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by
Hari Om
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on
31 Oct 2009
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4 Comments
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“There are moments in history when wrong decisions are taken… the effects of which are felt later.” Who said this? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Where did he make this candid comment? In Kashmir, while inaugurating the 18-kilometer-long Anantnag-Qazigund rail link on October 27. And, did he rally mean what he said? No. He meant
Shanghai is modernity in action, it is up for business, its many staggering new high-rise buildings, spear the imagination as well as the sky. It is saturated with festive almost unreal glamour, it is soaking in wealth, it is overwhelmingly proud and yet, it is humane, very humane in fact. It is habitable, it is relatively quiet, it feels safe, it
The decision over whether to send more US troops into Afghanistan may wait until the contested Afghan election is resolved, US officials said Oct. 18. The announcement comes as US President Barack Obama is approaching a decision on the war in Afghanistan. During the 2008 US presidential campaign, Obama argued that Iraq was the wrong war at the wron
This final part of the deceit story will prove for the first time that weapons containing uranium components are used in Afghanistan despite US and NATO denial. We saw this same denial in the Balkans, Kuwait and Iraq. Eventually hard evidence revealed the truth and the military backed down. Independent experts have since carried out tests in Afghan
We have heard so many times the lies associated with what weapons have or have not been used in the theatres of war. It is only when independent experts reveal the evidence that the respective authorities back down and admit to their usage. One can almost guarantee that soon after this these authorities play down how much they actually used. In the
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Hari Om
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on
28 Oct 2009
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6 Comments
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The State of Jammu & Kashmir acceded to the Indian Dominion on October 26, 1947 as per the law laid down by the Indian Independence Act, under which Pakistan also came into being as an independent and sovereign state. Although Maharaja Hari Singh alone had the authority to take a decision on the states’ political future, Prime minister Ja
Media's Hindu hatred Denigration of Hindu culture, demeaning Hindu traditional rituals, hurting religious sentiments of Hindus, ridiculing their beliefs as blind superstition, have all been perpetrated for years by a major section of the mainstream media, both print and electronic. Most maintain an anti-Hindu stance and work on a common p
At the risk of sounding churlish, one must say that with only single-largest party status in Haryana and just half-way mark for the Maharashtra coalition, the Congress is no runaway success in the recent Assembly elections. This ground reality could thus inhibit the winner-takes-all syndrome in governance. Of course, BJP is a clear loser, with a de
Even rationalists couldn’t disown MangalsutraIn the last seventy years, the Dravidian racist organizations and political parties have been trying their level best to alienate Tamils from the Hindu fold, by propagating that ‘Tamil culture’ is totally different from ‘Hindu culture’ and all that jazz. This kind of campaig
[Tamil Hindus have noted an increasingly anti-Hindu bias in the electronic media. Recently, a programme telecast by Vijay TV of ‘Star TV’ Group on 11 October, in Tamil, ridiculed the Hindu cultural practice of married women wearing Mangalsutras and insulted Hindu women. There is growing concern that this is part of a concerted socio-pol
In 2003, US diplomatist Peter Galbraith resigned at the end of a distinguished, 24-year government career. Over the years that followed, he worked as a contract-based adviser to leaders in Iraq’s Kurdish community, while also arguing passionately in public media that Iraq’s Kurds should be given maximum independence from Baghdad - inclu
Nowhere has the deficit in creative new strategic thinking been evident than in Washington policy towards the three pivot powers of the Eurasian continent - China, Russia and Iran. The recent calculated affront to Russia by Vice President Joe Biden was typical of the impotence of recent US foreign policy to regain American advantage across the stra
US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize [10 Oct.]. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prize, which was to be awarded to the person who has accomplished “the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the promotion of peace congresses.” Th
A vast section of the Eurasian landmass, stretching from Iran to Myanmar, encompassing Central and South Asia, is in a state of violent turmoil. This turmoil has been exacerbated by an eight-year war in Afghanistan, where the United States and NATO troops have been trying vainly to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in the process have deeply
Russia’s vote to endorse the Goldstone Gaza report in the United Nations Human Rights Council last Friday was an important milestone event both for Palestine and for Russia. For Palestine, this vote opened a way to try and sentence Israeli mass-murderers, and thus ushered Israel into a new era of responsibility after a long period of Wild Wes
The nuclear deal was heralded as a great leap for India, and an end to India’s nuclear apartheid, and the perfect answer to India’s growing energy needs. Yet, one year later, in a sobering article, Brahma Chellaney, noted security analyst, considers the deal to have “divided the country like no other strategic issue since In
WE had all hoped that the findings of the UN investigation team into war crimes would have delivered swift and severe justice for the people of Gaza. The US on the other hand had other ideas and once again intervened. We have over many years seen the manipulation and interference by the United States in not allowing the UN to carry out its rightful
As more NATO trucks were being torched in Peshawar last week, a Karachi student managed to fling his shoe at warmongering US journalist Clifford May during his address to the Department of International Relations on “Pakistan’s Role in Countering the Challenge of Terrorism”. In Washington, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Me
Pakistan has been a busy place over the past few weeks. The Pakistani armed forces have been conducting raids and airstrikes against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other foreign Islamist fighters in Bajaur Agency, a district inside Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), while wrapping up their preparations for a major
President Obama held a long session on Oct. 7 with administration officials, debating the options for Afghanistan in the coming days. The stated objective is to stabilize Afghanistan, and to enhance the security of the United States and its allies. However, the options discussed, as reported by the news media, amount to an absurd hoax. As of n
The Dollar needs to be devalued by Half?“A year ago,” said law professor Ross Buckley on Australia's ABC News on September 22, “nobody wanted to know the International Monetary Fund. Now it's the organiser for the international stimulus package which has been sold as a stimulus package for poor countries.” The IMF may h
When war becomes peace, When concepts and realities are turned upside down,When fiction becomes truth and truth becomes fiction. When a global military agenda is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor, When the killing of civilians is upheld as “collateral damage”, When those who resist the US-NATO led invasion of their homelan
The Islamabad office of the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) was struck by a suicide bomber just after noon local time Oct. 5. The bomber, who wore an improvised explosive device (IED) concealed under his clothing, was wearing the uniform of the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force, and reportedly made his way past perimeter se
More and more people across the world are going hungry. In the wake of the global recession, the UN says the number of hungry people have topped a billion. With world population likely to cross the 9 billion mark by 2050, the number of hungry will escalate. Growing hunger has dangerous socio-eco-political implications apart from morbid influences o
A Critique of Inane Popular RhetoricA famous judgment pronounced on 11 December 1995 by a three Judge Bench of the Supreme Court about the use of “Hindutva” as a slogan during an election campaign by Manohar Joshi and two other candidates has become a popular refrain often mouthed by Hindu leaders without much thought about its far reac
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Hari Om
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on
17 Oct 2009
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9 Comments
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Home Minister P Chidambaram has disappointed the whole nation. He has dumbfounded everyone who believes in national unity and integrity and Indian sovereignty; who abhors and hates communalism, terrorism, separatism and politics National Conference, People’s Democratic Party and Pakistani-style.The case in point is the outrageous and highly c
“If the English have enslaved the Hindoos, it is just because the Hindoos recognized and recognise coercion as the main and fundamental precept of the social order…In your case the only means of liberating your people from slavery lies in love. Love without non-resistance is a contradiction in itself” - Leo Tolstoy - Letter
Engagement with Pakistan, which the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has commended to the Indian People as “a way forward” to establish a relationship of peace, is in real terms a prescription for the second Partition of India. The composite dialogue between the two countries and the long Track Two negotiations held behind the sc
Is Iran a true threat in the nuclear sense, or is it more to the point that Iran has massive reserves of oil and gas and is the only country not under the control of the west? Is it also true that the war in Afghanistan is also connected once again to that evil word called “OIL” so that the United States and American companies can
Brussels - Oil and natural gas prices may be relatively low right now, but don’t be fooled. The New Great Game of the twenty-first century is always over energy and its taking place on an immense chessboard called Eurasia. Its squares are defined by the networks of pipelines being laid across the oil heartlands of the planet. Call it Pipeline
Two major leaks occurred this weekend over the Iran matter. In the first, The New York Times published an article reporting that staff at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear oversight group, had produced an unreleased report saying that Iran was much more advanced in its nuclear program than the IAEA had thought previously
Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley “Stan” McChrystal, Afghan war commander, whose “classified, pre-decisional” and devastating report - almost eight years and at least $220 billion later, the war is a complete disaster - was conveniently, not to say suspiciously, leaked to Bob W
Shyam Bhatia’s memorable ‘Goodbye Shehzadi,’ after former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007, revealed her confiding in 2003 that she personally delivered designs for making a nuclear bomb to North Korea in 1993, in exchange for missile technology. Her livid political heirs harangued both
President Barack Obama met on Sept. 29 with his Afghanistan-Pakistan policymakers and heard views of 17 individuals that included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones (ret.), chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, CENTCOM Chief David Petraeus, and Vice President Joe Biden. The meeting, the se
Ever since the Indian electorates’ verdict came out in May and the erroneously-defined-as- Right-wing BJP failed to defeat its rival Congress for the second consecutive time, the country is abuzz with a sense of insecurity over Congress domination and the lack of a credible opposition; there is also deep anxiety over the future of the Hindu m
Celebrating its 60th birthday this year, NATO is looking peaked and significantly worse for wear. Aggressive and ineffectual, the organization shows signs of premature senility. Despite the smiles and reassuring rhetoric at its annual summits, its internal politics have become fractious to the point of dysfunction. Perhaps like any sexagenarian in
New missile defense architecture, expanded role for NATO We are witnessing a flurry of emails and articles proclaiming victory after President Obama’s announcement that he was going to scrap George W. Bush’s plans to deploy missile defense interceptors in Poland and a Star Wars radar in the Czech Republic. There is no doubt that our pea
Americans cannot get any truth out of their government about anything, the economy included. Americans are being driven into the ground economically, with one million school children now homeless, while Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announces that the recession is over. The spin that masquerades as news is becoming more delusiona
On Saturday, Sept. 19, the Indonesian National Police announced that a DNA test has positively identified a man killed Sept. 17 as Noordin Mohammad Top. Top was killed in a raid on a safe-house in the outskirts of Solo, Central Java, that resulted in a prolonged firefight between Indonesian authorities and militants. Police said four militants were
Troops and Civilians are dying for oil – sound familiar?The powers that be tell us this is all about the 9/11 attack on the WTC, but do you believe them. If the incident at the Pentagon is anything to go by, it certainly was not a Boeing 757 that crashed into it. So if one has doubts about this and the fact that they all lied to us over Iraq,
A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. MERS is an ac
Look Who Created the Taliban: Saudi Arabia and the BritsA common refrain in Washington in some quarters is that if the United States begins withdrawing troops now, Afghanistan will be taken over by the Taliban. The Taliban will, once again, bring in al-Qaeda, posing a threat to Americans residing thousands of miles away. Former US Secretary of Stat
During the 2008 US presidential campaign, now-US Vice President Joe Biden said that like all US presidents, Barack Obama would face a foreign policy test early in his presidency if elected. That test is now here. His test comprises two apparently distinct challenges, one in Afghanistan and one in Iran. While different problems, they have three elem
History is being written every day but there is little doubt that the years from 2008 to 2010 will be remembered in the future as the period during which the global system transitioned from almost unchallenged unipolar western dominance to a much more complex and uncharted chaotic state.The after-effects of the financial meltdown in the USA brought
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Hari Om
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on
08 Oct 2009
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1 Comment
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People’s Democratic Party leaders, including Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and his daughter Mehbooba Mufti, have unleashed a no-holds-barred propaganda blitz to enlist the people’s support in favour of their self-rule doctrine. They are seeking to convince everyone that self-rule doctrine not only has the potential of defusing tensions between
Secular problem, Communal solutions!There are numerous instances where the Sachar Committee has been overly magnanimous in recommending state action for Muslims. We shall examine some clauses with a bearing on Muslim education and employment since the proposed Equal Opportunities Commission intends to simultaneously promote equal opportunities in e
Continuing DMK’s abysmal record against Terrorism after Coimbatore blastsMay 2006: Half a dozen cadres of Al Umma suddenly released from Palayamkottai prison within days of DMK government assuming charge. July 22, 2006: Five MNP (Manitha Neethi Pasarai) cadres arrested in Coimbatore on charges of plotting serial bomb blasts s
History of Coimbatore Blasts in Chronological order Events during DMK regime (1996 to 2001)January 31, 1998: State Intelligence informed government of a possible terror attack in the state. February 12, 1998: State Intelligence confirmed previous reports of possible terror attack, especially during BJP leader Advani’s election campaign i
Implications of Sachar CommitteeThe Sachar Committee identified the Muslim community as socially, educationally and economically laggard with respect to other Socio-Religious Categories (SRCs) like Hindu General and Hindu OBC. It discovered Muslim social deprivation to be rampant. But the Sachar Committee could not come to a conclusion regarding th
In 2005, after nearly six decades of freedom, the ruling United Progressive Alliance regime suddenly instituted the high powered Sachar Committee. Headed by retired Justice Rajinder Sachar, it was reminiscent of the colonial-era Hunter and Pirpur Committees that attempted to prove the backwardness of the Muslim community, and to attribute this alle
‘Compassionate’ Karunanidhi The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s concern for ‘humanity’, ‘humaneness’ and ‘human rights’ is beyond compare, and no contemporary leader can match him in this regard. Observers of Tamil Nadu politics would never forget the humane touch with which he dealt with sandalwood
- The land stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south, the land created by the gods, is known as Hindustan- The land which is north to the Hind Mahasagar and south to the mighty, magnificent Himalayas is Bharat, sons and daughters of this ancient land are called BharatiIn our contemporary era, possibly the
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by
Hari Om
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on
03 Oct 2009
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5 Comments
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“Some Azadi” for J & KIt was on May 2 this year that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told media persons that he and former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had virtually reached an agreement over Kashmir – a non-territorial solution, but they couldn’t give it practical shape because certain domestic developments in Pak
The move by the UNHRC to treat caste-based discrimination as a human rights violation is an irresponsible act of subverting Indian democratic and cultural institutions. The UNHRC’s obsession to equate caste as a ‘racist’ institution smacks of Christian and Leftist influence, and attempts to undermine India’s Hindu heritage.
Self respect marriages – only for cadresE.V. Ramasamy was of the view that marriages arranged by parents without the consent of their sons and daughters and with huge age difference between the bride and groom, lacked self-respect. He conveyed this view many times through his speeches and writings. As the founder of the self-respect movement
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by
Roushan
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on
01 Oct 2009
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0 Comment
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A deceitful self-respect marriageSharmila is an MBA working as an Assistant Manager in Karur Vysya Bank, and Samuel is an IPS officer serving in Indian Reserve Police Force as Commandant of the 13th Battalion in Jammu. Sharmila belongs to the Hindu Yadav community and Samuel belongs to the Christian Yadav community; both hail from Ramanathapuram Di
A deceitful self-respect marriageSharmila is an MBA working as an Assistant Manager in Karur Vysya Bank, and Samuel is an IPS officer serving in Indian Reserve Police Force as Commandant of the 13th Battalion in Jammu. Sharmila belongs to the Hindu Yadav community and Samuel belongs to the Christian Yadav community; both hail from Ramanathapuram Di
The United States announced late Sept. 17 that it would abandon a plan for placing ballistic missile defense (BMD) installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Instead of the planned system, which was intended to defend primarily against a potential crude intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threat from Iran against the United States, the a