2010

I write these lines after a fortnight has passed since that shocking incident took place in a suburb of the city of Calcutta. Three women and their driver returning from duty assigned by the government’s Health Department were detained by a gang of ruffians, their belongings looted, their van set on fire and they were beaten and the women criminally assaulted, in which one of them died alongwith the driver and two others are still hospitalised.
This ghastly crime was committed in a (…)

BOOK REVIEW
World Order: Vision and Reality by Hans Kochler, edited by David Armstrong; International Progress Organisation, Vienna; Indian print published by Manak Publications, Delhi; pages 530, price: Rs 2000.
The book under review offers a serious, indeed searching, critique of the current world order shaped by the sole superpower and for this reason alone is bold and scholarly response to unipolar political order. The range and horizon of Prof Kochler are truly amazing. The book (…)

Call from Srinagar (Garhwal) Seminar
The following is a statement issued by participants at a seminar “Social and Environmental Impacts of Hydro Power Projects on Alaknanda and Mandakini Rivers”, HNB Garhwal (Central) University, Srinagar
(Garhwal), Uttarakhand, April 24-25, 2010.
We, the undersigned, who gathered in Srinagar (Uttarakhand) from different parts of India on April 24 and 25, 2010, join together with the people of Uttarakhand to assert with all the force at our (…)

As the crow flies, just over a kilometre separates the White House from Foggy Bottom, the home of the United States Department of State, but the travel distance is longer. At any rate, the drive President Barack Obama took last Wednesday (June 2) from the heart of Washington to the border with Virginia was a rare one.
Obama broke protocol by attending a reception hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in honour of her visiting Indian counter-part, S. M. Krishna, who co-chaired (…)

One basic aspect of the international approach to Afghanistan is the tendency to shape strategy, make decisions and operate on the ground in a way that the Afghans perceive as disrespectful and sometimes arrogant. What the Americans did in Vietnam they are doing almost the same in Afghanistan without regard to the self-respect, pride and dignity as well as culture of the Afghan people, and the counterproductive nature of the consequences of such behaviour does not bear elaboration. In fact (…)

The TV channels continue to invite me to debates on death penalty. The corporate media refuses to understand that the fight for Afzal has nothing to do with the debate on death penalty. That is a separate debate. In the case of Mohammad Afzal Guru, the man convicted of being a part of the conspiracy to attack the Indian Parliament in December of 2001, the central question is whether an Indian citizen can be hung without a fair trial.
The arguments for and against the death penalty to (…)

The gruesome act of sabotage leading to the derailment of the Howrah-Kurla Jnaneshwari Express that resulted in the death of around 150 persons while injuring about 200 near West Bengal’s Jhargram last Saturday, May 29, 2010, the UPA Government in its second tenure under the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh dispensation releasing a 68-page Report to the People, 2009-10, outlining its record over the past one year and highlighting the obvious success stories of UPA-II, and the startling outcome of (…)

Israeli attacks on the Freedom Flotilla ships in the morning of May 31 killing over 19 and injuring over 30 peace and humanitarian aid activists in the open seas (international waters, not Israeli zone) are brutal exposition of criminal acts under international law. Israeli helicopters and military ships carried out shooting over the unarmed persons without any warning simply for the reason that the ships were carrying humanitarian aid materials to the besieged Palestinians in Gaza suffering (…)

An economic textbook talks of the pheno-menon of the ‘importance of the unimportant’. The phenomenon is visible in coalition politics as well when small parties claim and receive importance disproportionate to their numbers in the elected bodies.
Britain traditionally has been a two-party democracy in which in the election outcome one party gains absolute majority and forms the government. There is no ambiguity or uncertainty. But the May 6 election results brought about a different (…)

[This article appeared in tomdispatch.com from where it is being reproduced with the permission of Tom Engelhardt, the founder and editor of tomdispatch.com, and due acknowledgement.]
Irrespective of their politics, flawed leaders share a common trait. They generally remain remarkably oblivious to the harm they do to the nation they lead. George W. Bush is a salient recent example, as is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. When it comes to foreign policy, we are now witnessing a (…)