The incursion by troops of the Peoples Liberation Army of China into Indian territory at Daulat Baig Oldie (DBO) has surprisingly not elicited the kind of national response that one would have liked. Even more astonishing is that the media is also quite “cool” towards the incident. There have been few debates on television; such debates, of course,
An unsuccessful faceoff has been going on since a contingent of about 30 Chinese soldiers entered as much as 19 kms inside Indian territory at Burthe in Daulat Beg Oldie, Eastern Ladakh, on April 15, 2013. The Indian government is attempting to diffuse the situation at diplomatic, political and military levels to avoid an adverse impact on relation
|
by
Hari Om
|
on
28 Apr 2013
|
5 Comments
|
In the United States of America, the term “First Family” is casually used by the media in general and the White House press corps in particular to refer to the President and his immediate family. The US President is both head of the state and head of the government and members of the First Family comprise the President, the First Lady of the United
The news of today, whether it is the bombs in Boston, gang rape of a young woman and her demise in India, or the continuous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, the violent demonstrations in Egypt, and the continuous security checks, are a reflection of the dehumanisation of the present society, a failure of trust, and a reflection of the insecurity
On April 1, big multinational pharmaceuticals with big money and clout got a black eye in India when the country’s highest court turned down an appeal from the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis to patent an updated version of its cancer drug, Glivec. Novartis was denied a patent by the Indian authorities on the grounds that the new version was
Given that separation of Sri Lanka is out of the question, the Tamils had two choices before them. To be ruled under a de facto armed LTTE, or to remain under sovereign Sri Lanka ruled by a democratically elected Government that comprised representatives of all ethnic groups. The Tamils did live under the LTTE for well over 25 years and the T
An era ended when the Soviet Union collapsed on Dec. 31, 1991. The confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union defined the Cold War period. The collapse of Europe framed that confrontation. After World War II, the Soviet and American armies occupied Europe. Both towered over the remnants of Europe’s forces. The collapse of the Euro
Narendra Modi’s acceptability rather than unacceptability among ordinary and orthodox Muslims may have provoked his Bihar counterpart to go on the warpath. The merit of this proposition can be gauged from some facts in the public domain. Hence, the BJP should let this support from a growing national constituency crystallize at its own pace, rather than try t...
This year, spring in France is unusually cold and rainy, following on the heels of a frosty and long winter. Only the last Sunday was different: the sun pushed the clouds away for the first time in months, and immediately the lucid Parisian air warmed up and trees broke out in full bloom. The French were cheered up after the long, hibernal gloom an
Elections in democracies are mostly carnival time; the media goes overboard with tell all stories that cause more confusion than creation of awareness; then there are the flags, the banners, the road shows, the helicopters landings in remote areas giving a new experience to kids born after previous elections when the candidates last paid a visit, a
Would you believe that the United States tried to do something that was not nice against Hugo Chávez? Wikileaks has done it again. I guess the US will really have to get tough now with Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. In a secret US cable to the State Department, dated November 9, 2006, and recently published online by WikiLeaks, former US
Recent violence in Myanmar and Sri Lanka indicate that some fanatics in the Buddhist Sangha, the community of Buddhist monks and nuns, have begun to turn viciously anti-Muslim under the pretext of being “nationalists.” In tandem, the Sangha are setting the stage for future anti-Muslim violence in both countries. The policy of ethno-religious c
Farmers bodies are gearing up to oppose the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011, which was supposedly amended to improve compensation to farmers under directions from Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi, as the new draft perverts the meaning of “public purpose” to benefit multinationals and
As if the violence at Nadia and North and South 24 Parganas were not enough, the start of the holy Navratras saw Hindus of Bardhaman district being harassed during the sacred Gajon festival in honour of Shiva Mahadeo. The small village of Ketugram in Katwa Sub-division, where Hindus comprise a majority of 80 per cent and Muslims 20 per cent, h
By defining his idea of secularism simply as ‘India First’, Narendra Modi has hit the leftist-liberal combine where it hurts most. True to style, he has just bypassed the ideological debate saturated with its loaded jargon and banal inanities. He has focused on the operative significance of secularism in practice and boldly contrasted it with Natio
|
by
Hari Om
|
on
18 Apr 2013
|
1 Comment
|
“For our party power is only a means to achieve the goal (read autonomous status) and not an end itself. The National Conference (NC) will take it if it suits public interest and kick it if it does not”. So said Sheikh Mustafa Kamal, NC additional general secretary and uncle of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s on April 16 while addressing party worke
Before the USA begins vengefully bombing another nation, with Iran, Syria and North Korea high on the list of supposedly deserving targets, we should look at our own nest of potential terrorist murderers right here at home. Anyone, mentally ill or not, who wished to inflict horror on large numbers of people could do so at greater ease than it would
I was the first to point out that the Federal Reserve was rigging all markets, not merely bond prices and interest rates, and that the Fed is rigging the bullion market in order to protect the US dollar’s exchange value, which is threatened by the Fed’s quantitative easing. With the Fed adding to the supply of dollars faster than the demand for dol
The arrival of over 70,000 Indian Peace Keeping Force troops to Sri Lanka followed the signing of the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord on 29 July 1987. Their task was significant for ironically the IPKF was to disarm the very militants to whom India had provided covert training and arms. In other words, Indian soldiers were being sent to a foreign land to d
Since 2004 the international media has been reporting routine killings of “militants” and some civilians by missiles launched from US-triggered drones inside Pakistan’s tribal areas. Washington refused to acknowledge the attacks, despite the fact that a number of independent sources and some Pakistani Cabinet ministers repeatedly made “allegations”
Independence to colonies came at a cost with a legacy that bound nations to expend energy on solving the problems the colonials implanted. People were divided. Populations were divided. Ethnicities were divided. Tribes were divided. Boundaries were created and endless issues associated with each. Muslims have issues, Christians have issues, but whe
North Korea’s state-run media reported Sunday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered the country’s top security officials to take “substantial and high-profile important state measures,” which has been widely interpreted to mean that North Korea is planning its third nuclear test. Kim said the orders were retaliation for the US-led push t
Media idol Rahul Gandhi’s pathetic performance accompanied by Narendra Modi’s meteoric rise has put India’s left-leaning intelligentsia in a bind. Nehruvian Ramachandra Guha’s recent performance on Karan Thapar’s television show maybe an indication of more such face saving exercises to come Rats, we are told, desert a sinking ship in order to
There is little doubt that both Prabhakaran and Osama were leaders of two terrorist groups, and feared and abhorred. Prabhakaran headed the Liberation of Tamil Tiger Eelam whilst Osama headed the Al Qaeda. Prabhakaran’s death was announced on 18 May 2009 while Osama was killed on 2 May 2011. Sri Lanka is currently facing a plethora of allegat
The state of Jammu and Kashmir has, for quite some time now, been standing on the threshold of a turn over from the cult of foreign sponsored violence. What is coming in the way is the evil intentions of powerful international players who feel they have a stake in the future of Kashmir. These self appointed stake holders completely disregard the in
Perhaps unnerved by Rahul Gandhi’s fiasco of a speech at the CII, and the simultaneous rise of Narendra Modi, the Congress is increasingly resorting to personal attacks. Recently, it has revived the old phrase maut ka saudagar used by Smt Sonia Gandhi several years ago (a handout from lyricist Javed Akhtar, who initiated the Muslim move to take the
|
by
Hari Om
|
on
11 Apr 2013
|
3 Comments
|
Former minister Mani Shankar Aiyer, known for courting controversies and for his arrogance and uncouth manners, is unhappy with the Congress-dominated UPA Government. He has many grouses, one of which is that it has not accepted and implemented the recommendations of the report submitted by the three interlocutors for Jammu & Kashmir on October
Large multinational pharmaceutical companies have been quick to voice their disappointment with the Supreme Court judgment dismissing Swiss drug maker Novartis AG’s appeal seeking patent for its anti-cancer drug, Glivec. Coming on the top of the government’s decision to grant compulsory licence for another cancer drug Nexavar, the ruling is portray
Frankly, it never was much of a “League” of Arab states. And arguably it never really achieved a whole lot but two dozen lavish ‘summits’ offering inflated rhetoric, often calculated to assuage the Arab people about their central cause, Palestine.This, despite high hopes across Arabia when its founders promulgated a Charter on March 22, 1945 and to
The irrepressible Subramanian Swamy tweeted at Rahul Gandhi’s first major attempt at public speaking: “First he confused a piling of cow dung as a mountain of corpses. Now he says Rani ki Jhansi. As Prof. I say: write 1000 times Jhansi ki Rani!” That bloomer, coupled with a string of confused metaphors, saw the social media quickly give the thumbs down to #...
Senior BJP leader and former foreign minister Yashwant Sinha has, for the second time in recent days, departed from the party line of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations and gone to the extent of supporting the vivisection of Sri Lanka and creation of a separate Tamil Eelam. Speaking at a meeting in Chennai on Wednesday, A
The speech by former foreign minister Mr.Yashwant Singh recently to the members of the Lok Sabha was moving and drewattention to genocide of Tamils by Sri Lanka. However, Sinha’s accusations andrecommendations need to be analyzed [1]. Let us take his recommendations first:1] Sinha urged Sri Lanka to withdraw its armyfrom the North; the war en
The Supreme Court on 2 April 2013 allowed the Sterlite Copper Smelter plant in Tuticorin to function in ‘public interest’, but asked the company to pay Rs. 100 crore compensation for violating environmental laws. The court did admit that the company had misrepresented and suppressed material facts in the SLP. The Bench noted that the plant con
There is something clownish about the manner in which Indian communists stand up and say with a stiff upper lip that they will not side with the communalists! Of course, they mean Hindus. Nor are Marxist scholars appreciably better, since their lofty pronouncements on ancient India are not backed by knowledge of Sanskrit, without which any sch
The European economic crisis has taken different forms in different places, and Cyprus is the latest country to face the prospect of financial ruin. Overextended banks in Cyprus are teetering on the brink of failure for issuing loans they cannot repay, which has prompted the tiny Mediterranean country, a member of the European Union, to turn to Bru
The resignation of caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati is mainly due to the position taken by the United States and the West vis-à-vis Lebanese internal affairs and the new electoral law. It is a response to 8-March and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), which torpedoed the 1960 Electoral Act by preventing the formation of the Supervisory Commiss
Those opposed to an unconstitutional National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) with a dangerous combination of Intelligence and Police powers should propose an alternative: a National Intelligence Centre (NIC) with statutory powers over all other civilian agencies and a Director reporting directly to the Prime Minister. This will result in the entir
With Syria on the brink of national genocide, outside nations have only two options: help reverse the catastrophe or plunge this torn nation deeper into the abyss. Countries can either work towards a peaceful political solution or they can continue to pour money, guns, and fighters into the country to ensure a steady gushing into the bloodbath.&nbs
Abrahamic religions and the violence, expansionism and advocacy of conversion are things that cannot be kept hidden or denied. “Spreading the good word” has led to purging of territories and their wealth and excommunicating natives and their unique cultures. Current fears associated with the repetition of past colonial crimes need empathy in view o
The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) originated in 1926 and was accorded its present Constitutional status in 1950. The functions of the UPSC are listed in Article 320 and are primarily the “recruitment for all civil services and civil posts” of the Government of India.[1] As part of these functions, the UPSC conducts the Civil Services
Israel is in the process of watching a peace treaty unravel. I don’t mean the one with Egypt, but the one with Syria. No, I’m not crazy. Since Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in 1974, the Israelis have had a de facto peace agreement of sorts with the al Assad family. After all, there were clear red lines that both sides knew they shouldn’t cros
Afghan President Hamid Karzai took a swipe at the US and NATO on March 9, accusing the Taliban and the United States of working together to convince the Afghans that violence will worsen if most foreign troops leave by the end of 2014. He cited two suicide bombings, one in front of the Afghan Defense Ministry, which occurred on the same day that US