Since the end of the Second World War, the deep state and military-industrial complex of the USA has terrorized the globe. From Afghanistan to Iraq, Cambodia to Laos, the same logic of white supremacy and economic and technological domination has led to the deaths of millions. Cuba, Iran and North

Famine or feast?

Annapurna Express, 31/5/2020 Kathmandu saw its first known starvation death this week: Surya Bahadur Tamang, who’d spent several decades portering goods in Kathmandu, was found dead on the sidewalks of Kirtipur. He did not make enough money to rent a room for himself, so he slept on the streets. On Saturday, May 23, exactly two months after the lockdown started and all work shut down, he was found dead, still clutching the woven jute strap he used to carry loads on his back. The locals said he had no family. He’d been eating free food offered by local organizations. Yet that wasn’t enough to ward off starvation. How many people have died already is up for debate: on Twitter, there was news of at least one other man who had died of hunger in the Terai, news which went unreported in the national media. These are not isolated incidents but a systematic failure of justice. As time passes and the lockdown continues, there will be more starvation deaths. In a 2017 report by th

Nepal's Lockdown Reality Check

Annapurna Express, 11/5/2020 A few nights ago, I heard a young child talking with a man outside my lane. The voice of the child was rough, like she was from the villages and hadn’t been educated. The man was laughing occasionally in the casual manner of the laborers who still lived in the giant big building that has been constructed in front of our house as an investment property. Built for $600,000, it is now empty, with no renters coming forward to pay the rumored 10 lakh per room. But a group of young male workers are still living there, no doubt guarding the property. Every evening, I hear beautiful flute music from the same building. But this evening, I heard the voice of an angry young woman who was coercing the child to do something she didn’t want to do. The child start to cry hysterically. The man laughed. Then they left. I have done research in Mumbai and I know child prostitution runs beneath the layers of Nepali society, where family members and guardians often become t

Cold West, Hot East

Annapurna Express, 24/04/2020 Despite evidence coronavirus has spread rapidly in rich, developed countries, and left poor countries unscathed, WHO keeps up the official pretense that it will affect all countries equally. This, in fact, has shown not to be the case, after almost 3.5 months of global contagion. If the scientific establishment was in the service of science (and not in the business of pushing forth the notion of European hegemony and supremacy, or marketing Big Pharma drugs), it would be asking the question: why? What are the factors which are enabling the spread of this pulmonary disease in developed economies? Several things stand out to me. First, the evidence that the coronavirus can survive 72 hours on plastic. All economies devastated by the virus are plastic economies. People use plastic credit cards to pay for goods and services, they eat their takeout meals out of plastic food containers, they buy their food from plastic bowls which have been touched by mult