M B Naqvi makes a realistic assessment of Pakistan's policy options with regards to Kashmir. The conclusion? Make LOC the permanent but porous border and move on towards improving the quality of life of the people.
An insightful and sometime exhaustive look at dissidence in Iran. Many parallels are drawn with the Czech dissident movement and India's own independence movement. The anti-Shah revolution was not hijacked by the clerics, he said, just as the Bolshevik revolution was not stolen by Stalin, as Trotsky had claimed. “We began revolution, in order to create a paradise, but we created hell.” An unjust regime can be changed only by civil disobedience, nonviolently, he holds. Invasion cannot export or impose democracy either. The basic thrust of the article is the claim that the fight in this world is not between civilizations, but between open secular societies and religious worlds. This fight happens, according to the author, in all societies including the western ones.
An excellent article on Jinnah, debunking his secular credentials, in the wake of Advani's comments about Jinnah having wanted a secular Pakistan. Despite wiping out Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Parsis, the Muslims of Pakistan have become more sectarian and intolerant about their Islamic faith than they were 50 or 100 years ago. Islam has assumed dangerously virulent forms today and Pakistan has come to be associated with terror and tyranny, rather than democracy and secularism. These developments are intrinsic to Jinnah’s ideology rather than unintended, unexpected by-products. Jinnah's legacy, says Madhu Kishwar, is a planted seed of hatred that consumes Pakistan and burns India in its wake. Another comment of note is about how the Sangh and Shiv Sena are but mirror images of Jinnah's politics. The Sangh Parivar hates Jinnah because Jinnah succeeded in his mission of dividing India by "uniting" Muslims into an ethnically cleansed state, whereas a whole century ...
Trump's ban on all citizens from seven muslim countries from entering the US may finally do the impossible and unite the Shia and Sunni. The Democratic Party, all said and done, is making plenty of noise and is behaving like a party that won the plurality of the vote. This is a relief. However, they do need to figure out how to fine tune the message. We are clearly seeing a sunset era (maybe temporary) for globalization and trade deals. The Democrats were clearly caught on the wrong side of this and Trump - shrewdly or accidentally - has ridden this wave to the white house. This is a real problem, and the party needs to figure out which side they are on. It is not OK for the Obama wing to be pro-TPP and the liberal wing to be against it and the Clinton wing to be everywhere at once. Republicans can afford to be ride both horses at once on this because they are in power and Trump will dominate their public image for a while. But democrats ne...
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