Guo Xi (c. 1020 – c. 1090) was a landscape painter and from Wenxian in the Henan Province who lived during the Northern Song dynasty. Early in his career as an artist, he painted a vast number of screens, scrolls and murals on the walls of major palaces and halls. Producing monumental landscape paintings that featured mountains, pine trees and scenery envelo...
The visit of US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan was met with bewilderment and wariness in the Middle East media. This is evidenced, in particular, by the headline comments on the subject: “Taiwan after Ukraine on the American chessboard”, “Controversial visit”, “Why provoke China?”, etc. What is the use and point for the US to taunt ...
The Taliban (an organization banned in Russia), which seized power in Afghanistan a year ago, have pledged a tough fight against drugs, saying the cultivation, transportation and distribution of opium poppies are punishable by death. However, many experts had already raised doubts as to whether the Islamists would succeed in tackling the international drug b...
SAMARKAND – The ultimate Silk Road city, set at an unrivalled Eurasian trade crossroads, is the ideal spot from which to examine where the New Silk Roads adventure is heading next. For starters, the upcoming summit of heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will take place in Samarkand in mid-September. The ancient city dazzled...
The appeal of Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha lay in its simplicity. By highlighting the tax on a universally used food ingredient, Gandhi aroused the common man throughout the country. Land-locked provinces such as Central Provinces and Berar adopted a programme of breaching other repressive laws. Forest Satyagraha in Berar started in Pusad (dist. Yavatmal) on 10 ...
Temperatures in north-western Saudi Arabia, on average, seldom, if ever, drop below eight degrees Celsius except in the 2,400-metre high Sarawat mountains, where snow falls at best occasionally. However, that hasn’t prevented Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from envisioning Saudi Arabia as competing for winter sports tourism. The kingdom would do so by incl...
Finally, at long last, it appears the European Union may come to its senses. All it took was for German elites to understand they’re about to lose billions and risk upheaval. News from the IMF that halted gas supplies to the country will cost Europe’s largest economy 1.5 percent of its GDP in 2022 scares the Olaf Scholz puppet worse than communist smart girl...
Regrettably, Iraq is going through one of the most serious political crises since the unjustified aggression of the United States, which deliberately destroyed the state mechanism of the Arab country. Nine months after the last parliamentary elections, Iraqi politicians still have not agreed on candidates for the posts of president and prime minister. Inevit...
Sometime in the future a learned academic will be writing a weighty tome with the title The Decline and Fall of the Western Empire. Perhaps the Contents Page will include, among others, twelve chapters with titles something like this: World War One. World War Two. Korea. Vietnam. Palestine. Iran. Nicaragua. Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria. Ukraine. Taiwan. Inde...
Ninth of July 2022 would long be remembered in Sri Lanka as the day the three-month long ‘Aragalaya’ peoples protest movement succeeded in forcing their elected President Gotabaya to agree to resign on July 13. However, the President agreed to resign only after protestors forcibly occupied the President’s House and secretariat and laid siege to the prime min...
President Joe Biden was not wrong when he declared that “justice has been served” with the killing of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri in a US drone strike. The problem is that’s only half of the truth; the other half is that Mr. Zawahiri was more a has-been than a power to be reckoned with on the jihadist totem pole. In death, he may have scored his most sign...
As India celebrates the 75th year of her freedom, it is time to recall events and examine narratives related to our Freedom Movement. Close on the heels of this momentous occasion comes the centenary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, or Sangh). A question that is often asked – what role did the Sangh play in our Freedom Movement? This series of articl...
Saudi Arabia’s little touted effort to overhaul its defence and national security architecture may be the United States’ best bet to rebuild relations with the kingdom in ways that imbue values and complicate the establishment of similar defence ties with China or Russia. “Through the vehicle of defence reform, the Biden administration has an opportunity to ...
It has always been about the economy. What is the use of hegemony without economic gain? It is like throwing a party and no one comes. Or, going to war for purely egoistical or ideological reasons (aka shared values). What is even worse, is going to war and winning militarily, but discovering that the costs were horrendously too high, and the net results wer...
It has now been officially admitted that the three aims of the Allied Special Operation in the Ukraine, the liberation of the Donbass, and the demilitarisation and denazification of the Ukraine, have had to be extended. This is firstly because of the resistance of the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev to the liberation of the peoples of the Ukraine and secondly becaus...
Eight years ago, Kazakh shrugged off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks suggesting he could pull a Ukraine on Kazakhstan. They did so again in January when Mr. Putin reiterated his denial of Kazakh nation and statehood while Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border. Today, Kazakhs no longer discount Mr. Putin’s words. As a result, the days are like...
The SCO and other pan-Eurasian organizations play a completely different – respectful, consensual – ball game. And that’s why they are catching the full attention of most of the Global South. The meeting of the SCO Ministerial Council in Tashkent this past Friday [July 29-Ed] involved some very serious business. That was the key preparatory reunion previous ...
One of the GODFATHER’s most dramatic episodes is the ‘Day of the Long Knives.’ Michael executes a plan to liquidate all of the Corleone family’s enemies. Everybody from Barzini and Tattaglia to Moe Green and Carlo is eliminated in orchestrated acts of ruthless violence. The Corleone family then bestrode the criminal world – in unchallenged command. There i...
It will hardly be a revelation for anyone that the United States, being historically the “stepchild” of Europe from where the mass-scale population of the New World began, has always manifested a jealous attitude towards their Alma Mater. This process has especially aggravated in the recent decades when America entered the path of severe competitive struggle...
When Russia began its special military operation in Ukraine and the West responded with sanctions and threats of completely cutting off energy supplies from Russia, little did European states realise that their threat will come back to haunt them within months. The constantly rising cost of living in Europe (and the US) and the spectre of gas shortage for th...