George Soros, Hungarian-American businessman (File photo) The Indian Express newspaper featured today two reports relating to India’s indirect partnership with George Soros in a worldwide democracy project under the UN umbrella. The main report is behind paywall while the second report titled “UN Democracy Fund launched in 2005 on sidelines of India-US N-deal” is accessible. …
The West sees Iran in a new way
A drone exploding over a Defense Ministry workshop in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, on January 29, 2023 The Wall Street Journal reported from Tehran on Wednesday that “a lethal crackdown and an ailing economy have quieted anti-government street demonstrations … organised protests have largely tapered off.” The paradox is, this interpretation is widely applicable …
Syria’s power dynamic is shifting
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad met Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amir Abdollahian, Damascus, January 14, 2023 The process toward a Turkish-Syrian rapprochement may lose momentum as a top aide to Turkish President Recep Erdogan threatened to derail it. On Saturday, Ibrahim Kalin, presidential advisor on foreign policy, stated during a media briefing in Ankara that the …
Russia consolidates in East Mediterranean
Turkish military convoy in border with Northern Syria (File photo) The curtain is coming down on the brutal 11-year old Syrian conflict, which former US President and Nobel Laureate Barack Obama initiated, as the Arab Spring swept through West Asia two decades ago. The United States has suffered yet another big setback in West Asia …
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Russia’s homage to Nord Stream pipelines
Who stands to gain? First pictures of Nord Stream pipeline show 50 metre hole after “powerful explosions” confirming sabotage. David Brinkley, the legendary American newscaster with a career that spanned an amazing fifty-four years from World War II once said that a successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks …
NATO runs into multipolar world order
Germans say the moment of truth for most children comes at the end of Grade 4 when primary education ends in Grundschule. By that reckoning, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) at 73 is in “second childishness and mere oblivion / Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” — to borrow from Jaques’ famous soliloquy …
As UAE embraces Iran, fizz goes pop for Abraham Accords
Iran’s Dy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani (C) with diplomatic adviser to UAE President Anwar Gargash (L) and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khalifa Almara, Abu Dhabi, Nov. 16, 2021 The terrible secret about Faustian deals is that they need a Mephistopheles to nurture them. That said, Goethe’s Mephisto is very different from the …
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Ukraine, Belarus in the eye of the storm
President Vladimir Putin addressing the expanded meeting of the Russian Foreign Ministry Board, Moscow, November 18, 2021 Wouldn’t that be a delicious irony — the British defence secretary Ben Wallace rushing to Warsaw on Thursday to work up detailed plans to strengthen Poland’s border fence with Belarus? Britain had partnered the US in the invasion of …
Afghan Ghani makes farewell call on Biden
When the anointed king receives his vassal formally at his durbar for the first time, it is a moment of truth conveying that the latter’s obeisance is noted, while the vassal hopes to claim legitimacy. A US president is due to receive Afghan president Ashraf Ghani in the White House on Friday after a gap …
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Fizz is gone from Biden-Putin summit
The morning after a Russian-American summit is most critical to know whether the previous day’s bonhomie was real, surreal or unreal. Surveying the Geneva Summit (June 16) between presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, I cautiously assessed the next day, “Does Biden have the political capital to press ahead with a project to create “stability and …