By signing an agreement with Turkey to slow the influx of refugees – which happens to be illegal in international law – the leaders of the European Union have taken a step further in their pact with the devil. A large part of the 3 billion Euros annually allotted to Ankara will serve to finance support for the jihadists, and as a result will increase the num...
Buried amid tens of thousands of pages of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s secret emails, now being made public by the US Government, is a devastating email exchange between Clinton and her confidential adviser, Sid Blumenthal. It’s about Qaddafi and the US-coordinated intervention in 2011 to topple the Libyan ruler. It’s about gold and a...
Policemen’s heads were broken; women police were molested; in fact the police force was running for life! All this happened when organized violence was unleashed on the night of Saturday, 27 June 2015 on the Chennai-Bengaluru Highway and connected roads by a mob from Ambur, a town in Vellore district. Over 50 police personnel were seriously injured as also a...
The latest bomb attacks in Brussels are the clear proof that the attacks in Paris were not a fluke, but the first in what is likely to be a long string of similar terror attacks. Such attacks are really nothing new, this is exactly what Russia has to endure in the 1990s, from the same people and for the same reasons. But whereas Russia eventually succeeded i...
The massive terrorist attack in Brussels came as a Not So Fast answer to Vladimir Putin’s Mission Accomplished. It appears the world needs more of Russian intervention in the Middle East if the black killers from the desert are to be stopped. Luckily, Russia is not in a rush to leave completely. From what I hear in Syria, the promised withdrawal is rather a ...
I’ve written about the arrow of time on several occasions. This rule of physics says that time never goes backward, and it has crucial implications for politics, as I show in my book A Taoist Politics.
The February 19, 2007 blog in which I foresaw Obama’s eventual victory, was titled Obama’s Breath of Fresh Air, Hillary’s Blast from the Past and Putin’s Cre...
These are amazing times indeed. Only two weeks ago I outlined the likelihood of a dramatic escalation of the war in Syria, and this week Vladimir Putin announced the withdrawal of what I would call the “tactical air strike” component of the Russian task force in Syria. How is that possible? How could the Russian warn about Turkish troops poised to invade Syr...
The enemies of Syria have been gleefully watching Syria getting dismembered, its people killed and its infrastructure destroyed for five long years.
Every time an icon was destroyed, they leaped with joy. Every time they conjured up a plot to widen the scope of the war and involve NATO, they impatiently sat in front of their televisions waiting and bracing ...
Aggression linked to Islamic fundamentalism, which started some three decades back in Tamil Nadu, has grown alarmingly over the years. It has so far claimed the lives of 134 Hindus and hundreds of Hindus have also been subjected to severe and serious assaults.
Hindu Munnani (Hindu Front), an organization affiliated to the RSS, has documented the violence...
The sheer scale of The Art of Living’s World Cultural Festival on the floodplains of the Yamuna in Delhi evokes comparisons with New York’s Woodstock (1969) that drew nearly four lakh people for an exposition of ‘Three Days of Peace & Music’. Woodstock is revered as the most iconic moment in the history of Western popular music, the high noon of Rock and Rol...
American exceptionalism presents an election made in hell.
If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump.
My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greate...
Obama’s withdrawal from the Middle-East after the failure of the policy initiated in 2009 to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in order to isolate and destroy Hezbollah was grasped by the Iranians with both hands. They were quick to reinforce Assad as guarantee of their link with Hezbollah’s territories in Southern Lebanon. Qasim Suleimani, the supreme commander of ...
There is another invidious claim made in the project proposal that the Indian intellectual tradition "retreated in silence" in the face "vociferous" criticism offered by modern western knowledge:
Direct confrontation between Indian and European learning was as rare as that between Sanskrit and Persianate scholarship during the previous three centuries. Or b...
The Greater India encompassed by Samskrtam
Dandin the great Sanskrit poet and scholar (c.7th century) declared:
Samskrtam nama daivivak anvakhyata maharsibhih
Samskrtam is the divine language as expounded...
Vladimir Putin has just ordered the withdrawal of the Russian forces in Syria:
“I consider the objectives that have been set for the Defense Ministry to be generally accomplished. That is why I order to start withdrawal of the main part of our military group from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic starting from tomorrow,” Putin said on Monday [14 Mar...
The landmark judgment of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, quashing the appointment of an “Executive Officer” by the Tamil Nadu Government for Sri Sabhanayagar (Sri Nataraja) Temple in Chidambaram was delivered on 6th January 2014.
Chidambaram temple, from its inception, was administered by a community of Brahmins known as “Podu Dikshitars”. They Brahmi...
The third budget from Narendra Modi government continues focus on Infrastructure with better emphasis on agriculture and rural sectors. Broadly, the NDA government is continuing the development pattern followed for a decade with better emphasis on delivery minus corruption. The flagship programs from UPA government like MNREGA are being continued under this ...
The war on Syria entered its sixth year which coincides with a century old Sykes - Picot accord that divided the Arab nation into 19 states after promising them independence if they joined in toppling the Ottoman Empire.
The ceasefire in Syria or cessation of all hostilities is holding to a large extent despite the violation and reports of continuous suppl...
My first meeting with Prof Makarand Paranjape of Jawaharlal Nehru University happened in February 2003 at the “National Seminar on Philosophy of Indian Nationalism & Value-Oriented Education” at the Jadavpur University campus in Kolkata. It is an amusing coincidence that both JNU and Jadavpur university students have been in the news over the past one...
One can say that the 40 years following World War II were a surprisingly good time for Western Europe, which was spared the need to make its own major decisions under the umbrella of the US-Soviet confrontation and enjoyed unique opportunities for steady development.
In these circumstances, Western European countries have implemented several ideas regarding...
International relations have entered a very difficult period, and Russia once again finds itself at the crossroads of key trends that determine the vector of future global development.
Many different opinions have been expressed in this connection including the fear that we have a distorted view of the international situation and Russia’s international stan...
The most dangerous and unheeded aspect of the recent controversies rocking universities across the country is the communalisation of nationalism. The radical leftist elements, mostly deracinated Hindus clamouring for freedom to lionize convicted seditionists and terrorists (even if that itself is not sedition) have overlooked the fact that each idol being ju...
The hiatus between India and Nepal seems to have been resolved with the recent visit of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to New Delhi with the latter getting assurance that it would not remain as a land-locked country but would be transformed into a land-linked country. Earlier, there was a signing of motor vehicular movement agreement amongst Bangladesh,...
The presidential elections of 2016 have several unique characteristics that defy common wisdom about political practices in 21st century America. Clearly the established political machinery – party elites and their corporate backers - have (in part) lost control of the nomination process and confront ‘unwanted’ candidates who are campaigning with programs an...
Armed forces and accountability: The Sri Lanka government while going through the difficult process of implementing the UN Human Rights Council resolution to carry out a “credible justice process” to inquire into the alleged war crimes during the Eelam war, seems to have run into a bit of trouble over the issue, at least with sections of the armed...
Western Europeans are persuaded to live in democracy. However, since the end of World War II, no people could freely choose to approach the Soviet Union or Russia. Whenever either gave it a try, terrorist campaigns, political assassinations and even a coup prevented it. In fact, the West European democracy does not apply to international issues. In this area...
Stung by the criticism of being a “Suit Boot Ki Sarkar”, which had a severe negative fallout in the recently concluded Bihar election, the NDA has made a bold attempt to address the problems of rural India, in particular, the farming community.
There are a slew of measures like allocation for irrigation, with a dedicated long-term irrigation fund with a cor...
In music, it is said, if you could repeat a feat three times in a row without making any mistake, then you have mastered it. With that, Mr. Arun Jaitley can be said to have mastered the art of disappointing those who have pinned their hopes on his budget. For him, it has not been a hard job. Last year, when he had everything going for him, he managed to...
As Bhubaneswar tops the list of smart cities to be built in the first phase and the Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik praises the Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu for the first time for being generous to the state, the Congress senses a secret deal between the BJP and the ruling BJD in the...