Now that the vaccines for the deadly Covid-19 virus are in place, there is expected relief all over. The big question in the minds of most is how quickly will America get back on its feet? This is a fair question, but the answers may not be straight forward. At least if we go by extant data. A few important reports published recently may provide some insight...
St Petersburg, the Tsars’ seat and still the most civilised city, the culture capital of Russia, enjoys its wonderful Yuletide. Fluffy snow has covered the streets, decorated the hills and seashore, softened the air, and turned this fascinating city into a winter fairy tale. Christmas trees adorn the city squares and private dwellings. The magnificent imperi...
On this auspicious day of Vaikuntha Ekadasi [December 25] when Vishnu, the Atman, as the Sun in his chariot in Margashira, instructs the self, in the nature of the Moon, having taken refuge at His feet, let Jayam springs up from this upavāsa.
nārāyaṇaṃ namaskṛtya naraṃ caiva narottamam
devīṃ sarasvatīṃ caiva tato jayam...
A projected sharp reduction in trade between the United States and China in the next two years coupled with moves to diversify supply chains potentially position Turkey alongside Vietnam, Mexico, Taiwan and Poland as competitors in efforts to reduce dependency on the People’s Republic, according to a just published study. The study, conducted by the Boston ...
Today, with the vectors of political, economic and military cooperation in Europe being reoriented because of Britain’s exit from the EU, we can observe a clear rapprochement in many areas between London and Ankara. Britain is the second largest importer of goods from Turkey after Germany; annually about 2.5 million British people spend their vacations in Tu...
Intense geo-political upheavals are taking place in the Middle East in the wake of the Trump administration’s exit from power. The Biden administration, therefore, will inherit a Middle East that is much more complex and changed than it was during the Obama administration. However, a lot of what is happening today in the Middle East - The Abraham Accords, an...
Turkey is leveraging its successful backing of Azerbaijan’s recent war against Armenia to counter Iran in the Caucasus and gradually challenge Russia in Central Asia, the heart of what Moscow considers its backyard. The Turkish moves have elicited different responses from Russia and Iran, two countries Turkey views as both partners and rivals. Turkish Presid...
A factoid is an item of unreliable information which is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact. This, in a nutshell, explains the conundrum of the “Minimum Support Price” (MSP) on which the farmers strike has been organised in and around New Delhi. The MSP is meant to set a floor below which prices for agricultural commodities do not...
Here we are: the disaster that has been predictable for the past 30 years is looming. The United States is heading inexorably toward secession and civil war. Since the demise of the USSR, the “American Empire” no longer had an existential enemy and therefore no reason to exist. The attempt by George H. Bush (the father) and Bill Clinton to give the count...
“On Vijay Diwas we recall the unwavering courage of our armed forces that resulted in a decisive victory for our nation in the 1971 war. On this special Vijay Diwas, had the honour of lighting the ‘Swarnim Vijay Mashaal’ at the National War Memorial,” tweeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi after paying tribute at the National War Memorial, New Delhi on the 50t...
The widely-praised German model of the Angela Merkel regime to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic is now engulfed in a series of potentially devastating scandals going to the very heart of the testing and medical advice being used to declare draconian economic shutdowns and next, de facto mandatory vaccinations. The scandals involve a professor at the heart of ...
Populated at the time by fluent Hebrew speakers, the Israel desk of Armenia’s foreign ministry waited back in 1991 - in the immediate wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union - for a phone call that never came. The ministry was convinced that Israel, with whom Armenia shared an experience of genocide, were natural allies. The ministry waited in vain. Israel ...
“Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to a full-fledged diplomatic relationship,” US President Donald Trump wrote with evident satisfaction on Twitter on December 10th, emphasizing in particular that the North African kingdom was the fourth Arab country over the past four months to announce that relations with Israel would be normalized. Pursuan...
The human memory bank blends the truthful with the fictive. It is highly selective in what it retains and what it (tries to) discard. Selection and arrangement of memories is in part a conscious process; most of it is unconscious. For emotional stability requires a screening of happenings in order to concentrate on those things of utility that enable us to s...
Saudi Arabia appears to be drawing lines in the sand as the kingdom prepares for a new era in relations with the United States once President-elect Joe Biden assumes office in January. In doing so, the kingdom is seemingly signaling that it is willing to go only so far in seeking to get off on the right foot with a Biden administration. Saudi Arabia seems t...
The situation in Iraq, torn apart by US armed aggression, continues to deteriorate in recent months, confirming the complete fiasco of US policy in the country. For years Iraqis have been clamoring for reform in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, namely ending corruption, improving services and expanding job opportunities, as well as a slew of increasingly anti-Americ...
Indian troops have brought Kailash range in eastern Ladakh under their operational control by occupying heights and thereby dislocated Chinese plans to grab territory to gain strategic advantage. For the first time, India has gained tactical advantage to disrupt any Chinese military adventure in the region. This unexpected move by India, which had generally ...
For the past 18 years, the United States has been battling to establish global hegemony. The project’s failings, some ignominious, expose its brittle foundations and flawed design. Yet, there is an odd silence as the audacious enterprise risks coming to grief on every front. Americans who, for the most part, had no idea what they were getting into remain ...
Punching above its weight, the United Arab Emirates is wielding a combination of religious soft power, commercial and economic sway, and hard power in its bid to counter political Islam in ways that potentially could threaten pillars of Western democracy as well as US and European strategic interests. The UAE’s footprint is visible across the globe, most rec...
On December 10, every year, the world celebrates Human Rights Day. This date coincides with the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 1948. For many years, in Kashmir, the day has been marked by protests and fallacious attempts to project the Indian State as an oppressor of human ri...
While the American hyper-power is in advanced decline and President Donald Trump has evoked a possible exit of his country from NATO, the member states are wondering about the future of the Atlantic alliance. This is why, in April, its Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, set up a Commission of Reflection, composed of 10 Atlantic personalities, to define wha...
Much of the world breathed a sigh of relief when Joe Biden won the American presidency from incumbent Donald Trump. But from a realistic standpoint, we must all focus, and try hard to understand what took place in these elections. Here’s some food for thought, and a “not so fast” plea for sanity. When Joe Biden takes office next January, Russia’s Presi...
Increasing strains between Pakistan and its traditional Arab allies, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, is about more than Gulf States opportunistically targeting India’s far more lucrative market. At the heart of the tensions that potentially complicate Pakistan’s economic recovery, is also India’s ability to enhance Gulf States’ capacity to hedge ...
India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval visited Colombo to participate in the 4th edition of India-Sri Lanka-Maldives trilateral forum on maritime security hosted by Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s defence secretary Kamal Gunaratne and Maldive’s defence minister Ms Mariya Didi participated in the meeting. Though the trilateral meeting was supposed to be an annua...
“Donald Trump – the true face of the United States”, “The Arabs and the new American Administration”, “Biden, Arabs, and the Gulf”. These and similar headlines are interspersed in the flow of materials that have appeared in the Middle Eastern media about the situation with suspending the results following the American elections, and their influence on the co...
After 44 days of war, Armenia was forced to sign a ceasefire with Azerbaijan, acknowledging the loss of part of its territories. However, as we reported in the form of an interrogation, the initial plan of the United States was to blame Turkey, let it massacre part of the Armenian population, then intervene, overthrow President Erdoğan and restore peace. ...
On the evening of December 3, 1971, at about 5.40 p.m., fighter aircraft of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) carried out a coordinated, pre-emptive air strike on Indian Air Force bases in Amritsar, Pathankot, Srinagar, Avantipur, Utterlai, Jodhpur, Ambala and Agra. The air strikes were supported by heavy artillery shelling all along the border and a massive...
A video released by Science Channel on Ram Setu shows scientists saying that the submerged structure linking India and Sri Lanka is man-made. It consists of series or rocks and boulders sitting on a stretch of sand bed. The significant information from this video pertains to the dates of the structures. It says that the boulders and rocks found on top of th...
The G20 leaders have reached a consensus of a magnitude previously observed at Warsaw Pact summits. News in brief: they want to vaccinate us, and then, before we become restless, switch to combating global warming. If we survive masks and vaccines, austerity will kill off the survivors. Remember, before the pandemic there was Greta? Greta will return, as so...
Once the presidential election is over, the tenant of the White House has only the right to manage the day-to-day business. But just before the Federal Election Commission announced the results of the election, President Donald Trump began an unprecedented cleanup of the Pentagon. The U.S. press, always busy portraying him as an incompetent narcissist, does...
The U.S. presidential election of 2020 confirms the general trend since the dissolution of the Soviet Union: the U.S. population is going through a crisis of civilization and is inexorably heading inexorably towards a new civil war that should logically lead to the partition of the country. This instability should result in the end of the West as a hyper-pow...