US-Japan security treaty fatally delayed nuclear workers’ fight against meltdownConfused and often conflicting reports out of Fukushima 1 nuclear plant cannot be solely the result of tsunami-caused breakdowns, bungling or miscommunication. Inexplicable delays and half-baked explanations from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Minist
The British royal wedding is turning swiftly into a public relations disaster, with news that Bahrain’s Crown Prince is respectfully turning down his invitation to the event because of the “situation reigning” in the Persian Gulf kingdom. However, the real story behind the headlines is that the diplomatic shuffle reveals that
In the world today, corporate fraud, corruption and tax evasion are at an all time high with direct involvement of banks, politicians and their respective parties. The standards and obligations prescribed by the criminal, civil and administrative levels of law are invariably undermined and hence ineffective. To give some insight how it works,
An earlier essay on “the Hazare phenomenon” referred to the legal doctrine of clean hands.[1] This is easy to understand through the English idiom, ‘the pot calling the kettle black’. However, in these exciting times we need to be politically correct, so to describe the current anti-corruption goings
25 top terrorism experts were on-board What really happened that terrible day in June 1994? Having worked with helicopters some considerable time both operationally and in Search and Rescue, I found this particular accident very distressing, especially as the crew – all deemed guilty (since overturned) – are not here to tell their side
One thing is truly shocking about the Mayawati Government’s allotment of two 10,000 sq. metre farmhouse plots to Supreme Court lawyer Shanti Bhushan and his son Jayant, and it is amazing that no political party or civil society activist has taken note of it. The Rashtriya Lok Dal of Mr Ajit Singh, and the Samajwadi Party of Mr Mulayam Singh Y
We’re now entering a more disturbing chapter of the nuclear disaster in Japan. Radiation is being detected in the atmosphere, rain water and food chain in North America. The official refrain, boldly repeated, is, “Not to worry, perfectly harmless, no health threat,” even though the six Fukushima reactors contain thousands of times
Shares plunged across Europe, Asia and the United States on Tuesday [12 April] as the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant deepened and Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raised its radiological event scale to its highest level. Conditions at the stricken facility have steadily deteriorated despite the valiant efforts of em
On 12 March 2010, the Justice Department and the United States Department of Agriculture held a meeting in Ankeny, a suburb of Iowa State, world’s “corn belt”, to probe into the alleged “competitive dynamics of the seed industry”. Outside, a huge coalition of families of farmers, consumers, and other critics of corpora
For yet another time, yet another tussle in The Hindu family – has come to the fore.Mr N Ravi, editor of The Hindu, has levelled serious charges against his brother Mr N Ram. When a friend called Parthasarathy – who was one of the brightest reporters I had ever seen in action, had suggested that I joined The Hindu some thirty odd years
Now that the Government of India has repeated its Sharm-el-Sheikh performance at Thimpu and offered to resume the composite dialogue with Pakistan, virtually overturning the stand it had taken in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Mumbai, it has much to explain about what it intends to do in Jammu and Kashmir. New Delhi’s climb-down on
Cutting short his visit to Washington, one of Pakistan’s major sources of money, Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence Chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha made clear that the expected “deal” between the United States and Pakistan has not been clinched. Shuja Pasha met US CIA chief Leon Panetta on April 11 and left in a hurry, two days before h
Beijing has become noticeably more anxious than usual in recent months, launching one of the more high-profile security campaigns to suppress political dissent since the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Journalists, bloggers, artists, Christians and others have been arrested or have disappeared in a crackdown prompted by fears t
An earlier essay[1] presented data to establish that Anna Hazare & co. have double standards, that they or their NGOs demand integrity from public officials when their own record is murky, and that clearly and emphatically theirs is a case of double standards. In Hazare’s own case, the Justice P.B. Sawant Commission of Inqu
Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank – this before they even had a government. Robert Wenzel wrote in the Economic Policy Journal: I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular upri
The visual impact of a young girl giving water to a septuagenarian man on fast is immense. The man finishes two thirds of it without the girl’s help and the girl is gently forced by camera-friendly Kiran Bedi to pose giving him water. The visible reluctance on the girls face poses many questions over the whole episode of fast for Lok Pal bill
Radioactive material from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan has fallen in rain on major cities across the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency has also detected radioactive materials in milk, air and drinking water. The EPA and other government agencies continue to insist that t
An open letter to Anna HazareRespected AnnajiNamaskar Thanks for writing to us (countrymen) cautioning against the divisive powers which are working to divide the anti-graft movement by spreading misinformation and propaganda. But Annaji, you must be aware that those who have openly critiqued the movement were not the jholawala types surround
Russia has always looked on at events in the Middle East from afar, shut out of the action, and remains an onlooker today, absorbed by its own problems. Eric Walberg looks at the implications for Russia of the revolutions and no-so-revolutions sweeping the Middle East Russian politics is in turmoil as a result of the uprisings in
“Corn is not dear because rent is paid (by the farmer to the landlord) but rent is paid because corn is dear”, said the classical British economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) in his classic defence of the landed gentry of 18th Century England. A sympathiser of the UPA government may contend in a similar vein that the food prices are
Last week, as if to justify his Libyan crusade, President Obama echoed the prevailing “peak oil” myth, stating that “we must accept the new reality that from here on out, demand for oil will always exceed supply”. It was music to the ears of the Rockefeller/Rothschild energy cartel and tax-dodger oil traders in Zug, Swi
“America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam.” (President Barack Hussein Obama, Al-Azar University, Cairo, 4th June 2009.) George W. Bush embarked on the casual snuffing out of uncounted, unique, human lives in majority Muslim populations, chillingly called it a “Crusade.” President Barack
The revolution and the turmoil in the Arab world have their origins in the tortuous history of British and American domination of the Middle East. Eric Walberg looks at the implications for Egypt of its colonial past Just as during the Cold War the communists were reviled by liberals (not to mention conservatives), so the Islamists are
War crimes, which deliberately targeted and killed civilians; covert bribery and spying to undermine progress on global warming and to lessen opposition by poor countries the most afflicted by climate change; underreporting of thousands upon thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilian casualties; US knowledge of and inaction against the torture of Egypt
Anna Hazare’s electronic media-backed fast-till-darkness has slowed down the fire burning in the hearts of millions of people who wanted a quick change in the system of corruption and criminalization in India. We are the largest democracy governed by a living constitution where Parliament is sovereign. How far can a fasting gentleman - even i
Medvedev vs. PutinThe Arab Rebellion has polarized Russia: some dream that the Spirit of Tahrir will visit Moscow, even as others hope for a NATO crusade to spread Western values all the way to the Volga; yet a third lot prays fervently that nothing will change, now or ever. The recent Russian abstention in the UN Security Council has split t
Isn’t it incredible that the Japanese, US and the IAEA are still playing with this Chernobyl type time bomb in Fukushima that continues releasing its deadly contamination each and every day? Those in the know fully understand that this entire plant is finished and cannot be controlled. The only option from day one was to accept the scale of t
A war on Libya has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 20 years. Using nukes against Libya was first envisaged in 1997. On April 14th 1986, Ronald Reagan ordered a series of bombings directed against Libya under “Operation El Dorado Canyon”, in reprisal for an alleged Libya sponsored terrorist bombing of a
Isn’t it incredible that the Japanese, the US and the IAEA are still playing with this Chernobyl-type time bomb in Fukushima that continues releasing its deadly contamination each and every day? Why are they playing games with the populations of the world and why have they not dealt with this in the same way as Chernobyl and entombed it forev
The Japanese government can afford its enormous debt because it owns the bank that is its principal creditor. But competitors are attempting to force the bank’s privatization. If they succeed, they could propel the country into debt servitude along with other credit-strapped nations. When an IMF spokeswoman said at a news confe
Since RTI campaigner Arvind Kejriwal was micro-managing Anna Hazare’s drive for a Lokpal Bill conforming to one drafted by select activists claiming to represent civil society, and as this Bill will yield an institutional structure giving sweeping powers to a certain ideological clique, it may be in order to demand accountability from activis
Recently, the front pages of the Indian news media have been saturated with Anna Hazare’s “fast-unto-death” against corruption in the Indian polity. Hazare is described as a Gandhian – the politics and morality of the Gandhian fast is another story; this one is about the company this Gandhian keeps. “
The People of The Book as Interlok Characters: Bobbie, Georgie and Teresa Living in a borrowed culture, the [Malaysian], more than most, needs writers to tell him who he is and where he stands. Here the [Malaysian] writers have failed. Most have so far only reflected and flattered the prejudices of their [religious] groups. Many a writer has d
As an anthropologist, I am always interested in what humans learn from their mistakes. Can humans change their behaviour, thereby improving their chances of survival, not just through natural selection, but also through cultural learning? Or are we hardwired to repeat our mistakes over and over, like humanoid lemmings? More to the point, what
The Indo-US nuclear deal was conceived in sin, and sin has a way of surfacing in a most unexpected manner. Some recent disclosures by Wikileaks show the American hand where it should not be, while reactions of the Indian establishment to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan betray an unmistakable anxiety to protect American interests. The Wikil
No matter what spin you hear coming out of the US, Washington is very much in control of the conflict in Libya and in control of what goes on at the United Nations, and believe me, we have only seen Phase 1 of their objectives to force regime change and take control of the vast oil reserves in Libya. The already US-manipulated UN is about to b
In the wake of an orchestrated frenzy to achieve a particular legal structure against official corruption, it is pertinent to ask all political parties if they are willing to abolish Parliament and representative government, and entrust power to a coterie of NGOs with overt and covert Western support. Anna Hazare’s gigantic exercise to
Top British politicians – Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron – are all guilty of war crimes; they have all authorized the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) against innocent civilians and our own [British] military forces to a level bordering on mass genocide. Many of the weapons used, e
Russia is different. The Americans, the Brits and the French by and large approve of their forces’ Libya bombing spree (yes, some doubt that it’s a good bang for the buck). The Russians are flatly against it, with no ifs, ands or buts. The Russian Ambassador in Tripoli, Vladimir Chamov, came back to a hero's welcome in Moscow. President
The Bush/ Cheney/ Obama Wars of Naked Aggression Obama’s speech showed a person more capable of DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink than Big Brother and the denizens of George Orwell’s 1984. How does a person as totally absurd as Obama expect to be taken seriously?What does the world think? Obama has been using air strikes and drone
This Can't Be Happening On a tour led by an official of the Libyan government, a girl is seen next to a house covered in shrapnel marks on the eastern outskirts of Tripoli that government officials said was targeted by western air strikes, March 25, 2011. President Obama’s criminal launch of an undeclared and Congressionally unauthorized war
As Turkey gears up to parliamentary elections in June, recent pronouncements by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu confirmed the importance that the Turkish leadership places in defining a more dynamic role for Turkey in the Middle East as a bridge between East and West. The Leaders of Cha
Massive fraud and corruption – on the lines captured by the path-breaking documentary, Bad Company – is afoot in the corporate sector, involving politicians, banks and other usual suspects, and amounting to billions of pounds. This is money stolen from investors and massive tax avoidance, the kind of thing that has made the world e
The House of Saud was not created by Allah, the Merciful God. It was created, and nurtured throughout its existence, by the British colonials. As a result, the Saudi Kingdom not only acts as the conjugal partner of Britain in Arabia, and beyond, it has fully adopted the British method of controlling the Muslim world by creating deep fissures within
Saturday evening, the 19th, after a sumptuous banquet, NATO leaders ordered the attack on Libya. Of course, nothing could occur without the United States claiming its irrefutable role as supreme leader. From its command post of that institution in Europe, a senior official declared that “Odyssey Dawn” was about to begin. World public op
With the handover of $2 million-plus in “blood money” to Pakistani relatives of his shootout victims, the controversial Raymond Davis is back in the United States. While Davis’ release has enraged vast numbers of Pakistanis, it has pleased others, including US state department officials and the Pakistan “experts” in Wa
Nuclear Energy as a means of power generation is now dead in the water. Dr. Chris Busby has verified in an email that three spent fuel pools are totally blasted away and burned up. That puts the approximate radiation levels at 24,000 HIROSHIMAS x 3 = 72,000 times the radiation of Hiroshima now in the atmosphere. Remember, this is JUS
The Gandhis remain coy as to which of their many advisors are “in” and which are “out,” leading to endless speculation and large numbers of people claiming to be “close to the Gandhi family.”[All emphasis ours – Editor] 30212, 04/06/2005 13:16, 05NEWDELHI2602, Embassy New Delhi, CONFIDENTIAL“This