When the dazzling sun of a universe peopled by cricketers, politicians, film stars, corporate and media celebrities, and betting mafias, is worsted in a palace coup, stages a comeback but gets cheated of his prize, there is bound to be payback. There is some merit in Indian Premier League creator Lalit Modi’s anger at politicians controlling cash-rich...
“As you know, the modern world, especially the Western world, is highly monopolised and many Western countries – whether they want to hear this or not – have voluntarily given up a considerable part of their sovereignty. To some extent, this is a result of the politics of blocs. Sometimes we find it very difficult to come to terms with them on geopolitical i...
The neoconservatives will not be satisfied until they have brought about nuclear armageddon. Not long ago I asked in a column, “Are you ready for nuclear war?” You had better be, because Washington is bringing it closer. Indeed, as Europe’s politicians are complicit in Washington’s aggression against Russia, Europeans are preparing their own demise. Now Obam...
Europe today is a continent of borders. The second-smallest continent in the world has more than 50 distinct, sovereign nation-states. Many of these are part of the European Union. At the core of the EU project is an effort to reduce the power and significance of these borders without actually abolishing them — in theory, an achievable goal. But history is n...
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko requests the supreme court of Ukraine to declare that his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown by an illegal operation; in other words, that the post-Yanukovych government, including Poroshenko’s own Presidency, came into power from a coup, not from something democratic, not from any authentic constitutional pro...
Since Ashraf Ghani was made president through remote control by the Obama administration last September, bringing an end to the three month-long dispute with his presidential rival Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, who, left with little choice, has subsequently assumed an undefined role in the number two position as the country’s first-ever Chief Executive (CE) - he ha...
When I began this series a month ago, I pointed out that the most significant feature of the global system currently is the ongoing destabilization of the Eurasian land mass, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the Arabian Sea. One important aspect of this is that the destabilization isn’t, at this point, a single systemic crisis, but a seri...
About 75% of US employees work 40 hours or longer, the second longest among all OECD countries, exceeded only by Poland and tied with South Korea. In contrast, only 10% of Danish workers, 15% of Norwegian, 30% of French, 43% of UK and 50% of German workers work 40 or more hours. With the longest work day, US workers score lower on the ‘living well’ scale tha...
One of the best event managers in his own right, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accomplished a unique feat of making the entire globe acknowledge and appreciate the resplendent power of yoga, which in his own words is something “beyond physical fitness”. The maiden International Day of Yoga marking the Summer Solstice has somewhere set forth the trajectory...
Capitol’s apologists are paradoxically joined by many of its critics in seeming unity of belief that there is no chance or need for change. Driven by despair, many assume that either the end is near or that it will await their demise before things get so bad they can’t get worse. This is understandable as we experience an almost endless loop of bad news abou...
I had to whip up my courage to go to the Ukraine. There was a recent spate of political killings in the unhappy and lovely land, and the perpetrators never apprehended; among those killed was Oles Buzina, a renowned writer and a dear friend. Two years ago, well before the troubles, we had a drink under a chestnut tree in a riverside café. Buzina was in his f...
Mackinder’s Century
As the eminent imperial historian Paul Kennedy once observed, “the rest of the twentieth century bore witness to Mackinder's thesis,” with two world wars fought over his “rimlands” running from Eastern Europe through the Middle East to East Asia. Indeed, World War I was, as Mackinder himself later observed, “a straight duel between lan...
For even the greatest of empires, geography is often destiny. You wouldn’t know it in Washington, though. America’s political, national security, and foreign policy elites continue to ignore the basics of geopolitics that have shaped the fate of world empires for the past 500 years. Consequently, they have missed the significance of the rapid global changes ...
The Indian Army operation in Myanmar was enough a message to the insurgents that New Delhi will no longer tolerate nefarious activities engineered from the soil of a neighbouring country. This is not about counting casualties on either side. This issue is retaliation at the right time to save civilian casualties deliberately planned by...
Thousands of people in 428 cities across 38 countries joined the March Against Monsanto on May 23, to support the right to naturally grown food amidst rising concerns about the safety of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) on the health of humans, animals, and the environment. Earlier, on March 15, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared that glyphosa...
The current drift in Jammu & Kashmir is eroding the national interest and hurting India’s territorial integrity. It is dangerous to claim that national interest calls for co-opting the very forces that have waged war on the nation. The argument that this will change the mindset of these forces and bring them into the national mainstream is flawed. Already th...
The Indian Army operation in Myanmar was enough a message to the insurgents that New Delhi will no longer tolerate nefarious activities engineered from the soil of a neighbouring country. This is not about counting casualties on either side. This issue is retaliation at the right time to save civilian casualties deliberately planned by...
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Sona
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14 Jun 2015
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7 Comments
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Shiva! The Mahadev. The God of Gods. Destroyer of Evil. Passionate lover. Fierce warrior. Consummate dancer. Charismatic leader. All-powerful, yet incorruptible. Quick wit, accompanied by an equally quick and fearsome temper. Over the centuries, no foreigner who came to our land — conqueror, merchant, scholar, ruler, traveller — believed that such...
Those who have observed over the years that Islamabad was digging itself into a hole, and believe it is still digging, should note recent developments that suggest Pakistan is now making efforts to become a regional power, trying to repair its moribund relations with its neighbours to the west. No doubt it will be an uphill task for both Prime Minister Nawaz...
Oh, the misdirected fury of it all. The self-appointed elect, those states at the G7, have decided to have a chat about matters deemed critical for them. A few interlopers are also present – Nigeria, Tunisia and Liberia, for instance. Like any club whose rules vary between snooty and arbitrary, there were exclusions. On this occasion, basic arithmetic dictat...
Western governments no longer hide the fact that they’re using jihadists - NATO overthrew Mouamar el-Kadhafi by using al-Qaïda as its only ground forces; Israël displaced the UN Forces to Golan, and replaced them with al-Nosra; the international anti-Daesh Coalition allowed Palmyra to fall in order to cause more problems for Syria. But while we can...
While the signature of the agreement between Washington and Teheran draws ever closer, Thierry Meyssan retraces and analyses the policies of François Hollande in the Near East which uphold his support for the Gulf monarchies and Israeli apartheid. Indisputably, the author demonstrates the fact that this policy, which is contrary to the values of the Republic...
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Hari Om
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09 Jun 2015
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Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah’s announcement on February 25 this year that the BJP and the People’s Democratic Party would form a coalition government in Jammu & Kashmir was taken by the “politically marginalised” and “economically ignored” people of Jammu province as a signal of the return of hope and joy for them. It was taken to mean the begi...
The crackdown on human traffickers by the Government of Thailand since May 2015 and subsequent abandonment of the victims of trafficking, mainly Rohingyas, in the Indian Ocean has brought international spotlight on the deplorable situation of the Rohingyas in Myanmar. While the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organ...
A pretentious title requires a modest beginning. The world has increasingly destabilized and it is necessary to try to state, as clearly as possible, what has happened and why. This is not because the world is uniquely disorderly; it is that disorder takes a different form each time, though it is always...
Peace and stability in Bangladesh is vital for India which needs effective connectivity not only to its own north-eastern region but also to South-East Asia. A sense of satisfaction emanates from the fact that both economies are growing at faster rates transcending internal problems – India at over 7% and Bangladesh at over 6%. But the growth needs to be sus...
A number of recent developments in and around Afghanistan have made it evident that India’s investments made during the decade since the 2001 US invasion (and often wrongly described by some analysts as a display of India’s “soft power”) will certainly help Afghanistan. At the same time, these developments have made it clear that those investments will not h...
In a challenge delivered to Monsanto’s headquarters on May 20, 2015, US public interest attorney Steven Druker calls on that corporation to find any inaccurate statements of fact in his new book: Altered Genes, Twisted Truth – How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the...
The report card on the annual performance of the Modi government during the year past is out, and the “experts” have made their commentaries. Conspicuously, hardly any touched upon the deficiency of the Modi government on the agricultural front. The warning bells have rung, and, yet again, India has fallen by the wayside on the hunger front. Data in the foll...
From the moment he unveiled an enticing vision of growth before ambitious students at the capital’s prestigious Sri Ram College of Commerce in February 2013, effortlessly capturing the imagination of young India (and an awestruck national and international audience), Narendra Modi has straddled the nation like a colossus – a leader without a peer across the ...
It is said that the Churches in India, particularly of Kerala, are ‘a committed force’ to fulfill the dreams of the father of the nation – Gandhiji – for a spirit-free Bharat. At the time of his struggle against the British Raj, the Churches in India, notwithstanding theological differences, extended spiritual, moral and material support for the continuation...