Blindsided by Trump, Modi is learning hard lessons about India’s place in the new world order

New Delhi spent decades cosying up to the US. The truth is, Washington doesn’t have allies outside the west – it has clients. What changed was that over the past quarter of a century, India’s political class began to see the US as the country’s natural partner. It was the main destination of India’s exports… Read More Blindsided by Trump, Modi is learning hard lessons about India’s place in the new world order

Otter pelts, Orthodox priests and a $7.2m bargain: how Russia sold Alaska to the US

Pjotr Sauer Donald Trump appeared to confuse geography and history on Monday, saying on television that he planned to meet Vladimir Putin “in Russia” on Friday for their much-anticipated, high-stakes summit. It was the latest in a series of verbal slip-ups by the US president – though had he made it a century and a half earlier, it… Read More Otter pelts, Orthodox priests and a $7.2m bargain: how Russia sold Alaska to the US

Italian dockworkers threaten Israel cargo ban if Gaza flotilla blocked

NB: I salute the Genoa dockworkers unon and all their comrades across Europe. No government is bothered about stopping the genocide and mass starvation being implemented by the Israel-USA-UK Axis. Workers are quite capable of confronting these criminal establishments; and coming to the aid of the helpless people of Gaza. God bless you. DS “If… Read More Italian dockworkers threaten Israel cargo ban if Gaza flotilla blocked

The new barbarians

NB: Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coetzee (2017); and The Natural History of Destruction by WG Sebald (1999); are two books that show the mirror to ‘Western civilisation’ and Israel, inheritors of an atrocious history of exterminism and genocidal mania stretching from the Roman destruction of Carthage till the Armenian genocide of 1915, the… Read More The new barbarians

Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre wrote a memoir. Months after her death, it’s coming out

By  HILLEL ITALIE NEW YORK (AP) — A posthumous and “unsparing” memoir by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, will be published this fall, publishing house Alfred A. Knopf said Sunday. “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice” is scheduled for release Oct. 21, the publisher confirmed to The Associated Press. Giuffre,… Read More Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre wrote a memoir. Months after her death, it’s coming out

India’s Foreign Policy Is In Need Of Fresh Stewardship Columnists

Bharat Bhushan With its dream of reaching greatness by hanging on to the coattails of the United States going bust, India needs to radically rethink its foreign policy. Rather than the ongoing tentative recalibration, it needs to be redesigned from the ground up. Although Indian political leaders value loyalty to a fault, this cannot be… Read More India’s Foreign Policy Is In Need Of Fresh Stewardship Columnists

For Once in Our Lives

We’re Right Again. Now that it is too late, it’s no longer forbidden to use the word “genocide” in polite company. Now, as Gazans starve, as they are shot by soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces while seeking food aid at sites run by the farcically-named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the world has decided it is, after all, “against this.” Only recently,… Read More For Once in Our Lives

By sanctioning journalists, the Kremlin admits how much the truth hurts

Rafael Behr There is a Russian proverb: don’t blame the mirror if your face is crooked. I first came across it as the epigraph to The Government Inspector, Gogol’s 1836 masterpiece satirising corruption and hypocrisy in the provinces of the tsar’s empire. The phrase sprang to mind last week when I learned that a 21st-century… Read More By sanctioning journalists, the Kremlin admits how much the truth hurts

Bulldozing Gaza

The singularity of the Israeli campaign in Gaza lies in the asymmetry of power, its intensity, its enclosure, its direct connection to a settler colonial project. All this leads us back to the 1940s and Raphael Lemkin’s definition of genocide, which he modeled on Nazi-occupied Poland. That line of thought should not be dodged, or… Read More Bulldozing Gaza