Maldives’ Vulnerability: This small nation comprising some 1,200 coral islands inhabited by fewer than 350,000 people had long been unstable and has become a target of drug-traffickers, smugglers, and terrorists posing as Islamists. Because of its strategic location in the Indian Ocean the island nation has long been on the radar screens of China, India, and...
In recent days, the South Asian news media has been inundated with reports suggesting that terrorists aligned with the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are emerging in some member-nations of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC). India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh went on record warning the Indian population that ISIS-l...
The area around the Central Moscow tube stations looks like Aleppo after an air raid. Ruins, destroyed buildings, bulldozers gathering the shambles. No, Moscow was not hit by terrorists: this is a planned demolition of hundreds of small and not-too-small shacks erected (in defiance of planning law) in the vicinity of tube stations in the notorious Nineties, ...
You don’t understand the change of attitude of the United States deal with Syria? This is normal because there is no relation between what they do and what they say. In Munich, Washington - which has continued to arm groups fighting against Syria - comes to promote the principle of a cease-fire. Indeed, we must save the soldier Daesh that the Russian and...
The meeting of the International Syria Support Group seems to have marked the takeover of the Syrian situation by the White House, to the detriment of the “neo-conservatives” and the “liberal hawks”. The final declaration imposes supervision of the UNO by the US and Russia, which removes Jeffrey Feltman from his prerogatives. It imposes free circulation of h...
“Facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored” - Aldous Huxley
For the last fifteen years the left-oriented academia of Jawaharlal Nehru University have been actively promoting and propagating divisive politics aimed at the balkanization of India. The Marxism-infected teachers and ultra-leftist parties like the All India Students Associa...
The pro-secession-for-Kashmir meeting organised by the pro-Maoist Democratic Students Union at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on February 9, 2016, could well have been an official function of Delhi University if a particular candidate had become Vice...
No one knows how the “War On Syria” is going to end, let alone what turns it will take in a year from now, a month, and even a week. There are many variables, new developments, twists and turns, and they happen quickly, and sometimes unexpectedly. And because we do not really what is going on behind the scenes in the corridors of Washington, Ankara and Riyad...
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Earlier, in an article titled ‘Saints for Sale’ (Vijayvaani, May 11, 2009), I wrote about the new trend of the mushrooming births of saints in the galaxy of the Catholic Church. The Church now considers elevation of some as saints is the stratum to survive in the emerging adverse situations in contemporary Europe and...
The US economy died when middle class jobs were offshored and when the financial system was deregulated. Jobs offshoring benefitted corporate executives and shareholders, because lower labor and compliance costs resulted in higher profits. These profits flowed through to shareholders in the form of capital gains and to executives in the form of “performance ...
Washington foreign policies these days are dominated by a bizarre kind of political sado-masochism, not unlike the argument given by the CIA that torture such as waterboarding is a successful, legitimate way to extract invaluable intelligence from an enemy combatant. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo come to mind. The war-makers like CIA head honcho John Brennan or ...
Oil has fallen below $30 per barrel. The decline in oil prices that alarmed the world when it began in 2014 has lasted much longer than expected. Natural gas, steel, copper, and other commodities are also seeing their prices fall. Economists are becoming alarmed as all the signs indicating some kind of pending recession are appearing.
US media would have us...
The fires of Maoism and Islamism have been smouldering across Jawaharlal Nehru University for several years, but the UPA government chose to ignore the growing student radicalization for reasons best known to itself. Now, on February 9, 2016, the institution has burst into flames with a function organized to eulogise Afzal Guru and to advocate the...
Sometimes profound tectonic shifts in the global politics arise from least noticed events. Such is the situation with Iran and the recent visit to Teheran of China’s President Xi Jinping. What emerged from the talks confirms that the vital third leg of what will become a genuine Eurasian Golden Triangle, of nations committed to peaceful economic development,...
As the incumbent occupier of subsidized housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue works on his legacy by fending off mad dogs of the neo-zio-con right and still bringing us closer to provoking war with Russia, a seemingly eternal presidential race for the next tenant continues while the nation passes through a critical period of confusion, disinformation and socia...
New Hampshire is a wonderful news. After many years of frustration, we see America we want to bless: America that rejects its money-making machine of Wall Street and its death-churning machine of Pentagon. Both leaders of the President race are good, Sanders for the Left and Trump for the Right are good and great, exactly what is needed, and now let the best...
For the first time in History, a team specialised in psychological operations is attempting to fabricate a candidate for the US Presidential elections and win him a home in the White House. His victory, if they succeed, would prove that it is possible to falsify the electoral process itself. It would also call into question the power of the military on civil...
“With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.” – Otto von Bismarck
The blame game has now begun, not on the failure of the Syrian peace talks, but about their delay. We saw the signs early, and for those who were blind, we had Mr. de Mistura telling the press to expect to see parties walking out on th...
Is Bernie Sanders a socialist? “Self-described socialist” … How many times have we all read that term in regard to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders? But is he really a socialist? Or is he a “social democrat”, which is what he’d be called in Europe? Or is he a “democratic socialist”, which is the American party he has been a member of (DSA – Democratic Sociali...
The selection of the pampered New Delhi Municipal Council, merely 3 per cent of the area and population of the capital city, for upgradation under the Centre’s Smart Cities Mission, embarrassingly overlapped with the prolonged strike by municipal workers of the three Delhi Municipal Corporations and highlighted some problems that have long plagued this...
The year 2016 has hardly begun and the losses in different stock markets around the world are colossal: nearly 8 trillion US dollars during the first three weeks of January according to the calculations of the Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The Government of the United States made addicts of investment banks of policies of cheap credit. And now that the Syst...
The Geneva 3 negotiations for peace in Syria have just begun [Feb 1 - ed], after the pro-Saudi opposition finally submitted to the demands of the US State Department and agreed to participate. However, observes Thierry Meyssan, while Washington and Moscow were hoping for a rapid peace agreement in December, and adopted Resolution 2254, the United States are ...
Whatever happens in the future, Putin has already secured his place in history as one of the greatest Russian leaders ever. Not only did he succeed in literally resurrecting Russia as a country, but in a little over a decade he brought her back as a world power capable of successfully challenging the AngloZionist Empire. The Russian people have clearly recog...
Rice is the staple diet of South Asia, in particular, the Indian sub-continent. In India, it is the basic ingredient of several south Indian delicacies, such as the ubiquitous idli, dosa, in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and puttu, in Kerala. Like India, China, Japan, The Philippines and other neighbouring South and South East Asian populations...
If there is any single price of any commodity that determines the growth or slowdown of our economy, it is the price of crude oil. Too many things don’t calculate today in regard to the dramatic fall in the world oil price. In June 2014 major oil traded at $103 a barrel. With some experience following the geopolitics of oil and oil markets, I smell a big sku...
In mid-January Islamabad and Kabul saw the talks between foreign affairs representatives of four states – the United States, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan (the so-called Quadrilateral Coordination Group) who were tasked with a mission to develop a road map that would be able to put an end to the war in Afghanistan, which has been raging for over 15 years n...
In recent months, India’s dynamic new Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have opened first tentative steps in the direction of resolving some 70 years of border tensions. Were the two great Eurasian nations to come into a political and, eventually, economic harmony, it could change the geopolitical map of wars and chaos i...
The mantra of maintaining equidistance from the Congress and the BJP has played out well for Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. He has received a certificate of appreciation from the NDA government at the Centre for urban development. Another feather on his cap is Bhubaneswar becoming the number one choice for development as ‘Smart City’ under an ambitiou...