The ongoing petition in the Supreme Court on recognising “same-sex marriage” reflects the lack of conceptual understanding and difference between “sex /sex identity” and “gender /gender identity”. In its famous decision in NALSA v. Union of India, the Supreme Court recognised the existence of transgender or any other gender apart from binary gender as “third...
As a neutral actor, Russia aims to balance regional interests and prevent the expansion of US-backed terrorist groups. This approach, coupled with socio-economic reconstruction efforts, could reduce extremism and benefit Afghanistan’s impoverished population. While cautious not to pose a challenge to neighbouring countries’ security, Russia’s engagement aims...
Khula (Muslim women’s right to seek divorce) seems like an ever-existent law in Muslim society. The reality is that this right of Muslim women is a result of 20th-century ijtihad (reasoning and logic) by Ulema associated with the Deoband School of Islamic thought. Muslims are not a monolithic people and Sunni Muslims follow their religion through four promi...
Prigozhin’s attempted coup never had any realistic chance of succeeding after the Russian people and their elite rallied around President Putin in the face of the unprecedented challenge that the Wagner chief posed to him over the weekend. The only victor in another “Battle of Moscow” would have been their country’s existential enemies, which is why its lead...
A coup by private army chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, begun in the wee hours of June 24, 2023 (just after midnight of June 23), ended in a whimper less than 24 hours later, with the PMC Wagner chief ordering his troops back to barracks and leaving for exile in Belarus, in a truce negotiated by President Lukashenko, who persuaded Russian President Vladimir Putin to...
It’s a fool’s game. Kiev’s communication asserts that its army launched a counter-offensive two weeks ago. But this does not correspond to what can be seen on the battlefield. It also claims to welcome with hope the two missions of good offices from China and the African Union. But Volodymyr Zelensky has interrupted the negotiations he was conducting with Mo...
On June 14th, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg repeatedly insisted upon facilitating Ukraine’s becoming a member-nation of that marketing organization for the weapons that are produced by U.S.-and-allied weapons-manufacturers, but America’s President Joe Biden made clear on June 17th that he will not allow softening the existing requirements in order ...
Respecting deals between countries or governments goes back millennia and includes civilizations such as Sumerians and Ancient Egyptians. This was always considered a sort of litmus test of a certain country’s or ruler’s reputation and it stuck for a very long time. In essence, this practice predates the very concept of international law and is in many ways ...
President Putin surprised his guests from the African peace delegation on Saturday [June 17-ed] by revealing details about Russia’s now-defunct draft treaty with Ukraine. It would have re-enshrined neutrality in that country’s constitution and also limited its number of military forces. According to him, it had even been signed by the Ukrainian side, which t...
This article was written on June 10. At that time, the only information available came from Russia and allied headquarters. Ukraine had imposed a total embargo on its counter-offensive. We should therefore have waited before publishing this text. However, we felt that if Ukraine had been able to break through Russia’s first line of defense, even if it hadn’t...
This emerging scenario poses a serious threat to China’s national security interests since it amounts to Japan’s US-encouraged remilitarization driving that country’s neo-imperial expansion to Southeast Asia. The first-ever trilateral National Security Advisors (NSA) summit took place on Friday [June 16-ed] between the US, Japan, and the Philippines,...
“Fortunately, or unfortunately, Ramanand Sagar is not a member of any political party. He belongs to the party of humans. He has been exalted to those high ranks of artists who are carrying the flag of humanity.” Khawaja Ahmad Abbas wrote in the foreword to Aur Insaan Mar Gaya, an acclaimed and famous Urdu novel by Ramanand Sagar.
Ramanand Sagar is best kn...
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko shared his country’s red line in a video interview that was released on Wednesday [June 14-ed]. According to him, “red lines are a full-blown aggression from any side now, except Russia, of course. The Baltic countries, Poland and Ukraine. If they send troops, not small units, to cross the border and start a war, tha...
Today, in the mainstream narrative, there is much talk of a ‘food transition’. Big agribusiness and ‘philanthropic’ foundations position themselves as the saviours of humanity due to their much-promoted plans to ‘feed the world’ with ‘precision’ farming’, ‘data-driven’ agriculture and ‘sustainable’ production. These are the very institutions responsible for...
The first-ever trilateral anti-terrorist talks between China, Iran, and Pakistan took place in Beijing last week [June 7, 2023-ed]. While China has excellent ties with those two countries, they’ve each had a troubled history with one another, largely over cross-border militancy in the transnational Balochistan region. Iran and Pakistan have accused one...
For more than a decade, Washington’s “regime change” agenda in Syria involved not only defeating the Assad regime, but also forcing a territorial disintegration of the Syrian state. In the past few years, the US military presence in Syria has only served to prevent Syrian reunification. For decades, Syria and its allies – mainly Iran and Russia – worked as a...
Together with China and Japan, India is one of the three leading Asian powers whose mutual relations will increasingly determine the situation in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole. In turn, this latter is today in the focus of the current stage of the Great World Game. And if we can speak more or less definitely about the positioning of the first two countr...
Many people in my country are beginning to understand the lies and control mechanisms put in place by our elites. Liars are easily found over time. A Cold War mentality of our elite dinosaurs grafted onto the new breed of soulless elites is now crystal clear. The proxy war in Ukraine, the aggression toward China, and the hubris of Western leadership are fina...
The theory that global warming is observable all over the planet and that it is caused by human activity has been popularized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); a United Nations commission. I have no expertise in climate issues and I don’t presume to judge whether this theory is true or false, but I am an expert in international politic...
Rama and Ramayana were common knowledge in Tamil speaking lands in olden days. Numerous Rama temples all over Tamil Nadu bear testimony to this. But there is a propaganda blitzkrieg that Ramayana is a myth and there is no connection between Rama and Tamils. Let us examine the evidence from Tamil literature. Although Rama lived in Ayodhya, the major portion o...
Revisiting Sri Lanka Perspectives after a two-month break, we find the month of May occupies a special place in Sri Lanka’s history with a seamless continuity of events in yesteryears. The effects of wasteful politics failing to reap two-and one-half decades of peace after the Tamil separatist war that ended in May 2009 with the death of Prabhakaran have con...
When jailed Turkish politician Selahattin Demirtaş apologized for his pro-Kurdish party’s poor performance in recent Turkish elections, he did more than take responsibility. Mr. Demirtaş implicitly questioned the notion that Turks vote primarily along ideological and identity lines rather than based on assessing which party will best further their economic a...
In the 42nd ASEAN summit held in Indonesia in May [9-11 May-ed], the group decided to “not become a proxy for anyone.” This was with reference to the increasing pressure the group on the whole is currently facing from the US to counter and contain China in the Indo-Pacific region. This comes on top of the idea that Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim recently floated t...
The new world order, based on equality of all its participants and initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, is increasingly making its way in international relations. The results of the Arab summit, which just ended in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, are a vivid example of this. This year’s Summit came amid signs that the oil-rich kingdom is increasingly using ...
On behalf of China, Li Hui came to propose that the West make peace in Ukraine by acknowledging their mistakes. His analysis is precise and well founded. But the West did not listen. They are relentlessly pursuing the rhetoric they perfected during the Cold War: they are democrats, while the others, all the others, are not. They will continue to support Ukra...
In the event that Kiev gains and holds ground in Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and/or Ukraine’s former regions, none of which can be taken for granted of course, then the West can claim that the counteroffensive was worth it. The 52nd session of the CIS Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services took place in Minsk on Thursday, during which time...
On May 3, two slow moving drones flew over the Kremlin and then exploded in flames when the Russian military forced them down. Whether the drone attack was a serious attempt on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s life or not, Moscow perceived it as one, announcing that “Last night, the Kiev regime attempted a drone strike against the residence of the Presiden...
“Look at the stage our country has arrived in the last 20 years. (The opposition) would take us back 50-60 years,” said Bekir Ozcelik, a security guard in Ankara, who voted for Erdoğan. “There is no other leader in the world that measures up to Erdoğan,” The Associated Press (AP) reported on 23 May 2023. This point of view is shared by a vast majority of Tu...
“The greatest achievement of the Momin Movement (All India Momin Conference) was that it changed the psyche of this (weaver) caste. Now instead of being ashamed of their caste identity they proudly announce it.” These words were written by Professor Hafiz Shamsuddin Ahmad Shams, one of the founders of the All India Momin Conference (AIMC) and the president o...
Business Insider published a piece on Sunday that quoted government-linked US and UK experts praising Russia’s electronic warfare skills for neutralizing the threat that Kiev’s Turkish-supplied Bayraktar drones used to pose on the battlefield. Samuel Bennett from the federally funded Center for Naval Analyses told the outlet that “Once the Russian military g...