We started 2016 by ending 2015 with a holiday shopping frenzy falling short of what the private profiteers needed but the public losers really didn’t, foreign policy moves to more war that the military industrial profiteers need but we don’t, and the end of the first phase of a presidential campaign that like shopping and war profits the few at cost to the m...
The Chinese President, Xi Jinping, has embarked on a tour of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Officially, he will not be speaking of politics, but only of economy. China is proposing that the states of the Near East participate in the construction of a new “Silk Road” in order to enhance their development and liberate themselves from Wes...
TOP NEWS: Feeling Pinch of Oil Collapse, Some Russians Take to Streets, reported The New York Times. Indeed, at that time thousands of Russians were queuing in Central Moscow. The enormous line snaked around in the park, despite frost and snow. People stood three and four hours, braving winter weather: old ladies in furs and gentlemen in greatcoats, young pe...
The Islamic State (IS) has become a magnet for international brigades, drawing over 30,000 fighters from 5 continents and 86 countries to their war in Iraq and Syria. While the international brigades are part of a global movement, most of the volunteers come from two-dozen countries, mainly in the Middle East, Maghreb, Western Europe, Russia and Central Asia...
The NDA government is closer to its second anniversary. Much of the enthusiastic support the Bharatiya Janata Party and Narendra Modi received in May 2014 is either diffused or confused. Supporters who unanimously saw Narendra Modi as the harbinger of a new era in not just the country’s politics but for its ancient civilisation are now de-motivated and divid...
As we take stock of our annual journey, the dominant mood this Republic Day is of shock at the suicide of University of Hyderabad student Rohith Vemula and the harsh attitude of the Union Human Resources Development Minister who has since retreated from the public domain. Far more disturbing is an insidious attempt by some to uphold inequality and disrespect...
The last State of the Union address by President Obama was the occasion of a vigorous panegyric in favour of his country, in all points the best “on Earth” (sic). Unfortunately, his magnificent rhetoric was not based on a single convincing argument. His splendid oratory was thus unable to mask the reality of the decline of the United States, the result being...
The Paris meeting of national officials united to save capitalism by re-branding climate change was challenged by outside demonstrators from all over the world calling for system change. The people were way ahead of their governments. Whether called revolutionary by supporters or disastrous by opponents, what should rightly be called COP-OUT 21 came to a fin...
The recent attack on the air force base at Pathankot has come as a shocker. That the terrorists were neutralized before they could cause mayhem and destroy air force assets is no consolation. The fact remains that a strategic and offensive forward airbase was brought to its knees by a handful of terrorists, truly a shame for India.
Prime Minister Narendra ...
Sri Lanka economic policy: In keeping with the United National Party (UNP)’s strong commitment to economic and social sector reforms, deregulation and private sector development, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe presented in parliament his government’s economic policy based on social market economy. This marks a departure from President Mahinda Rajapaksa’...
New Years Eve 2016: I stayed up about two hours past my usual bedtime to watch the New Years Eve celebration in Times Square. For one reason only. To see happy people. A year like 2015 can do that to you.
The sight of many thousands of young people standing in the cold for hours, hugging and kissing, screaming and laughing, was very precious. Also a bit un...
There is much enthusiasm in the country to see French troops march down Rajpath along with Indian contingents on the 67th Republic Day when President Francois Hollande will be the chief guest. This will be the first time that a contingent from a foreign country would be participating in the march past on the day India adopted the Constitution in...
That some Dalits should set up their own trades and industries, become millionaires, offer jobs instead of seeking job reservations and establish their own chamber of commerce and industry is a novel and wholly welcome phenomenon. Under inspiration from Dalit thinker and anthropologist Chandra Bhan Prasad, Milind Kamble in 2005 set up the Dalit Indian...
The Opium/Heroin Factor: The third factor of insecurity is the vast network that has been built around Afghanistan’s multi-billion-dollar annual opium and heroin production. In 2001, when President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan to eliminate the murderous Taliban, the total area under opium poppy cultivation was an estimated 8,000 hectares, according to ...
The Causes of Today’s Instability: The US invasion in 2001 that ousted the already-hated ruling Taliban government of Mullah Mohammad Omar had conveyed the false message that the intervention was to unite a war-torn nation under a benign, temporary foreign rule. A large number of US and NATO troops remained in Afghanistan for more than decade. During that ti...
As 2015 opened, expectations were running high in certain quarters that with the much-heralded departure of the bulk of foreign troops from the Afghan soil, a somewhat acceptable resolution of the controversial 2014 presidential election and the emergence of China in the region as a major economic power eager to participate in establishing Afghan stability a...
India’s time-tested friend Russia has come forward to be a partner in the ambitious Make-in-India initiative in sectors like defence manufacturing, nuclear power, solar energy, heavy engineering and railways. Defence is a critical sector for cooperation between the two countries. Moscow still remains as a major supplier of defence platforms and equipment eve...
It is absurd, outrageous and irresponsible to give a sectarian characterization to these demands for democracy for the sole reason that, in fact, they would allow better representation for Shiites, which is characteristic of any representative democracy. As such, any claim of democracy could be caricatured as the simple manifestation of partisanship because ...
“Since our birth, we are subjected to oppression, intimidation, persecution and terror, so that even the walls frightened us. Even the walls! Is there anybody who has not suffered injustice and oppression in this country? I am over 50 years old, that’s half a century. Since I was born, I never felt safe in this country, in no part of it, since my childhood. ...
The pre-dawn strike inside the Pathankot Air Force Base on January 2 was a Tragedy of Errors. Never before has such specific, actionable intelligence been available in real time, and the concerned operatives deserve our heartiest appreciation. Yet, information for which men may have risked their lives did not give us the desired advantage due to serial lapse...
First and foremost, a disclaimer: I don’t normally comment on an event right after it has happened, if only because in most cases the key information needed to make an evaluation is missing. In this case, however, I am confident that three things are already obvious:
First, the murder by the Saudi Wahabis of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 other Shia was a delib...
There is a very positive news coming out of Paris, a city with more than her share of bad news lately. It’s a major legal victory for the voices of science and reason against the GMO Monsanto-led cabal. Its implications will be felt worldwide. If our world ever gets the will to rid the 21st Century Black Death plague masquerading under the name of Genetic Ma...
All uncertainty prevailing over the State of Maharashtra filing an appeal over the complete acquittal of celebrated Bollywood star Salman Khan in the wake of famous 2002 hit and run incident has come to an end, with the Chief Minister assuring the House on the last date of the Winter Session of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in Nagpur that justice woul...
The two simultaneous terror attacks on vital Indian assets at the beginning of the year – one at the air force base at Pathankot (India) and the other at the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif (Afghanistan) – have raised questions regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “innovative” and “risky” diplomacy with Pakistan.
Mr Modi took a risk to make a...
The best-kept secrets must be revealed in the end. The mafia cartel which governs Bulgaria has been caught supplying drugs and weapons to Al-Qaeda and Daesh, at the demand of the CIA, both in Libya and Syria. The affair is all the more serious since Bulgaria is a member of NATO and the European Union.
Head of one of the two Bulgarian mafia cartels, the SIC,...
On January 1, Gurdaspur SP Salwinder Singh was kidnapped and his car hijacked at gunpoint at Jammu-Pathankot national highway on his way back home around 4 pm by heavily armed persons wearing army uniforms. A Red Alert was issued and a massive search operation launched into the incident to apprehend the culprits.
Later, on Jan. 2, using the same hijacked...
December seems to be worst month of 2015 for the Kurdish minority in Turkey. In the early December additional units of Gendarmerie and Armed Forces, including tanks and combat helicopters were sent to southeastern provinces of Sirnak, Diyarbakir, Mardin, Siirt and Hakkari. A curfew has been imposed in numerous cities with checkpoints set on the roads and tra...
If we were to believe Erdogan’s up-beat ‘anti-terror’ rhetoric, we might also be tempted to believe that Turkey, led by him, has been one of the most important states fighting terrorist organizations since the beginning of the current phase of the conflict in the Middle East - a phase that originally started with the Western engineered so-called “Arab Spring...
That the Russian leadership continues to accord the Ukrainian conflict the highest importance is confirmed by a very interesting appointment the Kremlin has just announced. This is the appointment of Boris Gryzlov as Russia’s representative on the so-called Contact Group. The Contact Group was set up in June 2014 as a result of the talks in Normandy between ...
The BJP lost no time in distancing itself from the remarks made by its general secretary Ram Madhav, in an interview to TV channel Al Jazira, that as an RSS member he believed that “one day these parts (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) … will again, through popular goodwill, come together and Akhand Bharat will be created”. Mr Madhav also clarified that the A...
We wish all our readers a very Happy New...