Vile and crafty King Sisyphus, so the Greek myth goes, thought he was as smart as God. Zeus being smarter punished him to roll a boulder up the hill only to repentantly watch it roll down the other side. Since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar also believe they are smarter than God, they deserve the same Sisyph
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Hari Om
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30 Mar 2013
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3 Comments
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The situation in parts of the Kashmir Valley is highly volatile. It’s not just Pakistan which considers Jammu & Kashmir an “unfinished agenda of partition” that has been exporting terror to Kashmir (and other parts of India) and doing all that it can to motivate and inspire its Valley-based operatives to intensify, bleed and break India. Islama
From talk of “red lines” and cartoon bombs to having “all options on the table”, an undeniably delusional logic emanates from leadership in Washington and Tel Aviv regarding the alleged threat posted by Iran’s nuclear program. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu famously took to the stage of the UN General Assembly with his doodled explo
The duly elected government in Pakistan has completed its full term under President Asif Ali Zardari, and the country is making preparations to hold National Assembly elections in May. This is the first elected government in Pakistan since its inception that has survived a full five-year term, and good news any way one looks at it. However, what pu
Delhi Police has exposed a deep conspiracy of the ISI to destabilize India via Jammu and Kashmir by arresting a Pakistani national, Liaquat Ali Shah, who had crossed over to Pakistan 23 years ago and voluntarily adopted Pakistani nationality. He was definitely on the ‘pick-up’ list of militants who have crossed over to Pakistan for military trainin
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Hari Om
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27 Mar 2013
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2 Comments
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The Central Bureau of investigation (CBI) is a tool that the Congress misuses invariably to make sure that its opponents and equally “opportunist” allies fall in line and not do anything that has the potential of destabilizing what many in the country term as the most corrupt, highly arrogant and exceptionally anti-democratic and anti-people govern
When on March 14, 2013, the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church chose the archbishop of Buenos Aires as new Pope the election was no surprise to the cognoscenti. Soon after Benedict XVI resigned, the German press leaked the details of his election in 2005, which showed Bergoglio was in second place after Cardinal Ratzinger, then seen as Washington’s favou...
Small elite groups dominate the world because they have the economic and political power that comes from an unmatched capacity to raise and spend vast amounts of money. The institutional centre of that capacity is the profitable corporation, the primary vehicle of elite power over the last four centuries. The 99% has a broad and vital range of coll
Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, which took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the destruction continues unabated, devastating one of the more advanced economies and societies in southwest Asia. In addition, the war has ushered in an era of sectarian and ethnic civil wars, not only within Iraq, but throughout the region, thus fulfil
Relations between Indian and Pakistan have touched a nadir due to some unsavoury and nasty activities on the part of the latter country in recent times. The attack by terrorists of Pak-origin in Bemina, Srinagar on March 13, 2013 caused considerable consternation in India. The last straw was the resolution passed by the National Assembly of Pakista
President Hugo Chavez was unique in multiple areas of political, social and economic life. He made significant contributions to the advancement of humanity. The depth, scope and popularity of his accomplishments mark President Chavez as the ‘Renaissance President of the 21st Century’. Many writers have noted one or another of his historic cont
Several national newspapers have commented on the terror that struck Kashmir once again killing five uniformed men right inside their camp which is situated beside a police school in the heart of the city of Srinagar. Some of the comments deserve a strong reaction by those who genuinely believe that J&K is an integral part of the Union of India
The events in the Kashmir valley over the last few days are most disgusting and distressing. Five brave soldiers of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were killed in a terrorist attack at Bemina in the heart of Srinagar on March 13, 2013, in broad daylight. Nine others were injured, including seven more CRPF troopers, and two civilians. The tw
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Hari Om
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20 Mar 2013
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2 Comments
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On March 15, both Houses of Parliament adopted a unanimous resolution rejecting the March 14 resolution of the Pakistan National Assembly on Jammu & Kashmir and the lawfully executed Kashmiri terrorist Afzal Guru, who was convicted in the 2001 Parliament terror attack case. The Pakistan National Assembly had, like all Kashmiri separatists
In a previous article on the subject of media hype over Bt Cotton, a reader asked me to explain the importance of the nutrient buffer power concept, which is the writer’s real contribution to agricultural science, and to specifically address how alien technology/genes adversely impact soil nutrition balance. The crux of the issue, which he correctl
On Jan. 29, I wrote a piece that described North Korea’s strategy as a combination of ferocious, weak and crazy. In the weeks since then, three events have exemplified each facet of that strategy. Pyongyang showed its ferocity Feb. 12, when it detonated a nuclear device underground. The country’s only significant ally, China, voted against Pyongyan
The West Bengal Panchayat elections, slated to be held in April or May this year, seem to have unleashed a fresh round of minority appeasement, with the sudden arrest of Hindu rights crusader Tapan Ghosh on March 14. The event appears to be a follow-up of last month’s violence against the Hindu community in South 24 Parganas, in which 200 Hindu hom
Many still swallow the preposterous notion that the 1% and their finances are too big to fail while the 99% and their lives are too small to succeed. That’s always been the rationale of class division, whether between royalty and serfs, masters and slaves or at present between corporate capital and the rest of humanity. In the way that royalt
As Greece enters the sixth year of Europe’s worst economic depression, with 30% of its labor force unemployed and over 52% of its youth jobless, the entire social fabric is unraveling; suicide rates are skyrocketing and close to 80% of the population downwardly mobile. Family and inter-generational relations are deeply impacted; previous certaintie
Andre Pshenichnikov (24) is a most unusual kid. So unusual that he is languishing in Egyptian jail for crossing the border without proper papers. But his story begins earlier. I first heard of him when this young programmer from a Tel Aviv suburb stayed in Deheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. He did not go there to explor
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S Faizi
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16 Mar 2013
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6 Comments
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As a citizen who has worked on multilateral treaties in which India was a party, the writer is of the view that the Italian Government’s decision not to fulfill the commitment made through its ambassador to the Supreme Court of India represents a grave infraction of the rule of international laws and time-tested multilaterally accepted traditions.&
The customary decadal change of leadership in China took place on March 5, 2013, during a session of the Chinese Parliament in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The highlight of the transition process was that despite its fair share of intrigue, rivalry, speculation, the changeover was carried out without any major upheaval and in a peaceful
Presidential decisions often turn out to be far less significant than imagined, but every now and then what a president decides actually determines how the world turns. Such is the case with the Keystone XL pipeline, which, if built, is slated to bring some of the “dirtiest,” carbon-rich oil on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the
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Hari Om
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14 Mar 2013
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4 Comments
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Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Shashi Tharoor, a Congress-style intellectual, suggested at a meeting in Bhopal on February 24, 2013, that the Congress party, if voted to power, will like its president or vice-president to be the natural choice for the post of Prime Minister. “Everybody knows who is the president and vice-presiden
Janaka Goonetilleke (Wisdom of Our Ancestors and Truth Behind Our Heritage: A Sri Lankan Perspective, January 23, 2013), portrays an idyllic view of Sinhala tradition centered around the reservoir or tank, the rice field, the Buddhist temple and the village. I would like to highlight an alternate glimpse of hierarchy, caste and exclusion in Sri Lan
Looks like the world hasn’t heard enough of Narendra Modi yet. The more you hear of Modi, the more you want to hear about him. This is true for his enemies as well as his fans, both at home and abroad. Having failed in every fraudulent attempt to punish him for his success in business, good governance in virtually every sphere he cared to look at,
The recurring instances of terror, the latest in Hyderabad, are a matter of grave concern for public safety in India. Terror adds an extra dimension to the already insecure life of the common man, particularly in busy metros and other terror hotspots. While the political class assures its security with money lavishly spent from the public exchequer
The archetypal states of the green revolution are shriveling under the cumulative impact of the overuse of chemical pesticides and fertilisers, hybrid monoculture, and over extraction of ground water, all of which have ravaged the soil health and affected productivity. Further, in just one decade, yields have peaked in genetically modified crops (Bt cotton) ...
In the United States, drone attacks that accelerated rapidly under the Obama administration on Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are not a subject of everyday discussion. While no definitive conclusion can be drawn about what the average American thinks about those strikes, the US media and the country’s legislative arm, the Con
How quickly best laid plans become passé. New world orders come, it seems, as frequently as eclipses. The old world order (ancien régime), along with 16 million people, died during the Great European War which began on June 28, 1914 when the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated by a Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princ
InAugust 2002, when the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC, rechristenedas Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee) was manipulated by Monsanto, andits Indian subsidiary Mahyco (Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company), albeit throughthe back door, with clandestine support from vested interests scientificcommunity and open support of a voca
There are three main reasons why the British have not been able to co-opt and subvert the Hindu narrative as they did with that of Islam. The most important is a long-running failure to understand the nature of the faith. By the time Vasco da Gama landed in Kerala in 1498, Europeans had long forgotten what ancient Greece and Rome knew of India. Inc
P Chidambaram, the great Indian reformist, in his 2013 budget, has allocated a good sum of money to celebrate the centenary of the Gadar Movement. The proposed celebration plans include upgrading the Gadar Memorial in San Francisco and honouring the ‘Gadari Babas’, heroes of the movement. Gadar was the first American-German and
US President Barack Obama was quick to call his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin upon publication by the Russian ambassador to the Security Council a press release accusing the Rome Conference and its sponsor, the Secretary of State John Kerry, of being responsible for the support for extremists and terrorists in Syria. It was agreed during the c
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Hari Om
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06 Mar 2013
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3 Comments
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It is now almost clear that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to support the candidature of Shuban Krishan Dodha for the Legislative Council elections in Jammu & Kashmir, slated for March 7. The Kashmir-based People’s Democratic Front (PDF), which is known for its hostile attitude towards India and has a couple of militants-tur
Is it the ghost of Afzal Guru or some other earthly elements that are haunting the Kashmir valley since the latter was hanged at Tihar jail almost a month back on February, 09, 2013? The valley has witnessed high voltage political activity since the hanging; the matter has now boiled down to a single point demand of return of his mortal remains to
Risk averse. That is the shortest way to describe the finance minister P Chidambaram’s budget for 201-314. Faced with the multiple challenges of reviving a sagging economy, reining in the twin deficit (fiscal and current account) and propitiating large votebanks in the last regular budget before elections, he has preferred to avoid taking any chanc
If parliament enacts Finance Minister Chidambaram’s proposals to liberalize the insurance sector, the 2013 Union budget will destroy India. Entirely ignored by mass media pundits, the proposals are that: - Insurance companies be allowed to open offices in all Indian cities without prior approval from govern
The protagonist of this story, a prominent Russian developer and billionaire, “a Russian Donald Trump”, Sergey Polonsky, is now in a Cambodian jail in the small seaside resort of Sihanoukville, where I visited him. On December 30, 2012, just before the New Year celebrations, his speedboat was detained after hot pursuit and a few warning machine-gun
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Hari Om
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02 Mar 2013
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24 Comments
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Who says the ruling National Conference and the main opposition People’s Democratic Party, both Kashmir-based and Kashmir-centric parties whose core constituency is the same, are arch-political rivals? Those who say so are actually naïve. They have failed to understand that the NC and the PDP are two sides of one and the same coin, and they are ope
A series of money scams, high inflation, a significant slowdown of India’s much-touted economic growth, and currying favor with the globalization crowd at the expense of India’s vast majority of poor, have brought the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to its knees. With a year to go before the next general elections, the governme