The comments earlier this week by Roman Babushkin, the Deputy Chief of Mission of the Russian Embassy in India, suggest that Russia might have just tacitly “abandoned” its “balancing” act between China and India after visibly tilting closer towards the South Asian state at Beijing’s perceived (key word) expense, though that doesn’t mean that the…
Compared the great initiatives taken on behalf of freedom and anti colonialism throughout the past 260 years, today’s America appears to be a strange and foolish creature running roughshod over the dignity of people and nations in a race for mass nuclear extermination. Such is the image projected by Mike Pompeo’s ranting anti-China attacks or…
President Donald Trump is not always in control of his runaway tongue or his impetuous nature. So it’s entirely possible he could have dismissed fallen American soldiers as ‘losers,’ as the media and political opponents now claim. But I strongly doubt that Trump knew anything about the bloody 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood at which…
I am trying to think how best to write about Lebanon, about the BIGGER picture and the complicated political situation and structure there. It goes beyond the Beirut port bombing or the source of the fertiliser, well beyond the recriminations, and what is actually being reported in the news as well. This is a topic…
If Trump’s words about his dislike for war and US troops fighting ‘forever wars’ matched his actions, there would be no American soldiers in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Nor would he still be selling weapons to the region. Nearly two years ago, I asked Russian President Vladimir Putin at his annual press conference whether…
During the reign of the Emperor Justinian I (527-565 AD), a mysterious plague spread out of the Nile Valley to Constantinople and finished off the Roman Empire. Appearing first in China and North India, the “Black Death” (Yersinia pestis) radiated throughout the Mediterranean and into Northern Europe. It may well have killed close to half…
