Last week was spent obsessed with Gaza. In the end, nothing changed. A war was fought without an Israeli ground assault but with massive air and rocket attacks on both sides. Israel did not have the appetite and perhaps the power to crush Hamas. Hamas did not have the power to compel Israel to change its policies but wanted to achieve a symbolic vi
History, it is said, arrives first as tragedy, then as farce. First as Karl Marx, then as the Marx Brothers. In the case of twenty-first century America, history arrived first as George W. Bush (and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith and the Project for a New America -- a shadow government masquerading as a think t
The headline stories claim that CIA Director General David Petraeus resigned as head of the CIA because of an adulterous relation with his young biographer and that General John Allen,Supreme Commander of US troops in Afghanistan, was under investigation and his promotion to top commander of US troops in Europe was on hold, because, we are told, of
The week-long Israeli onslaught against largely defenseless Palestinians in Gaza that began on November 14 provides a basis for assessing how Western corporate media whitewash the war crimes of America’s foremost ally in the Middle East. There are three often intertwined techniques consciously applied to such news coverage — historical context, so
The Western media in chorus has described the Israeli attack on Gaza as an ad hoc IDF-led counterterrorism operation, launched on the grounds of “self defense” in response to Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel. While reports acknowledge that president Obama, in the wake of the November 6 elections, had granted a “Green Light” to Tel Aviv, the ce
The Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB), Chennai, on 17 November 2012 set aside the grant of geographical indication (GI) registration of the famous “Payyanur Pavithra Modiram” ring given in the name of a society named Payyanur Pavithra Ring Artisans and Development Society. The board meeting was chaired by Justice Prabha Sridevan and vic
It’s too soon to know whether the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will be more than a sticking plaster to be ripped off by more violence whether provoked by Israel or not, but while we wait for events to give us the answer, there is a good case for saying that under Netanyahu’s leadership the Zionist (not Jewish) state has suffered a signific
|
by
Rehmat
|
on
25 Nov 2012
|
2 Comments
|
“I don’t travel. If I did, I probably wouldn’t visit Israel. I remember how it was in 1948 when Israel was being established and all my Jewish friends were ecstatic. I was not. I said: What are we doing? We are establishing ourselves in a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea. The Muslims will never forget nor forgive. And Israel, as long
the US was elected to a second three-year term on the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC). President Bush boycotted the HRC for criticizing Israel too much, but Obama joined in 2010 to ‘improve’ it. US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice welcomed Washington’s re-election this week, saying that the HRC “has delivered real results”, cit...
We eat to nourish our body and mind yet food production is measured in terms of weight and not nutrition yield; quantity, not quality, matters. This anomaly has been thoroughly exploited by the corporations. Marketing and sales propaganda of all fertiliser and pesticide companies invariably stress on yield. Their main focus is to sell their poisons while...
The tiger will roar no more. Some said it almost gleefully. Most said it with grief. It is natural for leaders like Bal Thackeray who practice the politics of conviction and speak out their mind forthrightly to arouse strong emotions.In his death as in his life, Balasaheb (as he...
Defence and security is a serious business since the issues involved deal with human lives and can, as such, not be trifled with. A nation takes to defence and security with utmost seriousness; the slightest hint of weakness generates hysteria with a cascading...
A deep personal animosity, symptomatic of a deeper anti-Hindu bias, was reflected in some recent, very heated, television debates centered round the writings of Nobel Laureate Sir Vidia Naipaul. To recapitulate briefly, Sir Vidia was being honoured in absentia at a literary event in Mumbai when Kannada playwright Girish Karnad unexpectedly unleashe
The Arab Spring, for all its meanderings, is a harbinger of the end of the post-colonial era in the Arab world. If America and Britain are finally going to be leaving the area to its own devices with a rump military presence no bigger or larger than anywhere else in the world, it isn’t without having tried in an expensive and delusional millennial
The medically avoidable, gut-wrenchingly painful death of Savita Halappanavar in an Irish hospital on October 28 brought thousands of Irish citizens, most of them born Catholics, to the streets in heartwarming solidarity with the family of an unknown Indian. Savita was denied an...
Any reference to India’s civilisational contribution to the methods to predict and plan for the future should start from the recognition that Indic culture has kept the memory of very long periods of time, stretching back not just for centuries and millennia as is the case in other parts of the world, but indeed for billions and even trillions of y
President Barack Obama has won re-election. However, in addition to all of the constraints on him that I discussed last week, he won the election with almost half the people voting against him. His win in the Electoral College was substantial -- and that's the win that really matters -- but the popular vote determines how he governs, and he will go
In the fall of 1948, Harry Truman barnstormed the country by train, repeatedly bashing a “do-nothing Congress,” and so snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in that year’s presidential campaign. This year, neither presidential candidate focused on blasting a do-nothing Congress or, in Obama’s case, “Republican obstructionism,” demanding that the
There is a lot of excitement in the Hurriyat camp these days; its leaders are getting ready for their periodic sojourn to Pakistan which, after due deliberation with the Pakistani diplomatic set up in India, has been slated for December 15 onwards. The agenda would include a visit to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) to confer with the political lead
During the relentless campaign that preceded the 2012 US presidential elections, some of us had expected that the drone killings of Pakistanis, militants and innocents alike, would be a subject of discussion. That never took place. And, in fact, fresh drone attacks inside Pakistan’s Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) during the campaign mon
The word ‘reform’ was always a mask to conceal the truth that this Congress-led regime was going to restructure the Indian economy in the western capitalist way, with governance geared towards creating a society for the One Per Cent, and cussed indifference even contempt for the leftover Ninety Nine Per Cent. An indication of the new ide
The inability or, at the worst, unwillingness of uniformed and non-uniformed Myanmar authorities to put an end to the persecution of Muslims in the Arakan Hills and beyond poses a serious threat to a fragile and increasingly important economic region in Asia. Myanmar is the gateway for the two most-populous and powerful Asian nations, Ch
Following the Nuremberg trials, some critics claimed that much of the German’s self-incriminating testimony presented to the Court was obtained through questionable methods including horrific torture. Then Senator Joe McCarthy was one of those critics. Mainstream commentators labeled them Nazi apologistes and anti-Semites. But a recent articl
While HSBC’s Canary Wharf masters are back-peddling furiously over charges that they gave a leg up to terrorist financiers and drug traffickers as a recent US Senate report charged, new evidence emerged that its business as usual for the multinational banking giant founded by Hong Kong-based British opium merchants. Earlier this month, The In
At the end of America’s costliest and nastiest electoral battles, widely predicted by analysts to be ‘hung’ like the George Bush – Al Gore encounter in 2000, President Barack Obama made history as the second Democrat president to win a second term in office since the Second World War. By the time his Republican rival Mitt Ro
General VK Singh, former chief of army staff, has on retirement from service been involved in a number of public initiatives. He has shared a dais with social activists and some political organisations on issues of national importance. As has been the trend over the last few years, the actions of the retired general have been subject to intense med
The West’s attempts to destroy the Iranian economy through heightened sanctions - including most imports, oil exports and use of banks for trade operations - is having its affect. According to Johns Hopkins University Professor Steve Hanke, Iran is facing hyperinflation, with a monthly inflation rate of nearly 70% per month and its national c
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi has unwisely joined a body supporting Kashmir secession because she loves rubbing shoulders with international glitterati. As chairperson, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Ms. Gandhi is co-president of the Forum of Democratic Leaders in the Asia-Pacific (FDL-AP), an organization promoting democracy (sic) in this region. Other c
The energy sector in Nepal is mired in a game known in India variously as 2G, Commonwealth-G, Coal-G, Madam G, and now Mister G, ad nauseum, never ending Geez. This seventh letter of English alphabet has suddenly acquired a very ominous meaning which in Hindi and Nepali is also known as Ghotala-G [the English equivalent of which is ‘embezzlem
As Mitt Romney so scandalously was recorded as saying to a bunch of his multibillionaire supporters/bribers/campaign investors (in his attempts to take over the Oval Office), 47% of American voters will never vote for him because of their failure to pay income taxes and their so-called reliance on government programs. The GOP agenda, of course, is
Let us start with the very basics. Only minimal contemplation will be needed to understand that Devas and Devatas are expressions of human subjectivity or Consciousness that can evolve in each individual and also collectively in each culture. Why go too far? Start with the most familiar saying known to any Hindu. “Matru Devo Bhava”. Matru = Mothe
While appreciating India Against Corruption’s putting the spotlight on Reliance Industries, its face-off with the CAG and reputed role in the exit of Jaipal Reddy from the Petroleum Ministry, the author would like to point out that she had written about the judiciary’s role in facilitating Reliance’s unreasonable demands nearly tw
In 1976 this author had presented an original research paper on the effectiveness of Indian neem (Azadirachta indica) in the International Colloquium on Plant Nutrition at the University of Gent, Belgium, detailing how crushed neem seeds enhance utilization of nitrogen (a very important and crucial plant nutrient needed for all crop plants in large