Indian media speculation over a likely meeting between Trump and Modi has been making the news quite frequently of late. The Indian media is bound to hype the event from a blinkered, even myopic, prism, focusing on two points, viz., H1B visas /immigration and declaration of Pakistan as a terrorist state. To restrict the event to two issues, with perhaps the ...
The whereabouts of India’s controversial Islamist preacher, Zakir Naik, have become a test case of the Muslim world’s commitment to anti-terrorism in deeds, not words. Wanted by a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Mumbai for his alleged role in a terror case, Naik, last spotted in Malaysia where he had secured permanent resident status som...
Punjab Director General of Police, K.P.S. Gill, wrote a personal letter to then Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, on 30 May 1997, after attending the funeral of Senior Superintendent of Police, A.S. Sandhu, who committed suicide, thanks to the harassment unleashed by our human rights industry. As we mourn the passing away of Mr Gill on 26 May 2017, we repro...
Whatever has been written about President Emmanuel Macron by the yellow or the respectable press has been mere trivia or total falsehood. Media lies have a purpose that goes beyond Macron’s election. Throughout Europe and North America, bankers and manufacturers, NATO, militarists and EU oligarchs, media moguls and verbal assassins, academics and journalists...
A lot has been said and speculated on about the “real” objectives of Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia. Seasoned veteran British journalist/analyst and Middle East expert Robert Fisk sees it as an attempt to create a Sunni-style NATO to curb the Iranian expansion, and his speculation is on the money, but in realistic terms, what can this visit and its “aftermath...
Donald Trump’s speech to the leaders of the Muslim world marks a radical change in US military policy. As from now, the enemy is no longer the Syrian Arab Republic, but jihadism, in other words the strategic tool of the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
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During his electoral campaign, Donald Trump had declared that he had no interest in overthrowi...
The nine-point Mahanuwara Declaration on the United Nations Day of Vesak 2017 may have ended up as an empty vacuous and vague document not worth a second look but for three distinctive commitments which have saved this document from being cast into oblivion. These are: 1. “In realizing the long felt need to have an aligned organisation among Buddhist commun...
In Riyadh, on the first stop of his tri-monotheism tour that will take him to Jerusalem and Rome (sorry, Mecca was not available), Donald Trump gave a major speech on a wide range of topics – the Middle East, jihadi violence, Iran, an "Arab NATO," and Islam. It's a mixed performance, but overall positive. First, what's wrong with the 34-minute speech: It...
By abstaining from participating in the recently concluded Belt Road Initiative (BRI) summit in Beijing, India, in a highly calculated and bold move, has made its postures abundantly clear to China. China cannot have a ‘free run” in its “Grand Design – China Dream” without addressing India’s outstanding security concerns. Of course, Xi Jinping seeks fri...
Recently, as part of Xi Jinping’s attempt to revive the legendary Silk Road, viewed as a “Marshall Plan” with Chinese characteristics, Beijing hosted the Border Roads Initiative (BRI) summit on 14-15 May 2017. Leaders from 29 countries across Asia and Eastern Europe along with representatives from 130 nations participated in the Summit to commemorate four ye...
Sri Lanka before colonialism was a society that showed religious tolerance, communal harmony and acceptance of economic migrants. Was it not King Senerath who gave refuge to the Muslims in the east when they were discriminated by the Portuguese? Was it not the Sinhala who gave refuge to the Catholics in Wahakotte when the Dutch persecuted them? Thousands of ...
Anxiety is growing in Latin America – the United States and the United Kingdom are preparing a “Spring” for them on the model of the “Arab Springs”. Of course, this time, it will not be a case of spreading war and dividing the populations along religious lines – Latino citizens are practically all Christians – but by using elements of their local identities....
“Makka ki roti aur Sarson ka sag” is a popular food item in north India, in particular, Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh where both maize and mustard are widely grown. The current concern is not about makka but sarson. Take any vegetarian dish made in much of north, east or west India and it is mustard oil in which it is cooked. Down south,...
For the past 20 years Washington has aggressively pursued the age-old imperial strategy of ‘divide and conquer’ throughout the Middle East, Southwest Asia and East Africa. Frustrated at its inability to control national policy of various independent nation-states, Washington used direct and indirect military force to destroy the central governments in the ta...
The controversy over nationalists and patriots on one side and anti-nationals and traitors on the other side is viciously raging with no end in sight. Recently, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was the epicenter of an intellectual tsunami, with eminent academics, activists, and even politicians, expressing themselves in favour of unrestrained freedom of...
The order of the seven judge bench of the Supreme Court, gagging media coverage of any comments by Justice C.S. Karnan of the Calcutta High Court is inadequate to spare the blushes of the august court which felt driven to sentence a sitting judge to six months imprisonment for contempt of the apex court, judiciary, and judicial process. May 9, 2017 will long...
“Control the oil, and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people.” – Henry Kissinger. “Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation” by F. William Engdahl is a skillfully researched book that focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the p...
After having successively elected an agent of the CIA and an employee of the emirs of the Gulf to the Presidency of the French Republic, the French have been ripped off a third time, this time by an Israeli product. They believe that they have chased away the spectre of fascism by voting for a candidate supported by NATO, the Rothschilds, all the companies o...
The current crisis situation in Jammu and Kashmir is commonly perceived as extraordinarily explosive and complex, a multi-dimensional politico-military conflict. But, it is not so. Some time ago, a newspaper published former Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s statement on 25 February 2017 highlighting: “he had a sinking feeling that Kashmir was nearly lost...
The abrupt growth of the Muslim population in EU countries has led to the growing amount of influence that Muslim migrant communities are now enjoying over the economic and political life of European countries. The percentage of Muslims in the population of European states is constantly growing, with this number jumping from around 4% back in 1990 up to more...
Communist ideas have won concessions from industry, but they have been unable to stop high finance from exploiting workers. That is the big battle today. Only revolutionary and heavily socialist countries like Iran, Cuba and China – as well as dictatorships like South Korea in the past – have been able to stop domination by international...
The holistic modernisation reforms of the Indian Security Forces, the Armed Forces and Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) is an urgent imperative to enhance their operational effectiveness. A common perception is their “elephantine” size; a whopping over 1.5 million active personnel in the Armed Forces and over 1 million in CAPF. The sum total of active pers...
Faced with its failures, unipolarists regrouped and implemented the most dangerous military strategy yet: the build-up of nuclear ‘First-Strike’ capability targeting China and Russia. Orchestrated by US State Department political appointees, Ukraine’s government was taken over by US vassals leading to the ongoing break-up of that country. Fearful of neo-fas...
US Empire building on a world-scale began during and shortly after WWII. Washington intervened directly in the Chinese civil war (providing arms to Chiang Kai Shek’s army while the Red Army battled the Japanese), backed France’s re-colonization war against the Viet Minh in Indo-China and installed Japanese imperial collaborator-puppet regimes in South Korea,...
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s visit to New Delhi from April 25 to 29, 2017 and the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) the two countries signed hogged the limelight of events during the month. Though foreign affairs analyst and unabashed Rajapakshaphile Dr Dayan Jayatilleka, given to hyperbole, called it “Ranil’s worst betrayal: Giving Trincomalee to I...
Of all international Buddhist Conferences held in Sri Lanka, the one that stands out clearly above the rest is the Conference held in 1950, particularly because it led to the formation of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB). There was a huge need then for unity of all Buddhist schools and Dr. G.P. Malalasekera’s vision ensured that disparate groups were ...
For Russians, “Aurora” is not the Goddess of Dawn; it is first of all the battleship Aurora, the legendary cruiser whose thundering salvo over the Winter Palace had started the Russian Revolution in November 1917. Recently I participated in a conference commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in the Mirror of World Left Movement, in St ...
Every day in unimaginable ways, prominent leaders from the left and the right, from bankers to Parisian intellectuals, are fabricating stories and pushing slogans that denigrate presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. They obfuscate her program, substituting the label ‘extremist’ for her pro-working class and anti-imperialist commitment. Fear and envy over the...
Most policy experts know billionaire George Soros wields mighty influence. Even everyday citizens hear his name and associate it with control and power brokering. The man behind the anti-Trump chaos, the hedge fund oligarch and strange philanthropist, Soros is the real world equivalent of Dr. Evil. But up until now the world at large has tolerated his machin...
The Centre must give a fitting response to the shocking ambush and murder of 25 CRPF jawans at Burkapal in the Bastar forests of Sukma district by Maoist killer squads on April 24, 2017. This is Chhattisgarh’s second deadly ambush this year; 12 CRPF jawans having been gunned down on March 11 in forests under Bhenji police station, also in Sukma district. Bot...
The decision last year by a majority of British voters to exit the European Union was more than a simple vote of the people. The Brexit campaign was promoted and financed by the most influential banks of the City of London and by the British Royal House. Far from the end of Britain, Brexit is far more likely to be the beginning of the end of the disastrous E...