Marketing Buddha has become the cornerstone of the Modi government’s foreign policy in Southeast and East Asia. The policy holds good even for sub-regional cooperation in South Asia. The first visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a South Asian country was to the predominantly Buddhist neighbour Bhutan, and then to Nepal, where Gautam Buddha was born....
Now that almost all mainstream political and media mind managers have responded, in horror, sympathy or skepticism, to the most recent – as this is written – police killing of an unarmed black man, it is time to consider radical action for social change as opposed to the usual reactionary individual reform.
The attention given this latest outrage has been g...
The recent drama by the Telangana government to enumerate Telangana residents for the first time raised suspicions about the malicious intent of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leadership in media outside the Telugu-speaking states. The comment of Kavitha, MP, and daughter of K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), comparing Telangana with the accession of Kashmir has pu...
On the Pushkin square in central Moscow, McDonald’s, this symbol of Pax Americana, has been shut down this week. It was opened 23 years ago, as the USSR collapsed, and the unipolar world of One Superpower came into being. Soviet people queued for hours to get in and try this divine foreign food. They were so innocent, so inexperienced, the Russians of yester...
The US policy of rebalancing the Indo-Pacific region has made the superpower seek reliable allies in the region. The emerging economy and political power in the region, India, with its strategic location, has come as a best bet for US.
With India recently hiking the cap on the entry of foreign direct investment (FDI) in defence sector from 26 per cent to 49...
The stunning success of the rabid Sunni group, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in seizing territory in both nations since June calls for careful scrutiny to discern the reasons for its sudden comeback. Some events have occurred in rapid succession. First, terror was unleashed on ‘Shia and other heretics’ and their holy sites destroyed. Second, its...
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan comes across on television as the savvy voice of financial street smarts, but his 11 August speech in Mumbai on “Finance and Opportunity in India” showed him to be confused and out of touch with Indian realities. The first sign of this was his observation that because life expectancy in India was lower ...
Everyone has noticed the contradiction of those who recently characterized the Islamic Emirate as “freedom fighters” in Syria and who are indignant today faced with its abuses in Iraq. But if that speech is incoherent in itself, it makes perfect sense in the strategic plan: the same individuals were to be presented as allies yesterday and must be as enemies ...
Anglo-Saxon aggression against Russia is taking the form of financial and economic warfare. However, Moscow is preparing for armed hostilities by developing its agricultural self-sufficiency and multiplying its alliances. For Thierry Meyssan, after the creation of the caliphate in the Levant, Washington would lay down a new card in September in St....
Putting the current jihadist operation in Iraq in a long-term retrospective context, Italian geographer Manlio Dinucci does not perceive it a spillover of the war in Syria, but as the third US war in Iraq. Therefore, for him, it is the war in Syria that spells an outgrowth of the war in...
ISIS: A DECEPTIVE TOOL OF US-ISRAEL FOR “THE NEW MIDDLE EAST”: LIVE messages and pictures of Sunni ISIS fighters dressed in Islamic attire circulated through social media network such as You Tube ostensibly authenticate the hostile agenda of the ISIS fighters to dismember Iraq by carving out a Sunni Islamic Caliphate stretching from Syria to the western Sunn...
1] Recent approvals of GMO seeds: India’s Genetic Engineering Approval Committee [GEAC] approved en bloc 13 events including rice, potato, brinjal and mustard in July 2014. GEAC [1] is part of a three tier mechanism for granting approval for research and development activities on recombinant DNA products, environmental release of genetically engineered (GE) ...
“Today’s breeze is cool” said Sambamurthy (Sambu) Ayyar, formally inaugurating the discussion. Many ‘aye’s were heard in the group of over 20 persons, most of them long time friends. The housing society park was a giant ten acre plot which had walking tracks, children amusement gardens and even a water fountain. All the walkers on the track almost always sat...
Q: How do you see the diplomatic, economic, political relationship between Sri Lanka and India before the end of the war and after the end of the war?
A: The multifaceted India-Sri Lanka relationship has undergone subtle changes after the Eelam War ended in triumph for President Rajapaksa. The main reason for this is President Rajapaksa’s failure to impleme...
India is again set to show the developed countries their right place in international negotiations as it recently did in Geneva by not approving the protocol of amendment proposed by the 9th ministerial conference in Bali for enshrining the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) into the WTO Marrakesh Agreement till its concerns over food security are met. This ...
Introduction: Outside of Israel and its organized supporters in the major Zionist organizations, world public opinion and most experts in international law see the Jewish State’s invasion of Gaza and its systematic attack on civilians and basic infrastructure as a crime against humanity.
The purpose of this essay is 4-fold: 1. To identify the nature of the...
Withstanding the intense pressure exerted by the developed nations, India’s newly elected Modi government stuck to its guns and did not withdraw its demand for food security as the precondition for signing the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) on July 31, set by WTO (World Trade Organization) members.
Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher made clear the followi...
Cold War Two: During Cold War One those of us in the American radical left were often placed in the position where we had to defend the Soviet Union because the US government was using that country as a battering ram against us. Now we sometimes have to defend Russia because it may be the last best hope of stopping TETATW (The Empire That Ate The World). Yes...
At the time of this writing, India’s new government, under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Bharatiya Janata Party/BJP) has completed its first 70 days in office. While the NDA’s scorecard over this period has not been spectacular, it is nonetheless impressive. Considering the task that lies ahead, the Modi governm...
With the National Conference repeatedly questioning Jammu & Kashmir’s accession to India, and Pakistan continuing to claim Maharaja Hari Singh’s erstwhile kingdom in entirety, it is imperative that New Delhi lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the events that resulted in the ruler opting for India. The time has come to transcend the pious orthodoxies...
There is a general view that Vladimir Putin governs the Russian Federation as a dictator, that he has defeated and intimidated his opponents and that he has marshaled a powerful threat to surrounding countries. This is a reasonable view, but perhaps it should be re-evaluated in the context of recent...
Europe’s “Great War” of 1914-1918 does not deserve to be called the “First World War.” That title should go to the first real global conflict, Europe’s genocidal invasion of other regions that began in the final decade of the 15th Century. European historians have sought to downplay the ferocity, extent and significance of that earlier conflict by treating i...
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon was right when, after saying that “All the evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause” (of the attack on the UN school in the Jabaliya refugee camp where more than 3,000 Palestinians were taking shelter from Israeli bombs and shells), he added the following. “Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children.” ...
China’s President Xi Jinping has accepted a long-standing invitation from President Mahinda Rajapaksa to visit Sri Lanka sometime this year. The first-ever visit by a Chinese President to Sri Lanka will no doubt be hailed as a crowning achievement for President Rajapaksa’s foreign policy which had been under siege for some time now. The Chinese President’s S...
Vanishing Aircraft: We have been told by much of Western MSM that Air Algerie flight 5017 (hereinafter AH 5017) and its 117 passengers (according to the airline) lost contact with the ground and subsequently crashed in Mali on 7/24due to heavy weather.
A simple, tidy story that; and for all one knows the MSM soporific might even be true. And yet, true to th...
“For India, food security is non-negotiable, need of public stockholding of food grains to ensure food security must be respected. Dated WTO rules need to be corrected.” That was Anand Sharma haranguing fellow trade ministers in WTO at Bali last December.
It is easy to see through the bogus rhetoric. A government really concerned over food security for the ...
India has shown the industrialised countries they can no longer have their way in multilateral trade negotiations at the expense of the developing world. The WTO General Council meeting that concluded in Geneva on July 31 failed to approve the protocol of amendment proposed by the 9th ministerial conference in Bali for enshrining the Trade Facilitation Agree...
For a shamefully bloody example of how little single issue identity politics can mean, check out the unity of supporters and opponents of same sex marriage, supporters and opponents of abortion, and supporters and opponents of every other divisive issue clouding the minds of a population kept from acting as a democratic majority, we need look no further than...
“The coming of Buddhism to the West may well prove to be the most important event of the twentieth century” - Arnold Toynbee
During the Meiji period Japan had opened itself to the world and was in a dilemma as to whether to join the West or look towards the East. During this period many Japanese went to Europe to study oriental languages. After Kitabake’s ...
Defence is a critical area the country needs to address with a clear defined policy and sense of urgency. Modernisation of Armed Forces is the need of the hour in the face of contemporary challenges; it can be speeded up through public-private partnership. Appropriate technology flow should be ensured by inviting foreign direct investment (FDI) and co-produc...
In February 1925 the American state of Tennessee adopted legislation making it unlawful “to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals.” The American Civil Liberties Union responded with advertisements in Tennessee papers, offering to support anyon...