There is literary evidence that the Cholas were the descendants of Rama. There are hymns in the Tamil Sangam texts that refer to Rama as the ancestor of the Chola clan. However, in tune with the practice of not mentioning the name of the king but indicating the name by the special deed done by them, the poets have often written about just two ancient kings a...
President Joe Biden, you defeated Donald Trump, yet your administration has not rolled back all of the evil caused by your predecessor. Take the case of journalist Julian Assange. Under the Obama administration in which you, Biden, were vice president for eight years, journalist and publisher Julian Assange was NOT prosecuted for publishing the Collateral Mu...
The NeoCons’ agenda is not to “win the war” but to engineer the breakup of sovereign nation states, destroy their culture and national identity, derogate fundamental values and human rights. The strategic objective is to trigger political and social chaos, engineer the collapse of national economies, appropriate the countries’ wealth and resources, impoveris...
Under his government, Serbia clinched an “Individual Partnership Action Plan” with NATO, the same alliance that bombed it for 78 days in 1999. It’s also an official EU aspirant and has informally recognized Kosovo & Metohija’s self-declared “independence” at Brussels’ urging. Furthermore, Serbia voted against its historical Russian ally at the UN over Ukrain...
Serbian President Vucic condemned the failed Colour Revolution attempt on Sunday [Dec 24-ed] by the Western-backed opposition whose pretext for trying to seize government buildings was their anger with the latest national elections’ alleged irregularities. He also thanked unnamed foreign spy agencies for tipping him off about this plot, which Prime Minister ...
The Financial Times (FT) was surprisingly candid in their latest piece about how “Ukraine and its backers need a credible path to victory”, whose title masks the fact that it’s all about spinning that country’s defeat as a victory to justify freezing the conflict. This isn’t a subjective interpretation of its intent like some skeptics might reactively claim ...
One would think that heart-wrenching images streaming out of the Gaza Strip suggest that Israel has Hamas over a barrel in stalled efforts to revive prisoner exchanges. Think again. Talks in the past week in Europe between senior Qatari, Israeli, and US officials, and in Cairo between Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad, the second most prominent Gazan group, and...
Vladimir Putin, current President, announced that he would run again for the Presidential elections to be held in the Russian Federation on March 17, 2024. Although Putin’s candidacy is not a surprise in the regime that has been going on since the beginning of the twenty-first century and which some call ‘Putinism’, it is not intelligible to claim that he an...
The New York Times (NYT) just published a piece about “Ukrainian Marines on ‘Suicide Mission’ in Crossing the Dnipro River”, which includes such harsh accounts about the Battle for Krynki by unnamed servicemen that one can’t help but get a whiff of mutiny from their words. What follows are the key excepts from their article, after which President Putin’s wor...
Under its new president, Mohamed Muizzu, Maldives’ foreign policy priorities have changed. His various travels ever since he was elected is evidence of that. On December 6, he ensured Maldives skipped the 6th Colombo Security Conclave (CSC) meeting of National Security Advisers (NSA) of India, Sri Lanka and Mauritius held in Port Louis. This was in direct co...
Spanish philosopher George Santayana didn’t have Palestine in mind when he coined the phrase, ‘history repeats itself.’ Yet, Mr. Santayana’s maxim may apply to Hamas when comparing the group’s political evolution to the 16-year-torturous road traversed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from classification by Israel and its Western allies as a te...
The link between Tamil Nadu and Rama starts from the Chola dynasty itself. The Chola Kings have written on copper plates and inscriptions that they were the descendants of Manu and his son Ikshvaku. Rajaraja Chola’s father, Sundara Chola has stated in the Anbil copper plates, issued to his minister Aniruddha Brahmaraya, that the royal Chola family emerged...
Israel wasn’t slamming the door on renewed indirect prisoner swap negotiations with Hamas when it this week barred David Barnea, the head of Mossad, the country’s foreign intelligence agency, from travelling to Qatar to explore possibilities for renewed exchanges. Instead, it was manoeuvring for greater leverage in potential talks and expressing doubts about...
Important to understand is that there is not one single new or original idea in Klaus Schwab’s so-called Great Reset agenda for the world. Nor is his Fourth Industrial Revolution agenda his or his claim to having invented the notion of Stakeholder Capitalism a product of Schwab. Klaus Schwab is little more than a slick PR agent for a global technocratic agen...
The United Arab Emirates walks a geopolitical tightrope, juggling big power rivalries and mounting regional instability fuelled by the Gaza war. This week’s [Dec 6-ed] visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin is Exhibit A. Mr. Putin’s movements beyond the confines of Russia are restricted. Signatories of the Rome Statute that established the International C...
The nearly two-century-long dispute over Essequibo is back in the headlines after Venezuela’s referendum on this mostly forested and potentially mineral-rich region, which Caracas claims as its own but is currently administered by Guyana. Without diving too deeply into the history, an 1899 ruling awarded almost all of it to then-British Guiana, but Venezuela...
Recently, a huge furore was created by Mr. Udayanidhi, the Minister for Sports and Youth welfare of Tamilnadu, and son of the Chief Minister, that he stands for eradicating Sanatana Dharma. In defiance of the criticism and legal cases against him, he clarified that he is not against Hindus or Hinduism but only against the evil practices promoted by ‘Sanatana...
For those who do not know by now, COP stands for Conference of the Parties; 28 means it is the 28th Conference of the Parties, referring to the United Nations Climate Change Conferences, held every year in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The present COP28 is hosted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is ta...
It is now clear to any unbiased observer that this is no longer a matter of defense, but of targeted destruction – a destruction in which thousands of innocent victims, including countless children, are willingly accepted. Why? What and, above all, who is behind this monstrous inhumanity? Some background events that are largely withheld from the general publ...
In more concrete ways, Europe’s vassalage to the United States obliges it to follow Washington down whatever policy road the seigneur takes - however reckless, dangerous, unethical, and counter-productive. In predictable fashion, they have walked (or run) like lemmings over whatever cliff the United States chooses next under its own suicidal impulses. So it’...
Europe has an obsession with Jews. For nearly two millennia, it shunned them, despised them and persecuted them. Now, after a respite of a few decades, it condemns and abuses Muslims in a similar way – all in the name of supporting Jews. Israel’s inhuman treatment of the Palestinians – culminating in their massacre and mass eviction from Gaza – leaves Europe...
Russia’s 2024 presidency and the group’s unprecedented expansion during its last summit in August combine to present the opportunity for implementing this proposal over the next year, during which time BRICS’ new Ethiopian member could become the first beneficiary of this policy. Russian geo-economic guru Yaroslav Lissovolik, who’s responsible for the BRICS...
The Suez Canal is a geostrategic asset in every sense of the word: it sits at the intersection of three continents and two bodies of water. It cuts shipping times and costs by so much that today 12% of global trade and 30% of global container traffic pass through the Suez Canal. Egyptian President el-Sisi was told in the last weeks that if he accepts “Israe...
Two weeks before Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, Netanyahu went to the United Nations General Assembly, held up a map, and declared his plan for a “New Middle East”: an economic corridor, stretching from India to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, “Israel”, and finally to Europe. This is one of the main geopolitical reasons behind “Israel’s” massacr...
The Mirabal sisters – Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa – of the Dominican Republic were revolutionaries who opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. They were assassinated by the regime on 25 November 1960. Minerva was the one who had the most active role in politics. She founded the Revolutionary Movement together with her husband Manolo Tavarez Justo....
It’s extraordinary that Zelensky finally acknowledged that a lot of things aren’t going the way that he hoped, especially summer’s counteroffensive and his side’s expectations of forthcoming Western aid. Time Magazine quoted one of Zelensky’s unnamed senior advisors in late October who accused the Ukrainian leader of having messianic delusions of victory ove...
A recent clash between pro-Palestinian Muslims and pro-Israeli Christians in the North Sulawesi coastal town of Bitung raised the spectre of Indonesia’s worst nightmare, inter-communal violence. In a country that prides itself on a culture of inter-communal harmony, the death of a protester set off alarm bells. “This is very worrying” said Yahya Cholil Staqu...
Want to understand why the media we consume is either owned by billionaires or under the thumb of government? The latest developments in the reporting of who was behind the explosions that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines that brought Russian gas to Europe provide the answer. Although largely forgotten now, the blasts in the Baltic Sea in September 2022 ...
Iran and the Taliban became embroiled in a bitter dispute over water rights earlier this spring that was analyzed here at the time, which warned that these continued tensions dangerously risked dividing-and-ruling the broader region to the US’ hegemonic benefit. They’ve evidently patched up their problems since then, however, as proven by the latest improvem...
To say the world is currently witnessing turbulent times is an understatement. Heart-rending violence in Israel, the unending Ukraine war, earthquakes and massive floodings that have caused unprecedented deaths, destruction and misery are fresh on our minds. The global economic scene is no better and no source of comfort either. For sure, Europe and the US a...
A State Department official, Sylvia Yacoub, not only has accused the Biden Administration of “spreading misinformation”, but also of being “complicit in genocide”. Her 5-page memo was signed by 100 State Department and USAID officials in a State Department system that, unfortunately, is not for public view. Still, it reveals that conflict exists within gover...
Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel has not just divided Muslim political leaders. It’s also solicited diverse responses from religious figures and institutions, reflecting deeper divisions about what Islam stands for in the 21st century. At the core of the differences is the ability and willingness to empathise with innocent victims on both sides of the Israe...