A personality who is highly contested by his fellow members of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner nevertheless enjoys the total confidence of the President. He has been handed the job of reorganising the Middle East according to the “reality principle”, against the received wisdom of each camp. After tangible successes in Saudi Arabia, he is now taking ...
The Russian government has recently announced it will issue nearly $1 billion equivalent in state bonds, but denominated not in US dollars as is mostly the case. Rather it will be the first sale of Russian bonds in China’s yuan. While $1 billion may not sound like much when compared with the Peoples’ Bank of China total holdings of US Government debt of more...
This is to share some thoughts on the treatment meted out to Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav’s wife and mother by the Pakistanis, in what could easily have been a show of goodwill instead. Firstly let us recount what exactly happened. (a) Forced removal of any Hindu symbols – choori (bangles), sindoor and mangalsutra. (b) Forced to...
Merry Christmas to you, dear readers! It is a beautiful and serene time of hope, when the darkest time of the year is already behind us. Though the light is still not perceptible, but we know and feel that the change is coming. The recent vote in the United Nations has been such a glimpse of light, a harbinger of Sun. The people of the world en masse reject...
It is a shame that Tamil Nadu, once the frontline state in development and governance, has set the gold standard in electoral corruption in the over-hyped RK Nagar by-election. The institutionalization of corruption in the electoral process appears to be complete. All political parties in future will have to factor this alarming rise in “cost” of harvesting ...
So alarming is the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir that after failing to hold elections to Anantnag Lok Sabha constituency for over a year, and now again postponing panchayat and municipal elections (terms ended July 2016, March 2010 respectively), Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has inducted brother Tassaduq Mufti into the Legislative Council on...
At the end of November, a major crisis erupted in Yemen, when former President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced his intentions to start negotiations with the Saudi-led coalition that has been trying to bomb Yemen into submission. This resulted in the Houthis movement voicing accusations of treason against their former ally who they’ve been supporting in the stru...
As we discuss the idea of Leadership in the 21st century, I recall that that previously, the Minister of State for External Affairs, M.J. Akbar, spoke about the idea of nationalism as being the biggest weapon against radical Islam. Her Excellency, Chandrika Kumaratunga (former President of Sri Lanka) spoke about strengthening international governance...
The media channels, politicians, social workers and common citizens were busy speculating what would happen in the apex court as the Ram Janmabhumi case was to be heard on a day-to-day basis. Many petitions/appeals were made, dozens of learned advocates were ready to argue, and many new applications were filed to become party to the case. The Hon’ble Judges ...
Paradoxically, the Trump declaration has had many good effects. The President refused to sustain the old mischievous pretence of the US being a neutral broker. He undermined the beastly MBS of Arabia. He brought Palestine back into the world agenda after long abeyance. He gave Europe a chance to regain its independence. He did a step in undoing the unsustain...
Now an investigator with curiosity will be able to recover the fossils of communism from Kerala only. For coming generations, the story of the rise and fall of communism may be another ‘utopia’ (from Sir Thomas More’s 1516 book, Utopia). However, Kerala as a bastion of the communists is almost sure to perish. At present, the Communist parties of Kerala are s...
The Supreme Court recently struck down an exception to Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code that provided protection from rape charges to a man having sexual intercourse with his wife aged between 15 and 18 years. The Court thereby terminated child marital sex, making it a punishable offence, and ended the consent conundrum between India’s rape law and...
Gujarat has spoken. The BJP has managed to emerge victorious, with some bruises and battering. The assembly elections were portrayed as a fierce battle with the BJP on the back foot. “Anti-incumbency after 22 years”, “Patidars have deserted BJP”, “traders are angered over GST”, scheduled castes “up in arms against atrocities”, “farmers are cross over MSP and...
Since the beginning of the war against Syria in 2011, Russia has been supporting this nation against what it considers to be an exterior aggression. While the Western Press explains this behaviour as a case of solidarity between dictatorships, Thierry Meyssan brings to light its real historical motives. He notes that the victory, which also belongs to Moscow...
“History at close quarters and that its actual process is very different from what is presented to posterity,” Sir B.H. Liddell Hart wrote in his reflections, “Thoughts on War,” after World War 1. How or true is this about the official version of India’s Pakistan War of 1971, and the recorded distortions in the public domain? Many in India claim the status...
It would be a serious error to judge President Trump by the criteria of the Washington ruling class, ignoring the History and the culture of the United States. It would also be an error to interpret his actions from the point of view of European thought. Indeed, his defence of the right to bear arms or the racist demonstrations in Charlottesville have nothin...
No man has possibly served the American Empire as much as Henry Kissinger did, and with all the literature, including screenplays, that have been written about him and his “shuttle diplomacy”, none probably described his biggest ever performance than Patrick Seale in his book “Asad”. After all, even though Kissinger is always remembered as the diplomat who h...
The first-ever visit of Pope Francis to Myanmar to convey a message of peace and conciliation to the nation wracked by ethnic confrontation is perhaps the latest among international efforts to defuse the Rohingya crisis. This year, the Pontiff had appealed twice to the Myanmar government to end the campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority from h...
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani inaugurated phase one of the US $1 billion southeastern extension of Chabahar port on the coast of the Gulf of Oman on November 3. The port is poised to become a key strategic transit route from India to land-locked Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan. Already India had dispatched 15000 tons of wheat to...
In recent years, enlightened Indian farmers have begun to rethink the suitability of farming practices that involve injecting poison into the earth via fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides, and create problems of soil fertility, soil texture, soil preservation and erosion. There is a pervasive sentiment that unless the current system of intensive and unc...
The 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress made it clear that the New Silk Roads – aka, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – launched by President Xi Jinping just four years ago, provides the concept around which all Chinese foreign policy is to revolve for the foreseeable future. Up until the symbolic 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, in 2...
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe visited New Delhi on November 23-24, 2017. During talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, the speeding up of decisions related to India-Sri Lanka joint venture projects in the island nation to solve “problems that have emerged” topped the agenda. The projects discussed included ...
In terms of dealing with some of the world’s harshest weather conditions no country comes close compared with Russia. Now Russia has made it a highest priority to develop a Northern Sea Route along the Russian Arctic coast to enable LNG and container freight shipments between Asia and Europe that will cut shipping time almost in half and bypass the increasin...
Major changes are roiling the states, societies and ruling classes of the biggest industrial economies, oil regimes and military complexes. China is re-allocating its economic wealth toward building the most extensive modern infrastructure system in history, linking four continents. Saudi Arabia is transferring a trillion dollars of pillage from princes to p...
One day while working for a multinational corporation in Europe, I began receiving emails about what I will call Project Blue. I had never heard of Project Blue. I then contacted one of my colleagues to enlighten me about Project Blue. Known for her straightforward manner, she said it was much the same as Project Red, but Project Red wasn’t working, so they ...
In the latest issue of Foreign Policy journal, Paul McLeary quotes Gen. John Nicholson, head of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, who claims that after 16 years of war, the United States and its Afghan partners “have turned the corner,” the “momentum is now with Afghan security forces,” and we are now “on a path to a win.” McLeary notes that we also “turned...
China is nervous. Over the last few months, the Chinese have encouraged and participated in talks between Iranian and Pakistani officials about the increasing tension along their joint border in Pakistan’s southwest province of Balochistan. The Chinese are concerned about their multi-billion-dollar investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), ...
The best solutions to difficult problems are simple. The Columbus Egg. The Gordian Knot. The Procrustean Bed. So many people strained their fingers trying to untangle the messy knot, until Alexander came and slashed it open with one fine stroke of his mighty sword. Wise men vainly tried to make an egg stand upright on its end on the table, until Columbus sma...
While the people and the princes of Europe were struggling to free themselves from the hold of religion, Christianity found the means to expand in newly discovered lands. So, while the Roman Empire had collapsed centuries earlier, a new world empire, Christian Empire, was about to begin. Its founder was a mariner of genius and a ruthless mass murderer...
From this brief outline of Christian origins - actually of the first phase of Christianity - it is clear that the historical picture is radically different from what is given in the New Testament of the Bible, especially the Gospels. Here is what Eisenman had to say about the new picture of the birth of Christianity revealed by the Dead Sea...
Christianity, like Islam, but unlike their common parent Judaism, is largely an imperial movement. Conversion is to Christianity what jihad is to Islam - an expansionist doctrine. Where Islam seeks to bring the whole world under its sway through jihad, Christianity’s goal is to make the world Christian, or turn it into Christendom by conversion. The goal of ...