From Chicago to the White House, to Brazil, and to the entire Trans-Atlantic world, the news of the world today is that, as of January 1, 2011, President Barack Obama’s world is crashing down, and the world of Obama’s British masters, as well. While winter comes, the fate of London, Wall Street, the Chicago Board of Trade, and the trans
Europe is on the cusp of change. An EU heads-of-state summit Dec. 16 launched a process aimed to save the common European currency. If successful, this process would be the most significant step toward creating a singular European power since the creation of the European Union itself in 1992 — that is, if it doesn’t destroy the euro fir
Paul Volcker is worried about the future of the dollar and for good reason. The Fed has initiated a program (Quantitative Easing) that presages an end to Bretton Woods 2 and replaces it with different system altogether. Naturally, that’s made trading partners pretty nervous. Despite the unfairness of the present system--where export-dependent
Soon after being sworn in as Secretary of State, and just months after the deadly terrorist assault on the Indian city of Mumbai (Nov. 26, 2008), Hillary Clinton established an interagency task force with the Treasury Department to identify and disrupt terrorist funding conduits. The Interagency Illicit Finance Task Force (IFTF) was placed under th
Though devoid of any spectacular announcement, the Chinese Premier Mr. Wen Jiabao’s recent visit to India stands out as the most significant among the slew of high profile visits hosted by New Delhi in recent weeks. China is fast emerging as the country that matters most to India and New Delhi’s relations with Beijing are trickiest of a
While “scientists” have been genetically modifying insects for years, only in the last few have they begun to openly discuss releasing them into the environment. As always, the fact that public discussion has just now begun to take place on the issue means that the project has already been initiated. This much has been borne out by the
Recently, and particularly in the last few weeks, the public discourse has been vitiated by reckless allegations against Indian nationalists, particularly members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and RSS as an institution, and terms like “Hindu Terror” and “Saffron Terror” are freely bandied about. In the forefront of the
A recently released report on ‘Caste’ by the Hindu American Foundation, a body of (mostly first generation) American citizens of Indian origin, has unleashed a raging controversy in India and the US Hindu community. Indians question the ‘adhikar’ (locus standi) of American Hindus to pontificate on the nature of what th
Two years ago, Christians and a number of Tribals suffered heavy losses due to riots in Kandhamal. Thousands were displaced from their homes and had to migrate to safe places. Now, however, their lives are slowly coming back on track. Yet it is not only in Orissa that Christians lack normal ties with other faiths; this is so even in Madhya Pr
WikiLeaks is a touchstone. Amid all the brouhaha and legal shenanigans engaged in by various governments – the Brits, the Swedes, the Americans – the prospect of having a website devoted to spilling the secrets of the elites has brought out everyone’s true colours. To those truly devoted to liberty, it has evoked cheers; for those
Leaked documents reveal US and Afghan government collusion with major traffickers. Documents made public by WikiLeaks’ latest file drop show that Afghan President Hamid Karzai pulled strings several times throughout early 2009 to free numerous drug traffickers with whom he had political or economic ties. The documents also show that US o
Leaked cable raises new questions about Litvinenko’s 'assassination'We keep hearing there’s nothing in the WikiLeaks cables we didn’t already know – this from people who, more often than not, are frothing at the mouth about Julian Assange’s alleged “treason” and “anti-American” villainy. Of cour
“... the high praise of God in their mouth, and a two edged sword in their hand ...” - (Psalms: 149.5) The avalanche of proof provided by Wikileaks that the US and UK governments have been indulging in what millions have been convinced of for a very long time: just about every kind of underhand, lying, cheating, murderous sk
Julian Assange has declared that geopolitics will be separated into pre-“Cablegate” and post-“Cablegate” eras. That was a bold claim. However, given the intense interest that the leaks produced, it is a claim that ought to be carefully considered. Several weeks have passed since the first of the diplomatic cables were releas
Some startling pronouncements, orders, and judgments by the Supreme Court in recent times necessitate urgent scrutiny of the definition of ‘justice’ which seems to have undergone a strange metamorphosis without national debate or consent. There is also a danger that judicial overreach is transcending the constitutional scheme of separat
Biggest Scam in World History Exposed - Are the Federal Reserve’s Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?What if the greatest scam ever perpetrated was blatantly exposed, and the US media didn’t cover it? Does that mean the scam could keep going? That’s what we are about to find out.I understand the importance of the new WikiLeaks documents
Saint Yves d’Alveydre and his “Mission de l’Inde”At the time when the West’s colonial sway over the rest of the world reached its acme, India had a hallowed place in the imagination of Europeans and the study of the country’s culture and history was coloured by the romantic or rather “Romanesque” fasc
The so-called composite dialogue between India and Pakistan, aimed at finding a settlement of the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir, has so far revolved round two main presumptions: first, that the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir is a Muslim problem confined to the valley of Kashmir, and secondly, a settlement on Jammu and Kashmir must be acceptable to
“World bankers, by pulling a few simple levers that control the flow of money, can make or break entire economies. By controlling press releases of economic strategies that shape national trends, the power elite are able to not only tighten their stranglehold on this nation’s economic structure, but can extend that control world wide. T
They are trying to paint you,as the ultimate villain,Oh, Ms Radia, a brave woman of sorts,they are calling you by different names,portraying you as the root-cause,of all that possibly happened wrong,in so many areas of policy making,including the infamous Spectrum scams,releasing your tapes every now and then,presenting your talks personal an
An artillery duel between North and South Korean forces on November 23 has set in motion a series of events which threaten to spiral out of control. On November 22, South Korea began its annual military exercise, involving including 70,000 troops, dozens of South Korean and US warships and some 500 aircraft. The following day, South Korean artiller
What the Wikileaks revelations tell us about how Washington runs PakistanWith governments like Pakistan’s current regime, who needs the strong arm of the CIA? According to Bob Woodward’s latest bestseller Obama’s Wars, when Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari, an obsequiously dangerous man, was notified that the CIA w
Creating a Country of the Rich, by the Rich, and for the Rich There is a war underway. I’m not talking about Washington’s bloody misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a war within our own borders. It’s a war fought on the airwaves, on television and radio and over the Internet, a war of words and images, of half-truth, i
Historical PrecedentGiven the ahistorical nature of the public mind, few people will recall that as the United States prepared to enter World War I, American citizens were quite exercised over the issue of “open diplomacy.” Indeed, at the time, President Woodrow Wilson made it the number one issue of his fourteen points – the poin
Mackinder’s Geo-Strategic Nightmare- “The great wars of history - we have had a world-war about every hundred years for the last four centuries - are the outcome, direct or indirect, of the unequal growth of nations, and that unequal growth is not wholly due to the greater genius and energy of s
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Hari Om
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12 Dec 2010
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New Delhi has wasted enough of its time in Kashmir and achieved nothing whatsoever. Kashmir continues to simmer and pose a grave challenge to national unity and the very integrity of India. Indeed, the situation has reached a stage where even those constitutionally bound to defend and promote further the nation’s paramount interests in the Va
The Wikileaks story has been treated by the establishment as a dangerous expose of imperial mind management and led to suppression, damage control and vindictive retribution. Meanwhile much of what passes for an anti-establishment has expressed cynical disregard for what seems like old news, or treated the entire episode as another of the
At Lisbon, attending the Nov. 19-20 NATO heads of state summit, President Obama backtracked from his earlier commitment to start withdrawal from Afghanistan beginning July 2011, and invoked the end of 2014 as the new date for ending the war. In fact, he banished from his lexicon the word “withdrawal” vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Now, Jul
An epic drama is unfolding after the Wikileaks founder gave himself up to Scotland Yard, but will Assange suffer the fate of Ellsberg or Pollard? It was United States president Woodrow Wilson who called for “open diplomacy” — number one of his fourteen points in 1918 — so that “diplomacy shall proceed always frank
On the morning of Nov. 29, two Iranian scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear development program were attacked. One was killed, and the other was injured. According to Iranian media, the deceased, Dr. Majid Shahriari, was heading the team responsible for developing the technology to design a nuclear reactor core, and Time magazine referred to
The Hindu broke the dawn of 28 November 2010 with the new gospel of Arundhati Roy, one of the opportunist-cum-popularity hunters of contemporary India. She came into the limelight with “God of Small Things” which won the prestigious Booker Prize. The book is flavoured with anti-communism, maybe the main reason behind this game of chance
In the aftermath of his lobbyist Nira Radia’s tele-cons with politicians and families, journalists and editors, ministers and personal assistants, businessmen and auditors, bureaucrats and peons, taking the nation by storm, Ratan Tata has approached the Supreme Court seeking a probe on the leaking of the Radia tapes claiming his privacy has b
Going, going, gone! You can almost hear the announcer’s voice throbbing with excitement, only we’re not talking about home runs here, but about the disappearing date on which, for the United States and its military, the Afghan War will officially end. Practically speaking, the answer to when it will be over is: just this side
Jaganmohan Reddy’s revolt against Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s refusal to anoint him as chief minister of Andhra Pradesh signals the end of her personal hegemony within the party and undermines the Nehruvian edifice upon which this family’s domination of the polity rests. This will have an escalating impact, especially in sta
[After we published ‘Foreign Correspondents abuse Indian hospitality, host Mirwaiz’ on Dec. 2, 2010, Mr Jay Bhattacharjee sent us a copy of his 1999 article, originally published in The Pioneer, New Delhi, demolishing the insidious role of the foreign press in India. As this decade-old article still has a very contemporary ring –
Zbigniew Brzezinski has publicly boasted on several occasions that the clandestine war against Soviet penetration of Afghanistan began at least six months prior to the Christmas Eve 1979 Red Army invasion, when he got President Carter to sign an Intelligence Finding authorizing the recruitment and support for mujahideen operations inside the countr
Using Fake Intelligence to Justify a Pre-emptive Nuclear War on Iran The UN Security Council on June 9 2010 adopted the imposition of a fourth round of sweeping sanctions against The Islamic Republic of Iran. UNSC Resolution 1929 includes an expanded arms embargo as well as “tougher financial controls”: “[Res
Meenakshi Jain's book [Parallel Pathways: Essays on Hindu-Muslim Relations (1707-1857)] explains the leitmotif for Hindu-Muslim relations for over a millennium and demolishes the ‘harmony' theory. Hindus and Muslims lived amicably in undivided India until Britain colonised the country, promoted conflict between the two communities, purs
Our real-life Neo did it again! In this new installment of Wiki-Matrix, the intrepid Julian Assange assaults the Empire while being pursued by ravenous Pentagon generals, shadowy CIA agents and overheated Swedish feminists. Excuse me if I’m sounding like a teenager’s comic book, but this story has so many twists and plots it makes
Information is the currency of democracy - Thomas Jefferson Since 9/11, the US government, through Presidents Bush and Obama, has increasingly told the US public that “state secrets” will not be shared with citizens. Candidate Obama pledged to reduce the use of state secrets, but President Obama continued the Bush tradition. T
In an extremely provocative intervention in India’s internal affairs, the Delhi-based Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia invited Kashmiri separatist leader Mirwaiz Umer Farooq for an exclusive interaction with foreign journalists, dis-inviting even the Indian media, which stood outside the venue and covered the protest by agitat
Medvedev’s presence in Lisbon was more a show of Russia’s importance than of subservience to the Euro-Atlantic alliance The results of the NATO summit were as predictable as a Soviet Communist Party congress, with the word “peace” replaced by “war”. NATO’s embrace of the US agenda of missile defence, n
It is an open secret that the internal security of our nation has been in peril since May 2004, when the Congress-led UPA came to power. An effete Prime Minister and an inept Home Minister allowed the Naxalites, Maoists and Terrorists to regroup and strike at will, causing huge loss of life and immense damage to public and private property. When sp