During the course of the last fortnight alone, the international press has reported at least 4 instances of unarmed civilians being gunned down by a heavily armed gunman. This kind of killing is on the increase and though I do not have the statistics to prove it, i venture to suggest that economic uncertainty is causing a good deal of turbulence in American society. The killing of 12 people who had gathered to watch the Dark Knight Rises at Aurora, Arizona, and more recently the shooting o...

Early this morning a US warship belonging to the Vth Fleet opened fire on an unarmed fishing boat and killed a fiherman. This incident is seen as yet another example of the cynical disdain USA under President Barack Obama has for Asian and African lives. The boat was on international waters and the US Navy did not possess any authority to open fire and kill the men on board. Though there is a well established international protocol about the search and seizure on the high seas, the uS navy chose...

In most parts of the world children learn the alphabet by association letter A with "Apple" or something innocent. In parts of the world children learn the alphabet by reciting A is for AK-47 and D is for "Drone". USA has emerged as the world largest and most determined practitioner of "play station warfare" in which operators sitting in gaming consoles in Fairfax, Virginia, determine who should live and who should die in parts of the non-white world--particularly Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and...

Staff Sgt Robert Bales of the 3rd Stryker Brigade on his 4th tour of duty left his military base, loaded his kit and set off for  the village of Panjawi in Kandhahar province of Afghanistan and went on a killing spree that will cost the US quite a lot of political goodwill and credibility. On several past occasions I have drawn attention to the systematic rampage of US military personnel in Iraq and even when the killers were identified as was the case in the Mahoumadiya incident, the culpr...

I cannot say for certain when she came into my life. I cannot even say whether I mean anything to her more than a dear friend. But her presence in my life has enriched me and made me a positive and committed human being. As I look back on the women in my life somehow my entire life seems to arranged such that our meeting was inevitable. The rough patches in my life, and there were several, all seemed stepping stones leading me to her. Like a breath of fresh mountain air, she cleansed my soul of ...

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books Elizebeth Eisenstein in her study entitled The Printing Press as an Agent of Change argued that it was the availability of knowledge across class lines that paved the way for the great changes that we now associate with the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution. The printed book was empowering because it broke the monopoly of the clerical and the warrior groups to literacy and in the eighteenth century we see the...

Yesterday a bomb ripped through the car in which an Israeli embassy staffer Ms Yehoshua Koren, the wife of the defence attache, was travelling. The exposive used was similar to the one used in Georgia and the bomb was pbobably just little bigger than a human fist. Surprisingly, the attack took place less than 50 meters from the residence of the Prime Minister, Man Mohan Singh. Ms Koren suffered serious spinal injuries but the efforts of the doctors in one of New Delhi's Hospitals saved her l...

Norway is in the news all for the wrong reasons. First it was the news of the horrific massacre of 76 young people committed by the Christian fundamentalist. The world has neither forgotten nor forgive Norway for the financial and diplomatic support extended to sundry terrorist groups all over the world in the name of identity politics. And now comes the screaming headlines about the "Child Protection Service". I think Norway is guilty of two basic infractions of the European charter. First, i...

Pakistan faces an unenviable situation. It cannot forsake the special relationship with the USA and at the same time cannot come to terms with it, It can neither swallow USA nor spit it out. USA treats Pakistan with the same contempt the Romanb Empire had for its client kings. Hilary Clinton is willing to humour Pakistan and seem to accomodate hits ruffled feelings, but the CIA and the Defence Department will not let the diplomats have an easy ride. The rais which killed Osama bin Laden and t...

In the latest issue of Time is featured a debate, Which Economy will Rule the World? This debate sputters intermittently in the pages of News Magazines. While China receives a bad press because of the perceived threst to Western economic hegemony, India escapes scrutiny aas it hides behind the facade of dynastic fascism bolstered by periodic elections, as if India is an exemplar of a flourishing democratic state. Between India and China, I can say with all authority at my command that China, tho...

 Tamil politicians are back at their ususal game of barbarous bluster and brinkmanship. Vaigoplalaswami, the leader of one Dravidian faction has even threatened a blockade of Kerala over the Mullaperyar Dam issue. It appears that with the defeat of the LTTE and the return of nornalcy in Sri Lanka, the Western funded Human Rights activists not withstanding ( I wonder why they do not scream at what the White men are doing in Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan), Tamil politicians need an issue to...

NATO forces aided by France and USA have succeded in defeating the Libyan armed forces militarily and driving the legitimate government into exile. This repets the pattern of diplomacy that we have been seeing right from the time the Soviet Union collapsed and USA became the single pole around which the international order revolved. This development marks a reversal of the two principles that had been the basis of Western statecraft from 1648 when the Treaty of Westphalia was signed. The two pri...

The recent spate of riots in UK is clear demonstration of deep seated social and economic dislocations. Unemployment is rampant and the cutback in social spending has clearly hit those whose only purpose in life is to live off the welfare state. UK is no stranger to riots. In fact there is a whole school of English historians led by E J Hobsbawm who argue that riots are the end result of the breakdown of the "moral economy", I wonder what "moral economy" is represented by the football skinheads ...

A historian is sometimes forced to read books published several decades, in some case even centuries back, in order to tease out information that is relevant. Antony Grafton, in his The Footnote: A Curious History has drawn attention to this rather interesting aspect of historical research. Unlike other strands of knowledge in which one can see a cumulative increase in human understanding, in historical research there is search for new quetions about the past and new ways of understanding and...

Norway has always regarded it self as the conscience of the civilized world. The self appointed custodian of "western values" was always quick to defend every terrorist group i n the world the latest being the LTTE, the terrorist group which was responsible for killing more than 50,000 civilians. Norway was one of the prominent EU countries which followed a split policy on terrorism: condemn the state if it tries to defend the territorial integrity of the country, but always defend sundry ...