The Pakistani government’s removal of a virulently anti-Shiite militant from its terrorism list at the very moment that an international money laundering and terrorism finance watchdog was deciding to put the country on a watch list highlights Pakistan’s struggle to come to grips with militancy. The decision by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)...
Hypatia (370-415 AD) was a Hellenist, Neo-Platonist philosopher, astronomer and mathematician who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. She entered into a tough intellectual battle with Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. In March 415, she was dragged into a nearby church known as the “Caesareum” where she was stripped naked and murdered. Michael Servetus (1511-1553) made im...
To a student of history, Sonia Gandhi is an enigma. Her origins are known: born into a working class family in an industrial suburb of Turin in Italy. Beyond that, her early life and background are a mystery and her interest in the future of India remains questionable. All we know is that she was born in the small town of Orbassano, near Turin.
She went to...
India’s Hindu liberals are a little recognised scar on the national psyche, an enduring legacy of the British Raj that left after violently splintering the country in 1947. The Portuguese lingered in tiny Goa until finally evicted in 1961. A palimpsest on our ancient civilisation, the British colonialists worked assiduously to efface the rich traditions and...
Two Indians, both Muslims from Jammu and Kashmir, were killed by terrorists on June 15, but only one dominates the political mind-space. The death of Rising Kashmir editor Shujaat Bukhari is often cited by Bharatiya Janata Party leaders as evidence of Mehbooba Mufti’s inability to control the law and order situation in the State and a justification for quitt...
Eurasian integration and developing relations with Asian countries are important items on Russia’s present-day political agenda. One of the platforms for moving forward on these issues is the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU or EEU), which includes Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. With the aid of this organization, the Russian Federation is ...
It seems that Theresa May took office only yesterday, but the general public is showing signs of ever growing frustration with this political figure. According to the official record, the sitting British Prime Minister assumed office on July 13, 2016, becoming the second woman in the UK history after Margaret Thatcher to be employed in that capacity. Her gra...
My name is Haji Naseer, and I am one of the first victims of enforced disappearances in Balochistan. I was one of the founding members of the Baloch National Movement (BNM), a political party formed in 2004 to campaign for an independent Balochistan. We, under the leadership of Ghulam Mohammed Baloch, believed that the forcible annexation of Balochistan into...
The second half of the twentieth century was marked by the world economy suffering irreversible and potentially catastrophic changes. Once the US obtained virtually uncontested economic and military influence in the world, the Fed found itself in a position when it was able to print piles of dollars on demand without worrying about the overall sustainability...
Mounting anger and discontent is simmering across the Arab world much like it did in the walk-up to the 2011 popular revolts that toppled four autocratic leaders. Yet, this time round the anger does not always explode in mass street protests as it recently did in Jordan. To be sure, fury at tax hikes in Jordan followed the classic pattern of sustained publi...
In two earlier pieces, Modi’s transformation of India using the twin pillars of choosing the right policies and then executing them well, was examined in detail. The impact on the ground is for all to see. It is in this context that news of the plot to assassinate Modi by extremists groups has come as a shocker. Undoubtedly, it is a serious issue and reports...
At the beginning of June, Jordan was shaken by a week of peaceful demonstrations against a project for a fiscal law which planned for a rise in taxes of between 5% and 25% for all persons with an annual salary of more than 8,000 dinars ($11,245). The demonstrators, whose quality of life had suffered greatly from the consequences of the Western war against Sy...
With electoral upsets having become the norm, the latest upheaval that swept aside the long-standing president of Fenerbahçe SC, the political crown jewel of Turkish soccer, has taken on added significance with Turkey heading into crucial snap presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24. The parallels between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan an...
While the people and the princes of Europe were struggling to free themselves from the hold of religion, Christianity found the means to expand in newly discovered lands. So, while the Roman Empire had collapsed centuries earlier, a new world empire, Christian Empire, was about to begin. Its founder was a mariner of genius and a ruthless mass murderer known ...
Prior to the recent Assembly elections and by-elections in some States, Church leaders in Gujarat appealed to their flock to vote against nationalist parties, meaning the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A similar appeal was later made by the Archbishop of Delhi, followed by the Archbishop of Goa. This means two things: first, the Church opposes nationalism and...
Iraq has never known peace since the invasion by the United States, fifteen years ago, and as a result the electorate has lost faith in the different political institutions which followed. In any case, those citizens who did take part in the elections of 12 May chose anti-US electoral lists, thereby sanctioning those of the Prime Minister, who didn’t really ...
The Trump phenomenon, to paraphrase Lincoln, who may not have said this at all, “you can fool some of the people all of the time,” deeply parallels the elections of 1824 and 1828. This is when consummate “outsider,” a tough-as-nails backwoods “westerner” and war hero, Andrew Jackson, spouting conspiracy theories about corruption and “elites” rose to the pres...
Iran, in the latest of a series of incidents on its western and south-eastern borders, said it had disbanded a Pakistan-based cell of ant-Shiite militants in a clash this week on the Iranian side of the border. The clash, shrouded in mystery like similar past incidents in the ethnic Baloch province of Sistan and Baluchistan, and Kurdish areas in the West, oc...
Despite the good will of some of the participants, the Paris conference for Libya did not have the desired effects. For Thierry Meyssan, this can be explained by the double language of NATO and the United Nations, who are pretending to want to stabilise the country while their actions in fact continue the Cebrowski plan for the destruction of state structure...
The reverberations of former President Pranab Mukherjee’s address at the valedictory session of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s Tritiya Varsh Varg (Third Year Course) at Nagpur will doubtless resonate for a long time. Whatever one’s ideological persuasion, there is no denying that Pranabda has made a significant intervention in our political discourse. Af...
Q: What are the misconceptions about India in South Asia, when it comes to security related issues as a threat to State Sovereignty? Why do these perceptions exist? And how can India move past these misperceptions?
A: India’s cultural, religious, ethnic and linguistic soft power dominates the entire South Asian region from Afghanistan in the West to Myanm...
Protests that forced Jordan’s prime minister to resign and laid bare the country’s systemic economic and political crisis shed a new light on the root causes of popular protests in the Middle East that swept the region in 2011 and have since continuously erupted at local levels in a swath of land stretching from Morocco to Egypt. The protests, sparked by pri...
Key economic forums in cities across Eurasia point the way to new power structures rising to challenge Western dominance Ahead of the crucial Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Qingdao this coming weekend, three other recent events have offered clues on how the new world order is coming about. The Astana Economic Forum in Kazakhstan centered ...
Recently a deal was concluded where Walmart, USA is said to have acquired 77 per cent shareholding in Flipkart Limited, Singapore, and the holding company of Flipkart Group of Companies in India. It is narrated as the biggest e-commerce deal in the world. We are Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) firmly believe that this acquisition shall result in Walmart’s backdo...
The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)’s action to introduce a private member’s bill in parliament to abolish the existing executive presidential system, through the 20th Amendment (20A) to the Constitution, has once again triggered heated debate in Sri Lanka politics. Ever since President JR Jayewardene became the first executive president on February 4, 1978,...
In an earlier piece, the ground work laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his first four years in office was analyzed. His important achievement is the creation of a policy environment that facilitates accelerated growth. As pointed out, the implications for the country are many. This piece will explore the ripple effects of the rapid transformation on so...
Newly elected Malaysian Prime Minister Mohammed Mahathir is adopting policies that could reshape the Southeast nation’s relations with powerful Gulf states. A series of anti-corruption measures as well as statements by Mr. Mahathir and his defense minister, Mohamad (Mat) Sabu, since this month’s upset in elections that ousted Prime Minister Najib Razak from ...
Several noteworthy events, which have occurred in the past few weeks, bear witness to the continuing changes in the Indo-Pacific region’s political map. This process was long in the making, but its pace increased substantially after the election of Donald Trump as the US President, whose key campaign slogan, “America first,” is often misinterpreted as confir...
When strongman Ramzan Kadyrov last month opened The Local, a United Arab Emirates-funded luxury hotel in the Chechen capital of Grozny and prepared to receive Egypt’s World Cup qualifying national team as its first guests, he was cashing in on more than the Russian region’s Muslim identity. Eager to forge close ties to Middle Eastern nations, Mr. Kadyrov, wh...
In theory, football like all sorts of other sport activities can seem to be the most apolitical matter one can come across, while in practice political concerns have dominated sports for decades now. Sportsmanship in an age of unhindered political meddling and predatory business practices goes beyond, far beyond, the realm of pure entertainment. In fact, tod...
The growth in the Indian economy has attracted a lot of attention. India has emerged as the fasted growing large economy, pipping China. It is expected to clock a GDP growth rate higher than 7.2% in 2018. Many international agencies that monitor key economies around the world have been sanguine in their projections on India. A recent study published by UK ba...