The Indian government’s decision on 8 November to dismiss the use of the two largest denomination currency notes overnight has taken the entire nation by surprise. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to demonetise Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes has
Thursday, December 8th, 2016
From the archive: first published in February 2008. “What comes after Fidel” is a well-worn topic of op-eds, but the focus should be on an assessment of the character – a combination of the institutional, political, and personal – of
Thursday, December 1st, 2016
Japan and Russia are two neighbours who seldom in history had been in good and cordial terms. Two countries share a common sea boarder stretching along Okhotsk Sea and the Pacific. They also a share dispute inherited from the past.
Thursday, November 24th, 2016
Again, the Republican candidate in the US presidential elections lost the popular vote but won the election. Such is a function of the mechanics of the US flavor of democracy where not every vote matters; only votes in key states
Thursday, November 24th, 2016
For the past several years, people of Syria have been jumping out of the frying pan into the fire and then out of the fire back into the frying pan only to fall from there into the fire again. Just
Thursday, November 17th, 2016
“Trump is the logical culmination of a culture: the narrator of a democratic apparatus that has come to conceal itself behind the mother of all TV shows: the US Presidency.”
Yesterday, as I began to write these lines, Air Force One
Thursday, November 17th, 2016
Pervasive and problematic assumptions about the UK’s security lie at the heart of parliament’s recent decision to continue to support Saudi Arabia, despite accusations of war crimes in Yemen.
On Saturday 8th October, more than 140 people were killed and over
Thursday, November 10th, 2016
I was one of the original ‘boys on the bus’. In 1964, 1968 and 1972, I endured the appalling regime of 4am baggage calls to leave hotels in almost every state of the Union, oceans of indifferent coffee, fast food,
Thursday, October 27th, 2016
On Sunday, the Colombian people rejected the recent peace deal that the Colombian government had reached with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) after 52 years of civil war. The plebiscite narrowly failed: 50.2 percent rejected the peace accord,
Thursday, October 6th, 2016
Nara was Japan’s imperial capital almost for eight decades during the earlier phase of Japan’s emergence as a unified state. Japan’s first permanent capital was established in the city in 710 and served as the imperial seat until the capital
Thursday, September 29th, 2016
