The bonhomie displayed by the civilised,urbane, sophisticated and yes, diplomatic Europeans seem to have led the American media to pro offer the unwarranted conclusion that the "bridge " with Europe has been built, and the differences over the war and aggression in Iraq are settled. Norhing could be further than the truth. The fact the Bush was a state guest in the Eropean capitals meant that no major controversey was allowed the syrface. A show of polite welcome does not agreement make. The ...
An impoverished, violent and at time prophetic journalist of the !9th century once wrote:Events in History appesr twice; first time a tragedy and second time a farce. This statement is more true of Nepal than it was on the !8th Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte. Three years ago there was a strage coup in Nepal. The entire Royal Family was shot dead and the blame was thrown on Prince Dependra the heir to the throne. The killing of the entire family meant that the pattern of succession changed fr...
The January 30 th Electuions in Iraq did not throw any unexpected surprises. As we predicted the Shia political groups under Sistani are poised for a strong showing at the polls. The ignomious defeat of Iyad Allawi again was not unexpected. Most Iraqis regard him as a collaborator and he does not enjoy yhe trust of ordinary Iraqis. This result will mean that the Sunnis are under represented in the New National Assembly, and the Shia leadership has shown courage and statesemanship by invitin...
On the 30 th of this month Iraq will go to the polls. The violence unleashed in Iraq has already made the whole excersise suspect. Candidates are afraid of going before the people. The Sunni population is not at all ken about the poll process, and hence the Shias are likely to benefit from the Sunni boycott of the polls. Thus the elections in Iraq will throw up a government that lacks basic legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Bush has already stated that he wil withdraw his troops from ...
On January 30 2005 the 14 million people of Iraq will go to the polls in order to elect a National Assembly which will draft the Constitution on the basis of which another election will be called. The Iraqi people have rejected these elections on the ground that it will not bring a legitimate government to power. Actually the conduct of the election itself may serve to bolster the fading and rapidly eroding credibility of Allawi. Most Iraqis look upon Allawi as a Quisling protected by a cor...
The sad demise of Jhonny Carson has left many of us struck at the thought that a fixture in ones life has now ended. Many decades back when I was in graduate school I looked forward to his TO Night Show as I walked home across the Campus. The thought of the familiar face waiting at the end of a hard and busy day was not only encouraging but also cheering after a Hard days work and study. Carson's humour was one of a kind. Never mean spirited and not always genteel. Yet he brought a touch of...
The death of Susan Sontag in New York following a prolonged struggle with lukemia is an event the world mourned. Loke her other fellow New Yorker Edward Said Susan too was the voice of reason and intellect in an increasingly belligerent USA. She was instinctively against any form of political or ideological coercion and was deeply scrptical of the promise of freedom through political means. Hers was an individual's tryst with destiny in the same manner that Hannah Arndt believed that collecti...
The U S marines have only one rule in Iraq:shoot first clear the mess later. Any vehicle approaching within 100 meters of a US military humvee is peppered with bullets before questions are asked. Similarly any ordinary Iraqi with a cell phone risks having his guts ripped out by a splatter of M-16 gunfire. Deadly force has become the norm as for as the Anglo American forces are concerned. All this makes for a horrendous loss of civillian life. A 20 something U S soldier says proudly that "w...
Since the tsunamis that struck parts of Asia on the 26th of December a slow and painful start has been made towards relief and rehabilitation. Most of the debris on the accessible parts of the coast have been removed though in Acheh itself is still reeling under the impact of the earthquake and the killer tsunamis. In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands there has been large scale destruction and it is estimated that geeting these two islands back on to its pre tsunami level will take another 10...
Earthquakes under the ocean floor, especially those neat the area where the continental plates join, generate huge waves which travel deep under the surface of the water and as they approach the continental shelf swell up to form tunamis. It is usually felt that Japan, Korea and the islands of Hawaii are tsunami prone. However this proved wrong on December 26, 2004 when tsunamis generated by the Sumatra earthquake hit the coasal areas of Southern India and Sri Lanka. In Pondicherry and Tami...
The day after Chrisnmas was a day of Daeth and Destruction to large number of people all over Asia. Tsunamis generated by a mega earthquake epicentered north of Sumatra hit the coasts of Malaysia, Thailand, Southern India and Sri Lanka. These waves travelled further afar to Somalia and the coast of Africa. Perhaps these were the most powerful tunamis of the last hundred years. The most tragic part of this is the utter failure of the Givernments of India, Thailand, and Sri Lanka to issue Tuna...
On the day after Christmas an earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale struck Sumatra. The epicentre of the quake was 256 km north of Ache. This quake triggered off a wave of tsunami waves that killed tens of thousands in Malaysia,Southern India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. I have not seen anything like this before. A sheer wall of water 30 meters high came crashing on to the coast where I live sweeping everything in its wake. Cars trucks huge buildings came crashing down. The worst of the...
The spate of bombing in Bagdad and Karbala has once more underscored the fact that even 25 months of American occupation there is as yet little hope for peace. The large scale violence that afflicts the political culture of Iraq today was not anticipated by the Anglo American occupying forces and are therefore entirely unprepared to deal with the situation. In the last 4 weels alone nearly 7 000 Iraqi civillians and 230 US troops hasve been killed making this one of the most blood soaked per...
It has become an academic fashion among some American historians to call the USA an "empire" without the slightest trace of embassarment. In a recent issue of Foreign Affairs Ralph Cohen even drew paralells with the known empires of the past:Alexandrian, Roman and of course,the British Empire. In making such comparisons, it is often forgotten that the Roman Empire laid the foundations of a literate, record keeping, and organised polity which over the centuries became the Europe of today. Sur...
It is now quite clear that the war against Iraq cannot be sustained much longer. At best the war can go on for another 6 months, after which questions, now muted, will begin to surface. Unlike the Vietnam era there is as yet no overwhelming golobal opinion against the war, for the simple reason the news from Iraq is tightly controlled and the military censors routinely censor what they preceive as "anti American" slant After Iraq What? This question is of prime importance to all those int...