Excerpt from Introduction to: The Global Economic Crisis. The Great Depression of the XXI Century We are at the crossroads of the most serious economic crisis in world history. The economic crisis has by no means reached its climax, as some economists have predicted. The crisis is deepening, with the risk of seriously disruptin
Since 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - with the support of the United States, Israel and European allies UK, France and Germany - has been demanding that Iran explain a set of purported internal documents portraying a covert Iranian military program of research and development of nuclear weapons. The “laptop documents,
(From ‘The Winter Soldier Hearings’ [3/15/08]) Once in awhile, you come across something powerful when you least expect it. That was true for me when last year I stumbled across some powerful testimony about the current war from Iraq War veteran Mike Prysner. Prysner is justifiably considered a true hero to those courageous few who
Since the advent of European colonialists two hundred years ago to other continents in search of wealth, dramatic changes in the moral Zeitgeist have occurred during this period, designed to exploit man and nature. The elimination of the Red Indians and Australian aborigines to the present-day carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan has been justified in t
The historic victory of NDA in the recent state election has changed the political landscape dramatically. The liberal media was adamant about its preconceived notion that the widely expected NDA victory would rest solely on the charisma of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar; indeed the conventional wisdom in these circles was that the Bharatiya Janata Pa
Indian Maoist militants, known as Naxalites, have been meeting with members of the outlawed Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), according to the director-general of police for India’s Chhattisgarh state. Based on information from a police source, state police chief Vishwa Ranjan said Nov. 11 that two LeT operatives attended a Naxa
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Hari Om
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25 Nov 2010
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Much has been written on the so-called Kashmir problem and its solution during the past two decades, yet we are where we were when violence erupted in the Kashmir Valley in the late 1980s. Rather, the situation in the Valley has worsened with each passing day, with both the separatists and the ruling National Conference virtually working in tandem
If you go beyond the pomp that ensued, and the size of the contingent that tagged along with America’s First Couple, President Barack Obama’s trip to India will go down as yet another high-level trip that produced little. The two obvious reasons were: that President Obama was badly mauled in the midterm elections that preceded his visit
Indian Army Chief Vijay Kumar Singh’s four-day (Nov.10-13) visit to Tajikistan took place at a critical juncture for both Tajikistan and Afghanistan. A stronger Indian presence in Tajikistan is not only the requirement of the day, but is a good thing for the region. It is good for a number of reasons. To begin with, the war waged in
New Delhi’s satisfaction that US President Barack Obama’s recent visit underlined its status as a rising Asian power has obscured the larger truth that the emerging multipolar world negates Pakistan’s role as a Janus-faced entity watching its east and west flanks on behalf of its Anglo-American patrons. Islamabad must realize it i
Ten years of rule by the Bush and Obama regimes have seen the collapse of the rule of law in the United States. Is the American media covering this ominous and extraordinary story? No the American media is preoccupied with the rule of law in Burma (Myanmar). The military regime that rules Burma just released from house arrest the pro
As Prospects Dim in Iraq, the Pentagon Digs in Deeper Around the Middle East The construction projects are sprouting like mushrooms: walled complexes, high-strength weapons vaults, and underground bunkers with command and control capacities - and they’re being planned and funded by a military force intent on embedding itself ever more
The Barkha-Vir-Nira tapes have created a storm all over the country. The nation, already reeling under the spectrum scam, wherein an ex-minister is being openly accused of massive misappropriation of the public exchequer, received a far greater jolt with these tapes, wherein it was revealed that Barkha Dutt, the renowned and widely respected st
The mythical United States of America so highly lauded exists nowhere. It is a Shangri-la. The Preamble of the Constitution makes perfectly clear what kind of nation the United States was meant to be. What exists today fulfills none of those goals. Some have argued that the nation was a fraud from day one. Whether accurate or not, what is clear is
The G20 summit of leading economies held in Seoul, South Korea concluded Friday without any agreement on policies to bridge differences over global currency and trade issues that have grown increasingly bitter in recent weeks. President Barack Obama failed to obtain a consensus to demand that China allow its currency, the renminbi (also
Tajikistan’s military continues to conduct security sweeps in the Rasht Valley in the eastern part of the country to catch roughly two dozen high-profile Islamist militants who escaped from a Dushanbe prison in August. The chairman of Tajikistan’s State National Security Committee announced Nov. 9 that these special operations have been
Words of praise and assurances for India; guns and dollars for Pakistan. That has been the time-tested policy followed by successive American presidents, including Barack Obama. India is a huge market for American goods, services and capital. Pakistan is a strategic ally always willing to prostitute its location and resources, including Army, to do
Activists in more than 30 cities, organized by Interfaith Workers Justice and backed by labor groups, are staging a National Day of Action Against Wage Theft on November 18. “As the crisis for working families in the economy has deepened, so too has the crisis of wage theft,” says Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) Executive Director
Bangladesh’s Enemy Property or Vested Property Act is a black law, instrumental only in the persecution of the minority community. The law was enacted originally by the Pakistani military regime in 1965, but has been amended by successive post-independent governments of Bangladesh. Its evil effects are oppressive to religious minorities, espe
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16 Nov 2010
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On November 9, two interlocutors on Jammu & Kashmir, M.M. Ansari and Radha Kumar, visited Leh in Ladakh to ascertain the views of the people there on what could help restore peace in Kashmir and resolve the issues facing the far-off Ladakhis. Dileep Padgaonkar did not accompany them because of other pre-occupations. Reports suggest he is not h
Blocked from major new domestic initiatives by a Republican victory in the midterm elections, President Barack Obama promptly lit out for Asia, a far more promising arena. That continent, after all, is rising, and Obama is eager to grasp the golden ring of Asian success. Beyond being a goodwill ambassador for ten days, Obama is
A delegation of politicians and community activists gathered on August 7 in La Leonesa, a small farm town in Argentina, to hear Dr. Andres Carrasco speak about a study linking a popular herbicide to birth defects in Argentina’s agricultural areas. But the presentation never happened. A mob of about 100 people attacked the delegation before th
Barack Obama was used. Of course, he knew he was being used when he made the deal. But what he didn’t know was how quickly he would be used up. Now he has to face two years of humiliation knowing that he betrayed the people and the country he claimed to champion - and knowing that everyone else knows it as well - but also knowing that he̵
Introduction The November 2, 2010 electoral debacle of the Democratic Party in the US cannot be solely ascribed to the failed policies of President Obama, the Congressional leadership or their senior economic advisers. Nor is the demise of what passes for the American “center-left” confined to the US – it is a world-wide pat
Americans out of work, out of income, out of homes, out of hope... . In his historical novel, The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa writes that things have to change in order to remain the same. That is what happened in the US congressional elections on November 2. Jobs offshoring, which began on a large scale with the collapse of the
Some of America’s wars are condemned outright, while others are heralded as “humanitarian interventions”. A significant segment of the US antiwar movement condemns the war but endorses the campaign against international terrorism, which constitutes the backbone of US military doctrine. The “Just War” theory h
By understanding that money is simply credit, we unleash it as a powerful tool for our communities The reason our financial system has routinely gotten into trouble, with periodic waves of depression like the one we’re battling now, may be due to a flawed perception not just of the roles of banking and credit but of the nature of mon
The nearly 400,000 documents on the Iraq War released by Wikileaks last Friday has stirred an unusual flurry of attention to the persistent brutalizing of civilians during the war, a topic forsaken by the major news media when the conflict was raging. But the English-language newspapers provided with the documents in advance - the New York Times an
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kashmir would have inevitably featured in the subterranean subtext of discussions between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Monday. Hence our gratitude that American voters have rendered his a lame duck Presidency just prior to his arrival. New Delhi has little reason to pander to
The 2010 U.S. midterm elections were held, and the results were as expected: The Republicans took the House but did not take the Senate. The Democrats have such a small margin in the Senate, however, that they cannot impose cloture, which means the Republicans can block Obama administration initiatives in both houses of Congress. At the same time,
At the time of his arrival in Mumbai on Nov. 6, India was hosting an American President who had just suffered a massive electoral reversal at the Nov. 2 midterm elections. The electoral results were no surprise to most, since, during his two years in the White House, Obama’s inability or what many would call his unwillingness to respond to th
With five months of vicious violence by rent-a-teenage-stone-pelters in Srinagar Valley and loads of venom-spewing ‘azadi’ activists working overtime to delegitimise the Indian Nation in the State of Jammu & Kashmir serving as a grim prelude to the visit of the American President, New Delhi must be keen to probe the mind of
Human Trafficking is a global industry that transcends borders, regions, and cultures. Within the Western Hemisphere trafficking is an important issue that arguably helps to shape relations between Latin American and the United States. In June 2010, the State Department Report on Trafficking in Persons (TIP) included, for the first time in its ten
The Hindu struggle to recover the Sri Rama Janmabhumi is still some battles and skirmishes away, as all parties plan to approach the Supreme Court to rectify - to the satisfaction of each contending litigant - the fractured verdict delivered by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Sept. 30, 2010. Hence it is dicey to engage in political
The Doha Round Negotiations under the aegis of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is underway for the past decade or so since 2001. The Negotiations for the Uruguay Round which preceded the Doha Round were carried on for eight years between 1986 and 1994. The Doha Round is supposed to carry the agenda of trade liberalization further. But t
“Wal-Mart is crucial for America and India is crucial for Wal-Mart” – said the head of a consulting firm. And why not? American President Barack Obama is expected to raise the contentious issue of allowing foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail (FDI) during his visit later this week. As a prelude, Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke h
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03 Nov 2010
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Union Home Minister P Chidambaram will, it appears, never learn any lesson from his past mistakes. This became clear when on Sunday when he visited Kashmir and assured the people of the Valley (read Muslims) that “the promises made to them by New Delhi would be fulfilled and the dialogue process would be resumed to pave way for (political) re
We are a week away from the 2010 U.S. midterm elections [today – Ed.]. The outcome is already locked in. Whether the Republicans take the House or the Senate is close to immaterial. It is almost certain that the dynamics of American domestic politics will change. The Democrats will lose their ability to impose cloture in the Senate and thereb
The United States conducts monetary policy the same way it conducts foreign policy; unilaterally. When Fed chairman Ben Bernanke signaled last week that he was planning to restart his bond purchasing program (Quantitative Easing) he didn’t consult with allies at the IMF, the G-20 or the WTO. He simply issued his edict, and that was that. Th
The new buzz word in the world of international finance is currency wars. The rhetoric about cooperation to boost global economic growth has been replaced by a combative tone. Countries blame one another for distorting global demand by printing money, intervening in the currency markets or restricting capital flows. Central banks in India, Japan, S