S P Seth

Barack Obama’s re-election as the US President reinforces the historic nature of his election first time around in 2008. He is the first Afro-Asian to be elected and re-elected the country’s president. Despite history being made in America, one cannot say that it marks the country’s progression into a post-racial era. This is because many […]

When Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, recently visited Athens, it is as well that she did not see the Greek protestors carrying posters depicting her as Hitler with his trademark half moustache. She was obviously shielded from any exposure to what has now become a regular feature in Greece, with its citizens protesting against more […]

Looking at the US political landscape, it is a scary country these days. The leading Republican aspirant, Donald Trump, is more like a schoolyard bully who is threatening to bring down the whole house. And in his case, his schoolyard is the world at large. He is threatening to take on the Chinese, be tough […]

China is set to have a new leadership team for the next 10 years, which will formally be announced at the 18th Party Congress starting early next month. The next general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), who will also be the country’s president, has already been selected in behind-the-scenes party conclaves as […]

Even as the presidential debates hog the limelight to the real contest next month, the surreal world of American politics is a bewildering exercise. Take for example the claim of the American right and its corporate world that President Barack Obama is a dangerous socialist bent upon starting a class war in the country. In […]

The great worry about the Syrian uprising early on was that it might develop into a brutal civil war, which has already happened. The death toll is estimated around 30,000 and rising. The scenes of wanton destruction of entire suburbs and towns, principally by aerial attacks from an increasingly desperate Bashar al-Assad regime, are heart […]

When you are pitted against a superpower like the United States, as Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks organisation are, your odds of escaping that net are pretty low. Assange’s supposed crime is that by allowing WikiLeaks to release a multitude of US diplomatic cables, as well as the sordid crimes of its military in the […]

Whether or not the ceasefire to stop the Israeli bombing of Gaza, and the retaliatory rockets on Israel, will hold is anybody’s guess. If the past is any guide, the prospects of any durable truce are not too bright. At the same time, all the rhetoric about terrorist rockets falling and Israel simply defending itself […]

Will he or will he not bomb Iran? The reference here is to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is on the warpath. He wants to bomb Iran if the US would not do anything to prevent it from developing an atomic bomb. How serious he is about going it alone is not clear but […]

The recent political conventions of the two US political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, formally nominating their presidential contenders, were designed to directly appeal to the American people through the electronic media, which is now the nerve centre of political campaigning. Despite all the razzmatazz of the conventions, the contest remains tight. By choosing […]