Vladimir Putin “Anyone who does not regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart...”
Barack Obama “Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition...”
BISHKEK: A top U.S. diplomat arrived for talks with Kyrgyzstan’s interim leaders on Wednesday about defusing a crisis in the Central Asian country, where Washington rents an air base to back its war effort in Afghanistan. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, whose government has close ties with the interim leaders and sees Kyrgyzstan as part of [...]
NEW DELHI: India’s campaign against the country’s Maoist insurgency suffered a major setback on Tuesday when rebel fighters ambushed a paramilitary unit on patrol in an isolated forest region, killing at least 73 officers. The authorities described a carefully executed surprise attack in which the Maoists opened fire as the patrol entered an area seeded [...]
VILLAVICENCIO (Colombia): Colombia’s main leftist rebel group, the Farc, has freed a soldier it kidnapped just under a year ago. Private Josue Daniel Calvo, 22, was handed over to a humanitarian mission at a set of co-ordinates in the jungle provided by the rebels. He was flown to Vanguardia airport in Villavicencio where he stepped [...]
BANGKOK: Fresh from spilling their own blood at the gates of the Thai Prime Minister’s office yesterday, protesters hurled plastic bags filled with litres of blood into Abhisit Vejjajiva’s heavily guarded home in the fourth day of protests aimed at forcing him to call elections. Seeking new ways to dramatize their cause, a small group [...]
WARSAW: On every Saturday night at Brave New World, an expansive, smoke-filled bar and leftist club that has become one of the capital’s hippest venues, clutches of stylishly dressed young people expounded on the virtues of Karl Marx and social democracy, in between gyrations on a dance floor and copious shots of vodka. The ritual [...]
CARACAS: An energy crisis has battered Venezuela’s economy and President Hugo Chávez’s popularity, prompting severe rationing to avert nationwide blackouts and paralysis. One of the worst droughts in decades has crippled the hydroelectric plants that supply most of Venezuela’s power, plunging cities into darkness and forcing industries to go slow and even shut down. The [...]
It was called the ‘New Left.’ Emerging in Britain in the 1950s, the New Left was the left’s disparaging response to the authoritarian tendencies of Marxism mainly symbolised by so-called ‘Stalinism’. The New Left revisited Marxist doctrines and attempted to bring them more in line with concepts like liberal democracy. The New Left criticised both [...]
MADRID: Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets across Spain last night in the biggest test of the country’s Socialist Government, which is under pressure. With a general strike threatened in the summer, the two biggest Spanish unions staged protests in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Alicante. The Union General de Trabajadores (UGT) and [...]
There have been three major occasions when the Pakistani middle-class has broken away from its traditionally conservative disposition to come out and announce its ‘revolutionary’ political aspirations. The first incident of demonstrating political assertiveness was in the late 1960s when the bulk of the youth began to air their grievances against Pakistan’s military-industrialist nexus headed [...]
Most people — to paraphrase the radical British poet Adrian Mitchell — ignore most history because most history ignores most people. It is traditionally the domain of ‘great’ people: conquerors and kings, statesmen and generals, prophets and pioneers. Other people — the overwhelming majority — don’t get much of a look in. At best they [...]
LOS ANGELES: An American missionary who strode illegally into North Korea on Christmas Day and was detained by the communist regime for 43 days was welcomed back to the United States on Saturday evening in an emotional reunion with family members at Los Angeles International Airport. Robert Park was greeted by his parents and brother [...]
Politics is a dirty business. Electoral politics particularly, in a society like ours which is sharply divided on provincial, tribal, religious and clannish lines. Crudely put, this is for two reasons. One, areas of the Indian subcontinent that became Pakistan share the same legacy with other parts of South Asia which is derived from caste-based [...]
“The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.” Noam Chomsky. Plutocracy is defined as a political system characterized by “the rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.” Democracy, on the other [...]
In communist veteran Jyoti Basu’s death, India has lost its most illustrious politician and the last leader who embodied a personal link between the many phases of Indian politics since the early 1940s. Basu was not just a major Left leader in a country with the world’s biggest Communist party outside China. He participated in [...]
KOLKATA: Tens of thousands of people thronged the streets of Kolkata in eastern India on Tuesday to pay their last respects to veteran communist leader Jyoti Basu who died on Sunday, reported AFP. Basu, who was the longest serving chief minister in Indian political history, headed the world’s most electorally successful communist party for two [...]
Is Pakistan following any reasonable theory or practice? Earlier one had thought that the donors could do the needful and fill the gap by meeting the shortfalls. This is incorrect for the donors have their own agenda. The theories have a western bias and in any case, the theories so propounded have been developed for [...]
NEW DELHI: Jyoti Basu, the charismatic Marxist who headed the world’s most electorally successful communist party for
OSLO: A veteran Iranian diplomat based in Norway has resigned his post, denounced his government and urged colleagues around the world to do the same after the regime’s brutal suppression of huge opposition demonstrations last month. Mohammed-Reza Heydari, Iran’s consul in Oslo, is the first Iranian diplomat to publicly quit and condemn the regime. He [...]
When President Obama made his first post-election visit to San Francisco, two groups of protesters met him in Union Square. About 500 activists (the “Left”) carried signs, sang songs and chanted for an end to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, for environmental action and Medicare for all. Sharing space with us were about 250 [...]
TEHRAN: Iran will try five people arrested in connection with protests last month, the biggest in the Islamic Republic since the aftermath of the presidential election in June, the official news agency said on Thursday. The agency, citing a statement by Tehran’s revolutionary court, did not identify the detainees or the date of their trials [...]
Misbah-ul-Haq appointed Pak Test team captain
Swiss ‘Return of Illicit Assets Act’: Pakistan can get billions back!
Cricketer Muhammad Asif finally brings his bride Sana Hilal home, Veena Malik Shocked
Veena Malik seeks court’s help for registration of an FIR against Muhammad Asif
In mom’s wedding sari, Sania Mirza says “Nikah Kabul Hai”; it’s Sania Shoaib from now
What’s going on between Pak cricket legend Wasim Akram & Bollywood actress Sushmita Sen?
Potential to generate 50,000mw electricity from Thar coal field for 800 years
