What a difference a year – an eternity in geopolitics – makes. No one could see this coming; the ideological matrix of all strands of Salafi-jihadi terror – which Russia fights no holds barred, from ISIS/Daesh to the Caucasus Emirate – beating a path to the Kremlin and about to embrace Russia as a strategic ally [10 October – Ed]. The House of Saud was horri...
Over the last 16 years, numerous debates have troubled the experts in international politics in their attempts to define the objectives of US strategy. It is obviously much easier to answer the question now rather than at the beginning. And yet very few have tried, and many persist in expounding theories which have been belied by the facts. Basing his analys...
US Army Gen. Joseph Votel, head of Central Command, believes that military pressure will force the Taliban to negotiate: “That’s what the object is here is, to use the military pressure to bring them to the table and enhance the efforts, not only diplomatically but regionally, focused on bringing this to some kind of a political negotiation settlement and so...
The Supreme Court’s order of 9 October 2017, in Arjun Gopal and Others versus Union of India and Others (Writ Petition, Civil, No. 728 of 2015), banning the sale of fire crackers in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) has set the cat among the pigeons. As the order mentions “Diwali” in almost every paragraph, with a sprinkling of...
In the second week of January 2016, the Delhi Police had unearthed an international syndicate which was sending radicalised Rohingyas and Bangladeshi Muslims to West Asian countries to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, in Syria. Five jihadi operators were arrested, among whom two were Bangladesh nationals identified as Shaukat Ali and Suleiman and th...
The Rohingya are Muslims of Bengali origin who have been living for centuries in Myanmar’s Arakan region, presently named Rakhine province. They have been waging a war against Buddhists for the creation of an Islamic State by partitioning that country Burma since 1946. The war for partitioning Myanmar (then Burma) was started almost at the same time when the...
The common thread in the growth of Islamic extremism in Pakistan is its four decade official policy to harness Sunni militancy to suppress ethnic separatism and religious diversity domestically and advance its regional interests, particularly against Hindu India, Shia Iran and the perceived threat posed by Pashtun nationalism in Afghanistan. Coupled to that...
You are probably aware that you are incompletely informed about what is brewing in Myanmar, and you probably haven’t heard about the military coalition that is preparing to attack that country. And yet, as Thierry Meyssan reveals here, these current events have been in preparation by Riyadh and Washington since 2013. Don’t take sides before you read this art...
The unfolding “Great Game” in Myanmar – the Rohingya crisis – is the least understood or deliberately left out of public consideration. Perhaps it is due to ignorance among Indian analysts and media. Generally, the majority believe that the crisis relates to the plight of the Rohingya, stateless ethnic Bengali Muslim historically persecuted minority, living ...
Conflict between the government of Spain and the leadership of the Catalan Autonomy became the main international news event in the beginning of October. Nationalist parties forming the government in Barcelona declare independence. Madrid does not make concessions, and sends its police units to Catalonia. Regional authorities hold an independence referendum....
Wily clannish capo Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has announced that “Yes” won Monday’s non-binding independence referendum. Now that index fingers in indelible indigo ink are out of the way, the real battle between the KRG and Baghdad begins. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the Iraqi Supreme Court have denounc...
Last Sunday [24 September], the Kurdish regional authority defied the world and went forward with the scheduled independence referendum in Northern Iraq. With the definite result of the referendum not being official yet, there can be little doubt that an overwhelming majority of Kurds have voted ‘Yes’ to independence. Despite Kurdish leaders announcing that ...
Is GST good or bad? As a policy, one tax for one nation is obviously a good thing… so the policy is great. How it is implemented and what effect it has on various sections of people is what determines its ‘success’ or ‘failure’. In our case, the rate fixed for our products and the tiresome process of filing GST returns has completely shaken our faith in the ...
In this installment of my free newsletter series I have decided to share with you the hidden history of who was actually behind the February 2014 Ukraine crisis that forced President Viktor Yanukovic from office fleeing for his life. The consequence of the US-organized regime change, called by Stratfor founder, George Friedman “the most blatant coup d’état i...
Democracy was sold to the poor as the ultimate in good governance, but has turned into a dictatorship with no accountability, corrupt to the core, subjugating citizens to poor governance, no rule of law, essentially to a lawless society. Democracy as defined is a government of the people, by the people for the people. The only democracy we have today is a mi...
The Indian media’s, particularly visual media’s, sensationalism and ‘chest thumping’ over China’s border incursions/transgressions betrays strategic myopia. Freedom of speech and of the press is used by editors, anchors, panelists and columnists - critics, skeptics and supporters - to indulge in a cacophony of the worst order, depending on their political le...
The anti-Russian/anti-Soviet bias in the American media appears to have no limit. You would think that they would have enough self-awareness and enough journalistic integrity - just enough - to be concerned about their image. But it keeps on coming, piled higher and deeper. One of the latest cases in point is a review of a new biography of Mikhail Gorbache...
Barring perhaps tiny Sri Lanka, the British Empire amputated every non-Christian land that fell under its heel, causing wounds that time could not heal. As meticulously documented by Narendra Singh Sarila, the Partition of India was conceived by Winston Churchill, planned by Archibald Wavell, and executed by Louis Mountbatten (The Shadow of the...
Rahul Gandhi stands exposed due to his answers to questions, particularly on “Dynasty Politics” and admission of “arrogance in 2012” at the University of Berkley, California, US, besides misquoting even the number of Lok Sabha MPs – 546 instead of 545. Subsequently, at Princeton University, Rahul Gandhi gave two reasons for the rise of leaders like Modi and ...
We have assembled here to celebrate the auspicious occasion of this year’s Vijayadashami. This year is the birth centenary year of Venerable Padmabhushan His Eminence Kushok Bakula Rinpoche. This year is also the 125th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s historic Chicago speech and 150th birth anniversary of his renowned disciple Bhagini Nivedita. The Buddhi...