In the rough and tumble of the country’s longest election season, politicians often make statements for political mileage. Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s exaggerated claims of benefits accruing to industrialist Anil Ambani from the Rafale deal, his inability to stick to one figure for the corporate loans allegedly written off by the Narendra Modi...
The Trump administration once again has graphically demonstrated that in the young, turbulent 21st century, “international law” and “national sovereignty” already belong to the Realm of the Walking Dead. As if a deluge of sanctions against a great deal of the planet was not enough, the latest “offer you can’t refuse” conveyed by a gangster posing as diplomat...
After having lost his majority in the House of Representatives during the mid-term elections, President Trump has found new allies in exchange for his discharge by prosecutor Mueller of the accusation of high treason [1]. He now supports the objectives of his generals. US imperialism is back [2]. In less than six months, the foundations of international rela...
The annual meeting of political leaders of countries from twenty of the world’s leading world economies (The Group of 20, G-20) will be held this time on June 28-29 in the Japanese city of Osaka. However, there are already reasons to discuss both the significance of the G-20 forum, as well as current issues that will be presented for review to its executive ...
The heart of France is on fire. An inferno rocked France. Notre Dame, cultural icon of France and UNESCO declared World Heritage, was burning. The flames devastated the wooden roof and the spire. They caused, at first sight, only light damage on the 12th century cathedral’s structure and historic treasures, as most of the latter were either removed for the o...
While the United States and their allies have deliberately created famine conditions in North Korea, then in Sudan, in Tunisia, and now in Yemen, they are also beginning to drag Syria down into starvation. The only way of avoiding this situation is by re-launching the regional economy, which collapsed during the wars in Iraq and Syria. Two projects for railr...
The Congress, in its wisdom has appealed to Muslims to vote en masse to help vote out the Modi Government. The appeal came from cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Sidhu who seems to be working as a stooge of the Pakistani leadership and Army that expectedly endorsed him. At least he seems enamoured of its puppet prime minister, another cricketer-turned-polit...
As new studies continue to point to a direct link between the widely-used glyphosate herbicide and various forms of cancer, the agribusiness lobby fights ferociously to ignore or discredit evidence of human and other damage. A second US court jury case just ruled that Monsanto, now a part of the German Bayer AG, must pay $81 million in damages to plaintiff E...
One only needs to give a few lessons about how to apply to US universities – you teach students about the admission policies, motivational letters, etc. However, it is also necessary to make an attempt to get across to them the simple truth that they are most probably wasting their time and money applying to the so-called elite universities, unless they have...
Addressing last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, then US defense secretary Jim Mattis dismissed fears first voiced in 1997 by Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of America’s greatest 20th century strategists who advised US presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter, that long-term US interests would be most threatened by a “grand coalition” of China and Rus...
Like Prometheus to whom he was compared, Julian Assange did not escape the wrath of the self-proclaimed gods of Deep State. After seven years of captivity in the walls of Ecuadorean Embassy, the man who gave us an understanding of international politics was shifted to a new and worse jail, the “British Gitmo”, Belmarsh, waiting for extradition to the even wo...
The United States have become the leading world producer of hydrocarbons. As from now, they are using their dominant position exclusively to maximise their profits, and do not hesitate to eliminate their major rivals in oil production, plunging their citizens into misery. Although in the past, access to Middle East oil was a vital necessity for their economy...
The floods that ravaged Kerala in August 2018 are now history. Most of the dams had been filled to capacity by the first week of August itself and the Met people had been predicting continuous rains. But those who were to take decisions to avert any crisis didn’t see eye to eye. There were talks of conflict between the Minister for Electricity, who wanted to...
One of the most remarkable features of this year’s general elections is the failure of the opposition parties to stitch a “grand alliance” to challenge the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)–National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Even more inexplicable is the Congress Party’s sudden dysfunction, when it should have been upbeat after staving off the BJP challenge in...
Chinese nuclear bombers. Chinese hypersonic missiles. Chinese carrier killer missiles. Chinese cyberattacks. Chinese anti-satellite weaponry. Chinese militarization of the South China Sea. Chinese Huawei spying. So many Chinese “malign intentions”. And we’re not even talking about Russia. Few people around the world are aware that the Pentagon for the moment...
“Perhaps if the BJP - a right-wing party - wins, some kind of settlement in Kashmir could be reached.” This statement has been made, not by a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate in election mode, but by Imran Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan. Khan made this observation to a small group of foreign journalists in an interview on April 9. He further...
“I fired and continued to fire until the crowd dispersed, I consider this is the least amount of firing which would produce the necessary moral and widespread effect it was my duty to produce if I was to justify my action.......It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect from a military...
The legendary secret agent James Bond (007) played by Sean Connery once observed, if something bad happens once it is happenstance, twice it may be coincidence but if it happens third time, we must see it as enemy action. Let us apply this to post Independence India. In 1946, at the transfer of power, nationalistic firebrand Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was ma...
Much of the Middle East’s recent turmoil stems from internecine Middle Eastern rivalries spilling onto third country battlefields and Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led efforts to roll back the achievements of the 2011 popular Arab revolts and pre-empt further uprisings. This week’s successful toppling of ailing Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika (April...
Short of a decade after the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement took the nation by storm from Jantar Mantar, the Lokpal is a reality. As soon as the agitation began to gather momentum, the then UPA government brought in a Bill in 2011 that was derided by activists as Jokepal. They came up with a draft bill touted as Jan Lokpal. After some stalemate, the...
The decision of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to bury their political hatchet, at least temporarily, appears to have helped Sri Lanka to gain two more years to fulfil its commitment made at UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to promote accountability and human rights in 2015. The 40th session of the human rights body una...
A few days ago, an Ilyushin IL-62M liner carried over a hundred Russian soldiers and officers to Caracas. Symbolically, they made a stopover in Syria, as if saying that Venezuela is the next country after Syria to be saved from ruin and dismemberment. The military mission was led by the Head of General Staff, General Tonkoshkurov (“Thin-Skinned”, a name that...
A draft US resolution that would designate a Pakistani militant as a global terrorist threatens to be China’s, and possibly Pakistan’s showdown at the OK Corral. The draft is supported by Britain and France. The resolution, if formally tabled in the full United Nations Security Council, could force China to justify its ten-year long blocking of efforts to de...
Kashmir, despite being in the throes of a very unfortunate environment of violence, has witnessed a steady improvement in literacy levels over the last few decades. The 2011 census recorded a whopping 13 percent increase in literacy levels across the state from 55 percent to 68 percent. Female literacy showed an increase from 20 percent in 1981 to 58 percent...
Former CPI(M) general secretary and ideologue, Prakash Karat, said in 2012 that Christianity and communism shared many similarities. He quoted Fidel Castro who told the Church, in 1971, that Communism and Christianity had 10,000 times more in common than Christianity and Capitalism. (Comrade Karat gives red salute to Christianity, The New Indian Express, Feb...
Balochistan should be oozing with optimism as Chinese and Saudi investment pours into the troubled Pakistani province. It is not. Instead, Balochistan, a key node in China’s Belt and Road initiative that borders Iran, is gripped by anger, fear and uncertainty. Local residents are hardly awaiting with baited breath for Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan’s vi...
Yes, the latest research confirms that Venezuela is so rich in natural resources that it could single-handedly satisfy all global demand for oil, for over 30 years. And it has much more than oil to offer, in its Orinoco basin and in other areas of the country. But it is not all ‘about oil’; actually, far from it. Those who believe that what propels the sprea...
The collapse of the Samjhauta Express bomb blasts case against anti-conversion crusader Aseemanand and his “co-conspirators” Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajinder Chaudhary, on March 21, 2019 has trounced attempts by a previous regime to establish the bogey of “Hindu terror”. Aseemanand allegedly mentored persons seeking revenge for attacks on Hindu...
March 10 saw the publication of the official schedule for the elections to the lower house of India’s Parliament, which are an extremely important event in the country’s political life. They may well have a determining impact on the ongoing process of redefining the geopolitical status quo in the region and in the wider world. For the foreign policy implicat...