Is EPFO the reason your employer isn’t depositing your provident fund? https://the-ken.com/story/epf-defaults-are-off-the-charts-blame-the-epfo/ the EPFO steadily dismantled the systems meant to spot defaults. Internal systems that once flagged defaulters were scrapped, and local offices say even obvious signals like payments slowing then stopping were routinely ignored... The fix was supposed to be technology. Essentially, big data and smarter systems. Much of that tech either doesn’t exist or work, or sits behind opaque processes that field officers can’t actually use.

While some regional PF offices sporadically release names of defaulters, the EPFO does not publish a comprehensive list with the names and amounts in default. But the scale of the problem can be gauged from the “arrears management” section in its annual reports.

Between March 2019 and March 2023, the arrears by employers ballooned over 70% to over Rs 15,000 crore (over $1.6 billion). And in the next one year, it had increased another 70% to almost Rs 26,000 crore. Nearly Rs 10,000 crore of that is thanks to about 2,400 employers, each of whom had arrears of Rs 50 lakh or...

Naturally, there’s a vacuum. Nearly 70% of establishments registered with EPFO are now classified as non-contributory, up from roughly half five years ago. Some may fall outside the law. Many don’t. So, employees usually find out only when they try to withdraw their money, or when their families have to.

A fire at a Goa nightclub recently made all of this impossible to ignore. Twenty workers died, but EPFO officers later admitted they would struggle to secure provident fund, pension, and insurance benefits for the families because the employer had been defaulting for years without detection.

Anand’s story today traces how a drive to end the inspector raj hollowed out enforcement without a working replacement, and how amnesty schemes with token penalties reshaped incentives. It also sits alongside our earlier reporting on EPFO’s other failings, from masked inefficiencies dressed up as high returns to a long-simmering crisis of claim rejections.

The largest island in the world, Greenland (that is not green at all but rather covered by white ice), has in recent months and even several years become one of the hottest geopolitical spots and disputes in world politics and international relations. The island, which has been administratively part of the Kingdom of Denmark for two centuries, has seriously caught the eye of the USA, namely its Trump administration, which firmly claims that the island simply must be under direct control and administration of the USA for its national security, otherwise it will be “swallowed up” by Russia and China (whose [Russian] submarines already operate around the island). The latest statements by NATO leaders support the idea of “Russian occupation of Greenland” as the reason for the increased presence of (small and meager) NATO soldiers on the island, but in essence, this position advocates the transfer of the island under American administration.

Greenland politically belongs to Denmark, i.e., the European Union, and in a military-political sense to the NATO pact. Geographically, it belongs to the North American continent and is closest to Canada, not the USA, and far away from Denmark.

in this whole policy of transferring Greenland to the US, the biggest real winners will be China and Russia, and the only loser, along with Denmark, will be the European Union. The diplomatic moves of Beijing and Moscow on this issue clearly indicate that they are de facto staying on the sidelines, with the US award to Russia likely being a solution to the “Ukrainian Question” according to the Russian will, while the award to China remains a secret, as in many other similar cases so far.

by Dr VladislavB Sotirovic

19/01/2026

  Abduction in Caracas https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/abduction-in-caracas?pc=1732 Tariq Ali.. To accuse a sitting president, whom you’ve just kidnapped while bombing his capital, of ‘conspiracy to possess’ automatic weapons is grotesque. Bondi is setting up a show trial, but it may not be as easy as she thinks. Without any doubt, some of the best US lawyers will defend Maduro and take up his case.

Rubio himself comes from a distinguished cocaine family, heavily implicated in the drug trade throughout South America. His relatives have been involved in smuggling cocaine into the United States for years. As Secretary of State, he has put drug dealers into every pro-US government on the continent. Unsurprisingly, some are saying that the assault could actually be a Rubio move to defend US-sponsored drug-runners against the more autonomous dealers who also exist in that part of the world.

Another irony is that Delta Force, the US state-terrorist special forces team that abducted the Venezuelan president, is itself widely regarded as operating a drug-trafficking network within the United States.

it’s a travesty to accuse the Chavistas of being anti-democratic from the start. During the Chávez period, the opposition newspapers and television stations blasted propaganda non-stop, attacking the regime – something you could never have seen in Britain or the United States. When people said to Chávez, ‘We should crack down’, he said, ‘No, we fight them politically’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncd14jm4L4M  interview from June 1986 exploring sustainable and culturally appropriate alternatives to conventional development

https://youtu.be/EnWMRR6ZCgU 
Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh

https://vimeo.com/256475432?fl=pl&fe=cm 

https://vimeo.com/242981518

Rhiannon Firth https://vimeo.com/566159521?fl=pl&fe=cm 
Mutual Aid Organising, Political Utopias, and Immanent Revolution

 Anarchism, Utopia & Mutual Aid | Rhiannon Firth | ARG Episode 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtrg2NaWJPE
Anarchism Research Group Loughborough

contemporary political utopias, the recent proliferation of mutual aid organising and the dangers of state co-optation, and the concept of Immanent Revolution.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/rhiannon-firth-mutual-aid-anarchist-preparedness-and-covid-19

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEets6m8Yls Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal hit out at the detaining authority for missing a vital video from the protest and played it inside the court while hearing the petition by SOnam Wangchuk's wife Geetanjali Angmo 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm01cYcPe5A  100 DAYS OF ILLEGAL ARREST? SC SOON ACTION ON SONAM BAIL? 

http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/articles/50906/Reverse-Contradictionary-_-Dictionary-of-New-Worlds;jsessionid=CF01AA77A86E447F9C3AC45E180160D1

 https://www.krisispublishing.com/prodotto/reverse-contradictionary/ 

The entire cultural output of humanity is being fed into AI. Large Language Models are ingesting not only books, articles, and blogs in their entirety, but also the content of our private written and spoken conversations. LLMs are boiling lakes and burning down forests to generate texts based on statistical mediocrity, which we are supposed to worship as the beginning of a great new gilded age.

This is where Reverse Contradictionary comes into play — a collaborative effort by critical media titans

 New spaces: the Public Domain of media  http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/ 
 
The culture of independent communication in any form, from video activism to free radios to Free Software, has opened a new space among common media and technologies, a space whose political and cultural citizenship must now be recognized.
 
The cultural, political and legal frame of this movement is a space that we call Public Domain of communication. As a Public Domain we understand a sphere which does not belong neither to the State nor to the Market, but to the whole society, and it is managed and controlled by the society itself (not to be misunderstood with the public service performed by the State).
 
The actors that have contributed more to the extension of Public Domain must now work on the internal self-organization and external visibility. See the Dutch campaign Public Domain 2.0 (www.waag.org).
 
The new autonomous public domain of communication must be recognized by institutions as means of participative democracy and new municipalism. Institutions must finally support the instruments and solutions to transform the fordist society into a post-fordist society.
 
4. New policies: the culture of new media
 
Institutional policies on new media only consider the question of access (often in a market-oriented perspective) and do not understand their value as means of democratic participations and as catalyser of culture and innovation.
 
During the last years, thanks only to new spontaneous practices coming from the society, a new media culture was able to grow. The delay of institutions has allowed the independent communication movement to reach the critical mass and self-organise into autonomous entities.
 
Italian cultural policies only invest on the preservation of cultural heritage and not on innovation, as it happens in the north of Europe. This intellectual gap only considers new media as new containers for old contents. They need to be recognized as autonomous forms of culture and social experimentation.
 
5. Tactical media: television meets the net
 
The net has represented the period of discovery and training to participative media. But it is still television that maintains a central role in society, culture and politics. For this reason, it is necessary to deconstruct it in a real democratic way, and to let the television medium meet the net medium. Television must be considered a new prosthesis and an extension of the net: but to avoid another media alternative "ghetto", the horizontality of the net must meet the "socialising" power of television.
 
Strategies of independent communication are: gaining access to channels and technologies, proliferation of broadcasters, production of alternative contents. For Urban Televisions the nodal point is not only the simple control of channels or contents, but the re-conquest of the collective enunciation of the message. That is, the re-conquest of the public and collective role represented by television.
 
Working today on the television medium can be interesting only if it is transformed into a new participative, transparent and ethical medium: in order to address its power to the cultural and economical development of society itself, and not only to support market or political consensus.
 
6. Tactical television: public access channels
 
For this reason it is necessary to create Urban Televisions in the form of open access television channels and to promote a social and communitarian participation to them.
 
"Public access" means a TV channel not only accessible, but managed by the communities that compose the social life of a city. Public access has a meaning if it is used for a collective content sphere, and not for a top-down programming.
 
"Community television" means a television that is not only a simple public access and a rhetorical exercise of free speech (open publishing) but is also able to "make society" and build social texture (community access and not simply open access).
 
Urban Televisions are based on a wide social participation and does not only involve media activists and practitioners (as it happens in several independent project).
 
Urban Televisions have a social mission and status safeguarded by an Ethical Chart that recognizes all rights, duties and pleasures of a participative communication.
 
The Italian delay in public access media must face those European experiences that show the possibility to create televisions managed from the society itself.
 
7. Tactical contents: from national programming to urban programming
 
Urban Televisions are televisions that make information, entertainment and culture and are able to construct a daily narration where the whole society recognizes and confronts itself. Urban televisions re-conquest programming as a genre of collective narration. Instead of a national programming, backbone of the political consensus and of the social biorhythms, an urban programming is built bottom-up.
 
The heart of Urban Televisions is a Community Programming which mirrors the whole social mosaic and leaves its spaces to self-organisation of communities and single citizens. Community Programming also organises democratic spaces of confrontation and respects the most radical and anti-conformist styles and contents.
 
8. The urban model: television rooted in the urban life
 
Independent communication must discover the city again as a new dimension of action, because the city is the first and elective ground of making society. A public access city television can root easily into any sector of civil, cultural and economical life. Urban Television turns out to be a precious means and a model of participative municipalism.
 
We have to stop considering the movement as the first speaker of free communication and be prepared to make society and conquest everyday life spaces. The aim of the Manifesto of Urban Televisions is to transform an international innovation movement into a movement that actually builds up society.
 
9. The economical model: non-profit cooperative media
 
New models of social communication are only credible and alternative to monopoly if they are economically autonomous. Media-activism must avoid some of the errors made in the past: in its history it has created ruptures and invented practices that the market has promptly colonised (e.g. Italian free radios of the '70 which cleared the way to commercial radios).
 
Urban Televisions are based on a model of non-profit social cooperation, where profits are re-invested into new productions and projects for the communities.
 
Urban Televisions work as meta-medium of local economy in a post-fordist perspective: they trig the multi-media economy, valorise bottom-up productions and realize a content economy with social aims.
 
10. The political model: the autonomy of society
 
Urban Televisions are born out of the initiatives of society and not out of institutions or market. Institutional policies must recognize self-organisation in the field of culture and media, and must avoid the simulations of "civil society" and "social communication" for political or commercial purposes.
 
Urban Televisions inaugurate a new relationship between the society and the economical and institutional subjects. This way they overcome the old vertical structures of mediation and political representation to give room to new horizontal and autonomous networks, more suitable for the contemporary post-fordist society.

तुर्कमान गेट बुलडोजर का गोदी मीडिया ने बहुत प्रचार क्यों किया? https://youtu.be/987ZrHr3m5I Dr. Pradeep Mathur Dr. Shivaji Sarkar Dr. Tasleem Rahmani Dr. Muzaffar Ghazali  

Chandni Mahal in Old Delhi functions as an extension of the city’s informal economy — tailoring shops, small traders, pedestrians, residents, and commuters sharing narrow lanes in constant motion. On Wednesday morning (January 7), however, the neighbourhood bore the marks of an emergency security operation. 

According to the Joint Survey Report (JSR), authorities identified: 2,512 square feet of encroachment on a road belonging to the Public Works Department (PWD), and 36,428 square feet of MCD land encroached upon for non-religious, commercial uses, including a baraat ghar (wedding hall), parking facilities, and a private diagnostic centre (ThePrint).

        
Relying on these findings, the Delhi High Court, in its November 12, 2025 order, directed the PWD and the MCD to remove the encroachments. However, the court also directed that the mosque management committee must be granted a hearing before any coercive action was taken. This order formed the legal foundation for all subsequent administrative and enforcement actions. (The Times of India)

Administrative hearings and the MCD’s December 22 order. In compliance with the court’s direction, the MCD held two hearings on November 24 and December 16, attended by representatives of the mosque management committee, DDA officials, and L&DO officers (The Indian Express).

During these proceedings: Mosque committee moves the High Court again. Challenging the MCD’s decision, the mosque management committee filed a fresh writ petition before the Delhi High Court, seeking to set aside the December 22 order. The petition emphasised that: The mosque predated Independence; It was adjoined by a graveyard with no clear demarcation; the wedding hall and diagnostic centre had already ceased operations;
The committee had no objection to removal of commercial encroachments but sought protection for the graveyard. (The Hindu)
On Tuesday (January 6), a day before the demolition, Justice Amit Bansal heard the plea. The court recorded that the petitioner’s counsel stated there was no grievance regarding removal of the wedding hall or diagnostic centre, both of which had ceased operations.

The Demolition Begins Before Dawn

Although the demolition was scheduled to begin at 8 am on January 7, MCD teams arrived at the site around 1 am, accompanied by extensive police deployment. According to police officials cited by PTI and ANI, nearly 30 bulldozers and 50 dump trucks were mobilised. Heavy police deployment, including riot-control units, were present for the operation.

Senior police officers told ThePrint that tear gas shells were fired from one side of the mosque complex where stone-pelting was concentrated. The crowd was dispersed within about 30 minutes, after which the demolition commenced around 1:30 am.
The FIR invokes multiple provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, including:
Conflicting Accounts: Locals vs police

The incident triggered political reactions across party lines. Congress leader Salman Khurshid said the situation “could have been handled differently” but added that since the court had found the action valid, “nothing else can be said” (ANI).

The BJP accused opposition leaders of justifying violence. Party spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla criticised remarks by Samajwadi Party leaders who described the stone-pelting as an “action-reaction” (PTI).

Delhi Home Minister Ashish Sood stated that the mosque was untouched and the action was strictly in accordance with court orders (ANI).

Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party MP Mohibbullah Nadvi, who was present in the area prior to the violence, is under investigation. Police said he left before the demolition began but will be summoned to join the probe (ANI).

The larger context and present status

The Faiz-e-Ilahi Masjid had previously drawn attention after CCTV footage showed Dr Umar un-Nabi, accused of being involved in the Red Fort suicide bombing on November 10, 2025, offering prayers there hours before the attack. Authorities, however, have consistently stated that the demolition drive was entirely unrelated to that incident (ThePrint).

As of now:

The mosque and graveyard remain intact;
The commercial structures have been demolished;
Five arrests have been made;
The High Court has sought replies from authorities, with the matter listed for further hearing in April.
Delhi Police and the MCD maintain that the action was lawful, proportionate, and undertaken strictly under judicial directions, while urging the public not to be misled by misinformation circulating online. Police sources stated that social media posts falsely claiming the mosque itself was being demolished circulated shortly before the violence; and that these posts contributed to people gathering at the site (The Hindu, PTI)