Japan of the Shoguns on September 1, 2019Japan, or Nippon as the natives call it, is a land of contrasts. It’s a place where the traditional blends into the modern seamlessly, where bullet trains take you to castles where the Shoguns once ruled, past shrines where Shintoism is practiced, and past temples where Buddhism is practiced. It is a place where skyscrapers […]
The sun also rises in Atlanta on August 18, 2019In the history of the United States, Atlanta features prominently as the city that was burned down to the ground by Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil War. From there Sherman began his famous (or infamous, depending which side you are on)”March to the sea,” laying waste to everything that lay on the road […]
POTUS 41: The other president Bush on August 9, 2019POTUS 41 had the distinction of seeing one of his sons being elected president of the US, and seeing another son, Jeb Bush, elected governor of Florida Bush 41 felt that the most fulfilling job he ever held was not the presidency of the United States but being head of the CIA George W Bush […]
Operation Gibraltar revisited on August 2, 2019Operation Gibraltar was carried out by the Pakistani army in August 1965. It was an audacious operation intended to defreeze the Kashmir situation by seizing the Vale of Kashmir from India. Unfortunately the operation went awry and precipitated a full-scale war between India and Pakistan in September. That war ended in a stalemate. Lives and […]
Hawaii’s endless joys on July 27, 2019The state of Hawaii, with a population of 1.4 million, consists of four major islands and two small islands. Honolulu, the capital and Hawaii’s largest city, is located on the island of Oahu. I have been going to Hawaii since 1992 and have visited all six islands. The island that I have visited the most […]
How Dick Cheney manufactured a case for attacking Iraq on July 1, 2019The war drums are beating again in Washington DC. This time the anger is directed at Iran, which is being portrayed as the embodiment of all evil. A cruel and despotic regime governs the country, we are being told, and unless it’s stopped dead in its tracks, the nefarious Ayatollahs will threaten world peace with […]
New Brunswick — a maritime province of Canada on June 28, 2019I checked into the Air Canada flight which was going to take me from San Francisco to New Brunswick. I had travelled several times to other Canadian provinces but this was going to be a maiden visit to one of the Maritime Provinces. At the San Francisco airport, the Air Canada agent looked at my […]
Travelling back in time to Virginia on June 14, 2019Colonial Williamsburg is a quaint little town in southeastern Virginia, one of many that dot the East Coast. But what makes it a must-see destination is that history was made there. It would only be a modest exaggeration to say the US achieved its independence from Great Britain at the Battle of Yorktown that was […]
The six day war, 52 years on on June 11, 2019Most armies are able to pull off a tactical surprise attack but strategic surprise is much harder to achieve. In 1967, Israel pulled off a strategic surprise against a much bigger enemy who was defeated in a week short of a day. The maxim, that surprise acts as a force multiplier, was confirmed yet again. […]
A memoir of Washington, DC on June 7, 2019I had been coming to Washington, DC on business for decades and each time the city looked the same. But this time it looked different. Many of the buildings and monuments looked like they had been plucked out of ancient Rome or Homer’s Greek. The resemblance was so striking that but for the cars on […]