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HOW MITT ROMNEY DODGED THE DRAFT — H. Bruce Franklin remembers Romney from his Stanford days and lays out exactly how he and his father ensured he would evade service in the war which, at Stanford, he was demonstrating for. Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures. Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth.
Archives by Tag 'India'
Asia is currently in the middle of an unprecedented arms race that is not only sharpening tensions in the region, but competing with efforts by Asian countries to address poverty and growing economic disparity. The gap between rich and poor—calculated by the Gini coeffi...
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s stirring call for austerity tugs at the national tear ducts. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pleaded for it in the past and watched his flock embrace it creatively. With the finance ministry even acting on Dr. Singh’s call in 20...
The same full page appeared twice in three years, the first time as news, the second time as an advertisement.
“Not a single person from the two villages has committed suicide.”
Three and a half years ago, at a t...
Many countries are rethinking their nuclear plans post-Fukushima. Some are proceeding to draw down their nuclear power operations. According to an ...
On April 19, India tested its first inter-continental ballistic missile, named Agni-V, and joined the select group of nations possessing both nuclear weapons and a delivery system capable of hitting targets across continents. Only a few days before, nuclear capable North ...
If a group of Christians decided to hold a pork festival as part of their cultural assertion in Hyderabad, a city in South India that is now in the news for the ...
While United States and Israeli leaders, duly assisted by a warmongering media, ramp up war talk against Iran, two troublesome pieces of information are ritually ignored. First, even American intelligence reports conclude that Iran is not close to building a nuclear-wea...
The Ajmer Sharif Dargah in north India has become for politics what the Wagah border is for peace activists. It is just so much melting wax and withering flowers.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is to pay a visit to the shrine on what has been touted as a ...
One Tendulkar makes the big scores. The other wrecks the averages. The Planning Commission clearly prefers Suresh to Sachin. Using Professor Tendulkar’s methodology, it declares that there’s been another massive fall in poverty. Yes, another (‘more dramatic in the r...
At two in the morning, the sleek, modern airport at New Delhi hummed with activity. Most travelers pointed westbound to European capitals and from there, mid morning connections to the Americas.
What piqued my curiosity at that ungodly hour: airport security worked...
The bombing of an Israeli embassy car in Delhi threatens India’s diplomatic maneuvers between Israel and Iran, and has put India’s discreetly nurtured ties with Israel since 1992 through a severe test. Those who are attracted to Israel’s depiction of Iran as a terro...
“Tarry a little, old Jew,” remonstrates Portia with Shylock before having his macabre petition for a pound of human flesh thrown out of the window at the magistrate’s court in Venice.
Portia, if Shakespeare allowed, would be compelled to rein...
Monday. February 13. 3.54 pm. A bomb explodes in the car of an Israeli diplomat. Three people, including the defence attaché’s wife Tal Yehoshua, are grievously injured.
30 minutes later, embassy officials are examining the remains of the vehicle in an area that...
Oprah Winfrey walking the seedy bylanes of Mumbai on a work assignment in India, Jeremy Clarkson dropping his pants for a reality show, and tourists paying to watch naked Jarawa tribals dance are part of the same deal: Branding Blahdcasting Corporation.
Should outs...
A little under five years ago, the cricket establishment in India privatized a national passion. They started an ‘Indian Premier League’ modelled on the NFL and The English Premier League (only this was happening with cricket), complete with privately-owned te...
Saadat Hasan Manto’s centenary is being observed quietly by friends and admirers in Lahore. No official recognition or mention. He’s almost become a non-person. Manto died in Lahore in 1955. He was forty-three years old. The life of one of our greatest short-story w...
On UN Day, at a panel on Nuclear Disarmament, Secretary General Ban-ki Moon spoke about his 2008 five point proposal for nuclear disarmament, including the requirement for negotiations to ban the bomb. It was dismaying when the next speaker, a retired US Air Force Gen...
“The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, un...
Mumbai
Foreign direct investment in retail may be on hold, but Hillary Clinton can stop worrying about Anand Sharma and Pranab Mukherjee.
“How does (Commerce Minister) Sharma view India’s current Foreign Direct Investment guidelines? Which s...
They left me clutching
islands of farewells.
– Agha Shahid Ali, The Country Without a Post Office, 1997.
My friend was like an imp – mischief drew his smile, as did Beauty. Poetry was his mét...
“The spectators laughed. And my lawyer, rolling up one of his sleeves, said with finality, ‘Here we have a perfect reflection of this entire trial: everything is true and nothing is true!’”
...
“America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing…I can’t stand my own mind.”
– Allen Ginsberg
Space is being occupied. What does that space stand for? What does its occupation convey? There are q...
The union stories coming out of the huge Maruti Suzuki auto plant in Manesar, Haryana (approximately 30 miles south of New Delhi) fall into the classic “good news-bad news” categories.
First, the bad news: Approximately 3,500 workers have been on strike for a...
Shortly after Rahan Tabassum returns home to Delhi for a vacation from his university studies in the United States, he finds himself in an increasingly tense situation involving his mother’s servants. When she is away, her house is burgled—two computers and her safe...