The first two weeks of April this year were a time of pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by European politicians of various ranks, representing some of the continent’s leading states as well as trans-European structures. This in itself turned out to be one of the signs indicating the acceleration of the process of change that has recently bee...
Violent bloodshed erupted in Sudan on April 15 after weeks of power struggles between Sudanese Army Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who commands the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF). According to medics, the conflict between the army and the RSF has killed over 200 civilians and 45 soldiers in t...
Western regime-change efforts have intensified ahead of upcoming elections in Thailand. Opposition groups attempting to take power and remove Thailand’s powerful, independent military from Thai politics have received extensive, well-documented funding and political support from Washington, London, Brussels, and Western corporate foundations, including the mo...
You feel it, don’t you? There’s something deeply wrong with our world. And I don’t refer to the planet’s geosphere. I mean, there’s something deadly wrong with society overall, and the ways in which we interact and react. Something is coming, and many understand what it is. “We are like people under [a] sentence of death, waiting for the date to be set. We ...
The USSR collapsed in on itself, not from the war in Afghanistan (1979-89), but from the Chernobyl disaster (April 26, 1989). The Soviets suddenly realized that the state was no longer in control. The members of the Warsaw Pact, whom Leonid Brezhnev had made vassals, revolted. The churches, the Communist Youth and the gays of East Germany brought down the Be...
In the event that Burhan repeats this emerging anti-Russian narrative and promises to rubbish Sudan’s naval base deal with Moscow upon defeating the RSF, then the US can “justify” a military intervention there on the basis of “defending Sudanese democracy from a Kremlin coup”. The public would then be told that the latest conflict was sparked by Russia’s sup...
The biggest mystery of who killed Aditya Karikāla and why they killed was attempted by Kalki in his novel Ponniyin Selvan. He used the names of those mentioned in the Udayārkudi record of Rājaraja’s 2nd year and treated them as the security guard (in Tamil Ābatthudavigaḷ) of Vīra Pāndya to avenge the beheading of Vīra Pāndya by Aditya II. The novel describes...
The Chola kings called themselves alternately as Parakesarivarman and Rājakesarivarman. It is also stated in the Larger Leyden plates of Rājarāja I that the names, or rather the titles, Rājakesari and Parakesari were borne alternately by kings born in the Chola family. [i] Many inscriptions contain just the name Rājakesari or Parakesari only, and not always...
According to historians, Aditya II did not live beyond five years of his regency. This is based on the inscriptions stating “Vīra Pāndyan Thalai Konda” Parakesarivarman (one who took away the head of Vīra Pāndya). Parakesari was a title of Aditya II. Such inscriptions appear from his 2nd to 5th year. Interestingly, two more persons claimed the same title, “...
Finland’s official induction into NATO has been celebrated across the trans-Atlantic technocracy-sphere as a victory for democracy and freedom. Jens Stoltenberg gushed to his Finnish counterparts at the inaugural ceremony that: “Finland is safer and NATO is stronger with Finland as an Ally. Your forces are substantial and highly capable, your resilience is s...
Why are major governments, corporations, think tanks and the Davos WEF all promoting a Zero Carbon global agenda to eliminate use of oil, gas, coal? They know that the turn to solar and wind-based electricity is impossible. It is impossible because of the demand for raw materials from copper to cobalt to lithium to concrete and steel exceeding global supply....
Fierce fighting broke out all across Sudan this weekend between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), with each blaming the other for starting this. Seeing as how this conflict remains limited for the time being to two military factions, it can therefore be described as a “deep state” war and not a civil one like the conflict th...
The American “Straussians,” the Ukrainian “integral nationalists,” the Israeli “revisionist Zionists” and the Japanese “militarists” are calling for a generalized war. They are alone and they are not mass movements. No state has yet committed itself to this course. Germany with 100 billion euros and Poland with much less money are rearming massively. But nei...
China and India have decades-long border disputes that remain unresolved to this day, with each feeling very strongly about their respective but mutually incompatible claims. This impasse occasionally leads to tit-for-tat rhetorical escalations that have come to characterize their complex relations, but the strategic dynamics shaping the latest round thereof...
Vīra Pāndya who was beheaded by Aditya II was known to have beheaded a Chola king by which he came to hold a title “Śolan Thalai-konda Vīra Pāndyan”. The Ambasamudram inscription of Vīra Pāndya identifies him as Śolan Thalai Konda Vīra Pāndyan. Another name Cholāntaka Brahmarāya appears in the same inscription indicating his role in ending the life of a...
There was a gap of 17 years between the death of Aditya II and the action on the confiscated properties of the killers. There must be some reason for this huge gap. A parallel can be seen in Kulottuṅga’s period when a fire and loot of property at Rājamahendra Caturvedi Maṅgalam that occurred in the 2nd year of Kulottuṅga I was redeemed by him only in his 11t...
Having known the two revelations (overlapping years and kingship not as birth right), let us now pick out the right question(s) to solve the mysteries of the Ponniyin Selvan period. The questions arise from two inscriptions that offer dates related to two kings, Uttama Chola (Madhurāntaka) and Rājarāja I (Arulmozhivarman). Let us examine them one by one. Th...
The US Congress and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, have what can only be regarded as a testy relationship. Its various members have advocated and condoned his farcical prosecution, demanded his lifelong incarceration, even assassination, taking issue with his appetite for publishing unsavoury, classified details about the US imperium. He who give...
Russia showed the world that it won’t shy away from politely challenging China’s claims to territory under India’s control in the most diplomatic way possible despite its close ties with Beijing. This is relevant to remember not only because it discredits speculation that India can’t rely on Russia, but also because China is nowadays actively reasserting oth...
Historian Susan Williams grew up in Zambia. Like other scholars of her generation raised in former settler societies of southern Africa, she empathises with the continent’s people. Williams’ widely acknowledged new book, White Malice – The CIA and the Neocolonisation of Africa, adds to her track record, testifying to this engagement. Almost a forensic accoun...
The Chola kingdom of the 10th and 11th century had two kings ruling simultaneously, each having their own count of regnal years. While the senior was known as the King of kings[i] (Cakravarti) and based at the capital city of the time, the junior king was also king – but based at another city of the kingdom. This causes the overlap of the years of two kings ...
The historical fiction of Ponniyin Selvan, written by the famous author Kalki and made into a movie, differs in several ways from the original history of the characters portrayed. The true history of that period is being brought out in a short series by presenting certain questions and seeking answers for them from the inscriptions and derivations from certa...
The military conflict between Russia and Ukraine (as also Ukraine’s NATO allies) has brought some very interesting changes to the international political economy. Whereas this conflict has led Europe – working under immense pressure from the US – to stop its purchase of oil and gas from Russia, it has also allowed Russia to divert its resources, both materia...
President Xi Jinping undertook a landmark visit to the Russian Federation from March 20 to 23. It was full of events and symbolism, which will be analyzed by political scientists for a long time to come. It is now clear nonetheless that this visit signalled the beginning of a profound transformation of the entire international relations system, which would h...
Spring is finally here, and it has been a very mild winter for Europe. However, the month of March can be very unpredictable, and not only in terms of the weather. The National Endowment for Democracy, NED, CIA, is hard at work in Moldova and Georgia, and coming soon to Turkey, if it doesn’t just let it be and let nature run its course in the wake of the ea...
The United States is pushing its European Union allies to prepare for a Third World War. They have no choice but to fight it if they want to emerge victorious from the “Thucydides trap”. Unless all this commotion is just a staging to “keep” the allies on their side while many states in South America, Africa and Asia declare themselves “neutral”. At the same ...
Agastya and Vasishtha were two great sages, each with their own unique attributes and contributions to Veda Dharma; but one event combines them both in what appears a metaphorical description of a secret of Nature and also of their lives. That event pertains to the story of their combined birth in a pitcher to Mitra-Varuna. The plausible meaning of this even...
A Gulf investor with an analytical and artistic bent, Ali al-Salim, pinpointed the long-term challenges Saudi Arabia faces as it reestablishes relations with Iran. While most analysts focused on the immediate reduction of regional tensions and the possible opening for an end to the eight-year-long Saudi military intervention in Yemen as a result of a Chinese...
Over the past decade that has seen the stunning rise of China, the West – at American direction – implicitly has built its strategic thinking on the ‘Thucydides’ model of relations among states. Doing so was not the outcome of a rigorous, deliberate process. There was no great debate either in intellectual circles or among senior policy-makers. Admittedly, ...
The importance of Ukraine, in the eyes of American officials, goes far beyond the country’s intrinsic geopolitical or economic value. That was as true in 2014 as it was in 2021 – and most certainly now. The United States’ heavy investment in the campaign to pull Ukraine into the Western orbit signals what are Washington’s broader strategic goals. To put it s...