The question “why war?” has long inspired scholars to seek answers in human nature. Their findings invariably have been ambiguous and judgments inconclusive. While it is easy to make the case that humans do engage in violent behavior as part of their nature, there is no basis for arguing that they are “killers.” There is no propensity to kill fellow humans t...
President Putin has gone into hiding. Well, sort of. On September 14, he said that many people (“dozens”) in his inner circle have tested positive for the virus, and as a result he has to self-isolate. His sudden seclusion has sent waves of anguish across this huge country. His explanation was met with disbelief. Everybody around Putin is vaccinated and so...
The Pakistan army is going through a huge internal crisis, with fissures visible through the rank and file. While discontent at the lower levels is quite apparent, it is the power play within the senior leadership that is more significant. This is due to a succession battle that is raging with the second, and possibly final, term of Army Chief, General Qamar...
A bizarre war of words has erupted in recent days in the pages of financial media between billionaire hedge fund and color revolution specialist, George Soros, and the gigantic BlackRock investment group. The issue is a decision by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to open the first foreign-owned mutual fund in China presumably to attract the savings of China’s new (...
After 13 months of political vacuum, a new government was finally announced in Lebanon, led by Najib Mikati, a 65-year-old Lebanese billionaire who headed the cabinet in 2005 and also in 2011-2013. He ranks 446th in the list of the world’s wealthiest people, with at least $2.6 billion in capital. Initially, he played the role of a compromise prime minister t...
The events in Afghanistan has grabbed the world’s attention as the observers try to project not only the country’s future path, but also to determine the role main foreign actors on the world’s chessboard played in this process while seeking to answer the main question: “Who is the real winner in Afghanistan?” By all means, the answer to this question ca...
The New York Times headlines a story by David E. Sanger that purports to provide us with the ‘hidden agenda’ behind Biden’s stab-in-the-back of France. He claims Washington’s motivation was its perceived strategic imperative that Australia be endowed with nuclear-powered submarines that could sneak up the Chinese coast and do serious damage in support of Ame...
The recently concluded conference on “Dismantling Global Hindutva” (Sept 10 to 12, 2021) has garnered attention for all the wrong reasons. The event, organized by an “ad-hoc organizing committee” consisting of 19 individuals connected or affiliated to universities and one organization, went largely unnoticed in the US. Its stated purpose was to provide a ...
The 9/11 anniversary this year has brought in its wake old memories and new horrors. After two decades and trillions of dollars down the drain the world is back to square one, the difference being that, yet again, a super power stands humiliated while the extremists and terrorists are having the last laugh. Strategic analysts and think tanks across the world...
The Taliban’s record in recent weeks on making good on promises to respect human and women’s rights as well as uphold freedom of the press is mixed at best. Afghanistan’s neighbours and near-neighbours are not holding their breath even if some are willing to give the Central Asian country’s new rulers the benefit of the doubt. A litmus test of Taliban willin...
One of the most severe and visible consequences of the crisis in Afghanistan has been the influx of Afghan refugees seeking to flee the country because of the chaos resulting from Western actions in the country. Refugees don’t have many choices. Air communication with the outside world has been severed, so the main wave of migrants has been in neighboring st...
The fact that Europeans need their joint armed forces can be heard more and more often in the European Union lately. The number of such statements has increased noticeably, especially against the backdrop of the US and NATO’s failure in Afghanistan. “America is leaving Afghanistan not only defeated but humiliated,” writes the French Le Figaro. The f...
Anywhere you look around there are more Ganesha temples than Muruga temples in Tamil Nadu. This comparison comes from the premise that Muruga is considered to be a Tamil God while Ganesha is not! First we should understand this is a politician’s version and can be outwitted by a simple logic that if Muruga is a Tamil God, then Ganesh also is a Tamil God, in ...
After the complete evacuation of the US and NATO military from Afghanistan, the possibility of a return of Al-Qaeda (a terrorist group banned in Russia) is causing concern. Al Qaeda carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, and they are now receiving a safe haven in Afghanistan, as it did before the tragedy. Taliban morale is now highe...
Moscow and Washington are preparing the reorganization of the Levant that they drew up during the Geneva meeting (known as “Yalta 2”) on June 16. The aim is to draw conclusions from the terrible Western military defeat in Syria without humiliating the United States. According to this peace agreement, Syria would be placed in the Russian zone, while Lebanon w...
The ignominious US withdrawal from Afghanistan has blown a global hole in the post-1945 American Century system of elaborate world domination, a power vacuum that likely will lead to irreversible consequences. The immediate case in point is whether Biden’s Washington strategists - as he clearly makes no policy - have already managed to lose the support of it...
Captain Ahab’s obsessive hunt for Moby Dick was driven by the thirst for revenge. The great white whale had maimed Ahab – in soul as well as body. Ahab was consumed by the passion to restore his sense of self, to regain his prowess and make himself whole again, by killing his nemesis – a compulsion that his wooden leg never let weaken. America’s “war-...
Sri Lanka government had resisted enforcing a lockdown to fight the Covid-19 pandemic as advised by medical health authorities for nearly ten months. Instead, it had opted for travel restrictions. However, the government was forced to announce a 10-day nation-wide lockdown from August 20. But when the total number of cases breached the figure of four lakhs a...
The idea of Lemuria was invented due to the influence of the then prevailing mood in the scientific community. Philip Sclator, who discovered Lemuria, was doing research on animals and their habitat. Greatly influenced by Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, he was engaged in research in Madagascar Islands on the African shores of the Indian Ocean. While doing so, ...
In the 18th and 19th Centuries, Europeans were travelling all over the world, noticing unfamiliar new cultures and new places. During the same time many disciplines in Science and Archeology were getting created and new research papers were getting released. As far as History was concerned, Europeans were eager to trace their ancestors. They had learnt, from...
“It is a real tragedy that Geelani was buried in India and not in Pakistan.” This statement posted on Facebook by Indu Jalali, a Kashmiri Pandit lady living in Europe, aptly summarises the widespread sentiment at the demise, due to old age, of the Kashmiri separatist, Syed Ali Geelani, at age 91, on 1 September. Geelani was the kingpin of separatism in ...
It will be difficult, but necessary, to resist the green energy crusaders’ pressure to abandon fossil fuels precipitously. It is universally accepted that neither solar nor wind are more efficient energy sources than CO2-emitting fossil fuels. One may wonder why the crusaders are not developing concrete plans to install zero-emission nuclear power plants, wh...
Today’s pandemic-devastated world is confronted with yet another threat. It is the threat of climate change brought about by the rising amount of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. Despite statements by many “experts” that the threats are real, we do not know with any degree of certainty how big this problem will be in the future, or when we will en...
Dogu Perincek is celebrating the perceived defeat of US forces in Afghanistan. The staunchly anti-American Turkish politician doesn’t fare well in elections and has no official position in government but his sway on official thinking should not be underestimated. His response to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan suggests that it is not just Islamists and ji...
Recent attacks on Kabul’s international airport by the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate raise multiple questions as well as the spectre of paradigm shifts in the drivers and expanding geography of political violence. The attacks have called into question the Taliban’s ability to maintain security and keep a lid on the activities of multiple militant groups i...
In a Financial Times op-ed, “Investors in Xi’s China face a rude awakening” (August 30, 2021), George Soros writes that Xi’s “crackdown on private enterprise shows he does not understand the market economy. … Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has collided with economic reality. His crackdown on private enterprise has been a significant drag on the economy.” Tra...
These past weeks in Afghanistan have been what some would call a shit storm, in lack of better words. What is unfolding in front of our eyes is truly both a tragedy of great proportions and a spectacle of some sort I guess. After 20 years of occupation, Washington and its obedient dogs are not just retreating, they are fleeing in panic from Afghanistan. The ...
The caption under a photograph of a familiar public figure on a boat somewhere reads, “Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the modernization of Russia’s navy.” In my ever more cynical geopolicy brain I hear echoing, “Good God people, stop him before he manages to do his job!” I mean, just what the hell else should Russia’s president be doing in the ...
Prince Khalid bin Salman may not have planned it that way but the timing of his visit to Moscow last week [August 23 –ed.] and message to Washington resounded loud and clear. The Saudi deputy defence minister was signalling by not postponing the visit that he was trying to hedge the kingdom’s bets by signing a defence cooperation agreement with Russia as the...
The scenes from Kabul prompted ten thousand newspapers to frame Saigon evacuation images alongside those from Afghanistan. Only this time YouTube was available to show human bodies falling from US Air Force planes, as Afghans clung to landing gear to escape the Taliban. The scenes, the bitter reality of it all, brought back the memory of America’s southeast ...