India, a rogue state on February 22, 2021A rogue state, as defined by the Oxford Languages, is “a state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations”. It is also defined as one that is repressive within, aggressive towards its neighbors, supports and sponsors terrorism, has WMDs and is a threat to world peace. Ironically, […]
Laundromat on the Thames on December 18, 2020In his ‘History of England’, famed economist and philosopher David Hume encapsulates the British Empire’s mindset. It reads: “The British conquerors in India directed their pursuits to one object exclusively, the acquisition of money. They considered in every transaction of war, peace or alliance what money could be drawn from the inhabitants. They pillaged not […]
Profiteers of war on November 23, 2020During his presidential campaign in 2008, Barack Obama asserted repeatedly that “the sources of Afghan instability are in Pakistan; those in turn are linked to Islamabad’s conflict with New Delhi, at the heart of which is Jammu and Kashmir”. If elected, he pledged to help resolve the Kashmir issue. In his Nobel acceptance speech, Obama […]
Profiteers of wars (Part-I) on November 12, 2020“War is a racket. It is the only one in which profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, a gangster for capitalism. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few […]
Modi’s hate speech behemoth Part II on October 17, 2020The Narendra Modi – Mark Zuckerberg symbiosis started in September 2015 when Modi was hosted at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters. Before they met, Zuckerberg changed his profile picture to “Digital India” with his face merged in the Indian flag. Modi reciprocated the same. At a subsequent town-hall meeting, a tearful Modi talked about his mother […]
Modi’s hate speech behemoth Part I on September 26, 2020Rudyard Kipling, Bard of Empire, famously said, “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. Little did he know that the twain shall meet one day as epitomized by India and the West of today”. Over the years, India has nurtured and publicized, apart from the mystical land of […]
Cash is King on July 15, 2020“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it.” (Frederic Bastiat) The “Cash is King” mantra of Najib Razak, former Malaysian prime minister, became so infamous that […]
Who is the savage? on June 29, 2020In 1922, Sir John Maffrey, head of the British Empire’s North West Frontier Province, put this nonchalant query to his superiors about civilian deaths during bombings: “What are the rules for this kind of cricket?” The equally callous response was: “International law does not apply against savage tribes who do not conform to codes of […]
Modi’s phantasmal demon on October 13, 2019“A king rules over willing subjects,” wrote influential historian and scholar, George Buchanan, “a tyrant over the unwilling.” Today, some democracies have enabled the same with mass complicity of the willing. One would have thought that India with its much-touted 2.7 trillion dollar economy and huge military force would, for once, shed off its insecurity […]
Modi’s phantasmal demon on October 12, 2019‘A king rules over willing subjects’, wrote influential historian and scholar George Buchanan, ‘a tyrant over the unwilling’. Today, some democracies have enabled the same with the mass complicity of the willing. One would have thought that India with its much-touted 2.7 trillion dollar economy and huge military force would, for once, shed off its […]