The drums of war are beating again. The Obama administration will reportedlylaunch a military strike to punish Syria’s Assad government for its alleged useof chemical weapons. A military attack would invariably kill civilians for theostensible purpose of showing the Syrian government that killing civilians iswrong. “What we are talking about here i
And here we go again. In Syria, things weregetting desperate for Washington. It needed a major made-for-TV,cross-the-red-line incident involving chemical weapons. Unsurprisingly, by hookor by crook – probably crook (1) – it got it. The BBC, British ForeignSecretary William Hague and a multitude of other media outlets and politiciansnow clamour, or
Tehran: The Bandar-Zionistlobby collaboration is currently the cocktail party talk of many in Washington,and given the three decades of mutual cooperation which started during PrinceBandar’s long tenure as Saudi ambassador in Washington, it is not in reality acase of strange bedfellows. Basedin Washington, but with a palace out west and up nor
|
by
Hari Om
|
on
30 Aug 2013
|
0 Comment
|
The brazenfalsehood which National Conference (NC) working president and Jammu &Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has been flaunting since the August 9 communalassault on the minority community in Kishtwar is that his party, alongwith the Congress, doesn’t politically gain from such a situation and it is theBJP which makes political ga
Islam and the Churchhave been pursuing world conquest and domination through control of territoryand people while Judaism has pursued the goal of dominating world affairs(directly and indirectly) by controlling all world capital. All three religionsare pursuing a historically mandated predatory global agenda, but this timeround the quest to conquer
The smoke is alreadyclearing in the wake of Egypt’s latest coup—the whodunnit and why. All tracesof the post-2011 attempts to reform and clean up the corruption of the previous40 years are systematically being erased. All appointees under Morsi are beingreplaced by military officials and old-guard Mubarakites. A state of emergencyand trials by mili
Egypt may be poised for fresh turmoil after the army-controlled Supreme Court ruled on August 19 that ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak was not guilty of misusing State funds to finance construction of his presidential palaces and ordered his release in another corruption case, even as the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme guide Mohamed Badie was arrested on August...
The Iraq captivity keeps on huntingme from time to time especially when I was supposed to be handed over to ‘ChemicalAli’ (Ali Hasan Almajid Altikriti) to be executed because I was embedded withthe US forces. We managed to escape and the tribe leader who helped us escapealso runaway from his home with his children, fearing retaliation. Even t
Overview:The Indian armed forces were guardians of British colonialrule before independence. They have now distinguished themselves as thedefenders of independent India by shedding their blood on more than oneoccasion. This has not been an easy process. It meant moving away from theCommander-in-Chief system of the British to Chiefs of Staff for eac
Representativedemocracies and autocratic dictatorships respond to profound internalcrises in very distinctive ways: the former attempts to reasonwith citizens, explaining the causes, consequences and alternatives;dictatorships attempt to terrorize, intimidate and distract thepublic by evoking bogus external threats, to perpetuate and justifyr
Thepartition of India was the greatest betrayal of the Indian people by theBritish and the Muslim League. The British had ruled India for more than acentury and when they decided to quit after the Second World War, out of theirown compulsions, they divided India in collusion with the Muslim League. TheKashmir dispute is a legacy of the partit
|
by
Hari Om
|
on
22 Aug 2013
|
4 Comments
|
The next six monthsare very crucial for the unity and territorial integrity of India. Anything canhappen anytime. The manner in which the Congress and the UPA Government havebehaved in the aftermath of the August 6 well-planned and meticulously executedbarbarous attack by Pakistan Army’s Border Action Team (BAT) on our forwardpost in Poonch sector
Modern science has come to the conclusion that all isone energy. Long ago, ancient wisdom came to the conclusion that all is oneawareness/ consciousness, i.e. the one energy of science ‘knows itself’. It isnot inert, not dead. So far, science either does not know about the claim ofthe Indian rishis or fights shy to investigate it. Suppose ther
Maj Gen Harkirat Singh, commander of the Indian PeaceKeeping Force (IPKF), claims he was ordered, not once, but twice, to eliminatePrabhakaran when he arrived to meet the Indian Generals in Palaly in September1987. What is poignant about this revelation is that it was only on June 3, 1987that India violated Sri Lanka’s territory by dropping parippu
In1948, when the United Nations passed the Covenant ensuring the right to foodvis-à-vis the right to a proper livelihood, to which India became a signatory,it did not envisage that the whole issue would be caught up in such animbroglio – political and economic – as the one we are witnessing today. Theoriginal covenant in Article 25 ensures th
|
by
Senthil
|
on
17 Aug 2013
|
11 Comments
|
The Congress Party’s announcementof a new State of Telengana is a turning point in Indian history; it has shakenour fundamental geo-political perspective. The current demarcation of statesis purely colonial. The British first began their trade in Bombay, Madrasand Calcutta, and as they started colonizing the country, they createdprovinces
The general belief is that theWestern world is ahead on women’s issues because most Western women, orWesternized women, do not wear veils, do not wear clothes strictly for modesty,have access to education and full employment and are not forbidden to go out,or live an independent adult life, free from male permission, supervision,domination&nbs
The secret of the Persian carpet isdeeply rooted in the history of making it. In fact when you like the carpet,you are ready to pay any price and they say in Iran the price is determined byyour liking. So is the politics of Iran. Every thread has different colour wovenby the hands of masters, and each knot has its reason to be there. So is theelect
Eachtime an election takes place in Pakistan or a new leader comes to power in thatcountry, and each time a few weeks pass without a major incident in Jammu andKashmir, the professional peaceniks start clamouring for a ‘solution’ to theproblem of the State, beginning with removal or mitigation of the Armed ForcesSpecial Powers Act (AFSPA). It takes
Health care is a basic human right that every citizenmust be offered in a civilised society. Can commoditisation of health care bethe answer to the failure of a state system? Was the state system a failure? Shouldhealthcare be determined by the amount of money you have? Is this moral? Is thesystem efficient? Should expensive drugs and investigation
How does a civilisation born in the deep meditative silences of Himalayan caves and verdant forests, which touched the peaks of material abundance in the valleys of silt-laden rivers, shrug aside a sacred legacy like some youthful indiscretion? The shameless commitment of Uttarakhand’s political leadership to the builder lobby, its determination to rescue th...
At the time of writing,Tunisia’s Prime Minister Ali Larayedh, representing the democratically electedIslamist party Ennahda, has managed to stave off the raucous public demand forthe government’s ouster, but it is becoming increasingly evident that thesituation is extremely fluid and the present teetering-on-the edge governmentcould be swept away a
Today marks the first anniversary of the Muslim protests againstthe riots in Assam and Myanmar, protests that turned very violent! The riots werebetween Bodos and illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Assam, and Rohingya Muslimsand Buddhists in Myanmar. But the protests were in faraway Mumbai, whereinnocent policemen, journalists on duty, and bystander
Already the early enthusiasm for Egypt’s 3 Julycoup is waning, as EU leaders demand President Morsi’s release and US PresidentObama prevaricates. Senator John McCain, who soon after the coup called for anend to US military funding as stipulated by law, arrived in Cairo Monday [August5] to mediate. As a kind of cruel joke, the new ‘president’ Adly M
The July3 removal of Egyptian President Dr. Mohamed Morsi, by a combination offorces that included public opposition by a large section of the Egyptian peopleand the Egyptian military, has brought into focus the historical role of theMuslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, or MB). Morsi, a leading member of theMB, was the chairman of the Freedom a
|
by
Hari Om
|
on
09 Aug 2013
|
23 Comments
|
A closescrutiny of the proceedings of the Indian Constituent Assembly reveals that theissues concerning Jammu and Kashmir were discussed twice – first on May 27,1949 and finally on October 17, 1949, when Article 306-A (Article 370) wasadopted. It also shows that the focus on this State on May 27 was far moresharp and revealing than on October 17, d
Majorshifts underway in the Chinese economy that Stratfor has forecast and discussedfor years have now drawn the attention of the mainstream media. Many have askedwhen China would find itself in an economic crisis, to which we have answeredthat China has been there for awhile -- something not widely recognized outsideChina, and particularly not in
When I interviewed Palestinian leader,late Yasser Arafat, in 1997, it was at a very odd time, 1:30 am, at RashtrapatiBhawan, during his visit to India. I asked him, ‘Mr. Arafat, what do you expectfrom Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?’ Arafat kept silent and lookedat me for a while; I could see the anger in his eyes. I repeated the questio
ThisTuesday, August 6, 2013, is the 68th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima,the whole truth of which has been heavily censored and mythologized ever sincewar-weary Americans celebrated V-J Day 10 days later. Thepitiful history lessons that were taught by my uninspired/bored historyteachers (which seemed to be mostly jocks) came from patr
In The Rebel, Albert Camus tells us that “TheSaint-Justian tragedy is to have, from lofty ideals, and systematic reasons,made common cause with Marat” [1]. Jean-Paul Marat is the hystericalradical journalist of the Club des Cordeliers, the populist movement at theheart of the French Revolution. The historian Jules Michelet writes about howMarat car
|
by
Hari Om
|
on
04 Aug 2013
|
65 Comments
|
It is a well known factthat the nominated Governor-General of India, Louis Mountbatten, and the firstPrime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, never wanted the PrincelyState of Jammu and Kashmir to become part of the Indian Dominion. Hence, I willnot focus on this aspect of the anti-India role played by Mountbatten andNehru. Suffice to
When Newt Gingrich, once a powerful member ofthe US Congress and a presidential candidate, called Americans angry at theGeorge Zimmerman trial verdict of “not guilty” a lynch mob, one felt one was witnessingthe decline of a civilization. The very leaders who claim to be the great voiceof Democracy in the Middle East, with its dictators and tyr
On July 15, MushtaqYusufzai, an NBC news producer, reported from Peshawar that leaders of theTehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), widely known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimto have sent “hundreds of fighters” to Syria in support of various rebel groupsand outsider Sunni jihadis who are fighting to unseat the Syrian regime ofBashar al-Assad. These
Duringthe last 65 years of the Indian freedom, there is nothing that has not gonewrong in the way India has dealt with Pakistan and the Muslims of Jammu andKashmir. This is the gut feeling a reader gets after going through AG Noorani’stwo-volume The Kashmir Dispute 1947-2012. Noorani,a senior advocate of the Supreme Court and a constitutional