Fifth column: Petty cogs in the wheel?

INDIAN EXPRESS | TAVLEEN SINGH | SEPTEMBER 27 2015

There are things that we who inhabit the high realms of political punditry in Lutyens Delhi often cannot see. So before the Prime Minister left for the United States we concluded that this time he would not be given the rock star reception he got last time. “There is deep disappointment” pundit friends murmured happily “because he has simply not been able to do the economic reforms that investors hoped for”. Even I, someone who believes that Narendra Modi brings the first real hope that India will shake off the legacies of Nehruvian socialism and the licence raj, began gloomily to share the apprehensions of my fellow pundits.

Last year, I was in Madison Gardens and reported in this newspaper that rock stars would be lucky to get the adulation that Modi got. But this year I agreed with my fellow pundits that there would be disenchantment and not rapture. So it was a shock that the rock star treatment began in Ireland and has continued on the other side of the Atlantic. With even Rupert Murdoch endorsing Modi on Twitter as ‘the…continue reading

 

In deadly attack on Pakistan air force base, Taliban gunmen kill 17 people

A volunteer and security personal carry an injured to a local hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, Sept. 18, 2015. The Pakistani Taliban launched a brazen assault on a military base on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar early Friday, triggering a firefight. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) / Picture from INDIAN EXPRESS

INDIAN EXPRESS | Reuters | SEPTEMBER 18 2015

Taliban gunmen stormed a Pakistani Air Force base early on Friday, killing at least 17 people, a military spokesman said, the deadliest attack on a military installation this year. Sixteen of the dead were killed in a mosque as they offered morning prayers, and a captain died leading the counter-attack against the raiders, Major General Asim Bajwa said on Twitter. The Major added that 13 of the terrorists were killed. It was unclear if the 16 killed in the mosque at the Badaber air base in the northwestern city of Peshawar were civilians or military, he added…continue reading

Kundalini cultivation

Farmers will be empowered with Rajayoga, on the basis of numerous studies allegedly conducted on this arcane subject. / Picture from INDIAN EXPRESS

INDIAN EXPRESS | EDITORIAL | SEPTEMBER 16 2015

Rajayoga will apparently replenish the farmer’s lost confidence in the “age-tested knowledge of farming”. Is the good minister, then, speaking up for the loonies who think the Green Revolution was a great perversion with no redeeming qualities? Would the minister oppose GM trials, then, since the technology removes agriculture even further from traditional practices? If ancient technologies like grafting are better than the modern practice of fiddling with genetic material, perhaps there is reason to rewind beyond the agricultural revolution and recapture the lost glory of the hunter-gatherers? Numerous peer-reviewed studies suggest…continue reading

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe reads wrong speech

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has read out the wrong speech at the opening of parliament.

Zanu-PF party supporters clapped at regular intervals during Mr Mugabe’s speech / Picture from BBC

 

BBC | SEPTEMBER 16 2015

He gave the same one during his state-of-the-nation address on 25 August, when he was heckled by opposition MPs. His spokesman told the state-run Herald paper the error was because of a mix-up in the president’s secretarial office. The BBC’s Brian Hungwe in Harare says tensions were high ahead of the speech and the state broadcaster cancelled its live feed fearing further disruptions.

At least six MPs from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)…continue reading

Ostracised, sacked … and even arrested: the fate of whistleblowers at the UN

guardian.co.uk | Roger Hamilton-Martin | SEPTEMBER 14 2015

Former investigator Caroline Hunt-Matthes, who took nine years to get redress after being ousted from the UN . Photograph: John Heilprin/AP / Picture from guardian.co.uk

When a United Nations investigator reported the rape of a refugee in Sri Lanka, she did not expect the disclosure to force her into a decade-long legal battle with her employer.

Caroline Hunt-Matthes was ostracised and eventually ousted while on medical leave. She has still not secured redress after a decade fighting her case.

Her case was remarkable in duration but not in substance. Hunt-Matthes is by no means the first or only whistleblower to fall foul of the UN system. Indeed, her case highlights neatly one of the UN’s dirtiest secrets: that its staff are reluctant to report abuses or corruption within the organisation for fear of losing their jobs.

“The bottom line is the UN is not a safe working environment at the minute,” said Hunt-Matthes, who has left the UN and now works at a university in Geneva. “You can’t report misconduct and be protected. What could be more serious than that?”

Figures obtained by the Government Accountability Project (GAP), which supports whistleblowers, reveal that the UN ethics office had received 447…continue reading

Jeremy Corbyn: ‘Britain can’t cut its way to prosperity. We have to build it’

guardian.co.uk | Jeremy Corbyn | SEPTEMBER 13 2015

On Tuesday, the government will set out regulations to cut tax credits, leaving thousands of working families worse off. Tax credits are a vital lifeline to many families and Labour will oppose these cuts.

It is clear, too, that the prime minister will soon again be asking us to bomb Syria. That won’t help refugees, it will create more.

Isis is utterly abhorrent and President Assad’s regime has committed appalling crimes. But we must also oppose Saudi bombs falling on Yemen and the Bahraini dictatorship murdering its democracy movement, armed by us.

Our role is to campaign for peace and disarmament around the world.

For the Conservatives, the deficit is just an excuse to railroad through the same old Tory agenda: driving down wages, cutting taxes for the wealthiest, allowing house prices to spiral out of reach, selling off our national assets and attacking trade unions. You can’t cut your way to prosperity, you have to build it: investing in modern infrastructure, investing in people and their skills, harnessing innovative ideas and new ways of working to tackle climate change to protect our environment and our future.

Our job is to show that the economy and our society can be made to work for everyone. That means ensuring we stand up against injustice wherever we find it…continue reading

Mama Merkel has consigned the ‘ugly German’ to history

THE GUARDIAN | JOHNATHAN FREEDLAND | SEPTEMBER 11 2015

‘In future, the sight of a vast German crowd will recall not just Nuremberg but those signs held up by football fans declaring: Refugees welcome.’ Photograph: Daniel Bockwoldt/AP / Picture from THE GUARDIAN

This has been no overnight transformation. Germans have spent decades reckoning with their past in a way few nations can match. Nevertheless the embrace Germany is currently offering to the dispossessed of Syria – while so much of Europe closes its doors or quibbles over tiny numbers – has altered perceptions anew. People are speaking of Germany the way they used to talk of Scandinavia, as a kind of right-on oasis defined by its progressive, pacific instincts. One rightwing academic this week slammed the country as “a hippy state being led by its emotions”. That’s quite a change from the caricature of old,…continue reading

Simply put: Diplomats and rules of the game

INDIAN EXPRESS | Shubhajit Roy | SEPTEMBER 11 2015

According to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961, the immunity enjoyed by a diplomat posted in the embassy is “inviolable”. The diplomat cannot be arrested or detained and his house will have the same inviolability and protection as the embassy. It’s this point that the Saudi Arabian embassy has raised — that by entering the house of the diplomat to conduct investigations, the Gurgaon police have flouted the immunity rules. It is possible for the diplomat’s home country to waive immunity but this can happen only when the individual has...continue reading

How Europe’s Other Half Lives

Shoes donated by Hungarians for refugee children in Budapest on Monday. Credit Christopher Furlong/Getty Images / Picture from New York Times

NEW YORK TIMES |  NOEMI SZECSI | SEPTEMBER 9 2015 

“I play a new game these days,” a friend of mine said. “I watch the news with my back turned to the TV, and just by listening I can tell which party a politician belongs to. If he blames the government for the refugee crisis, he’s from the opposition. If he blames the European Union and its legislation, he must be with the government.”

An easy game to play, no question. My friend is a sensitive woman who has dedicated many years to organizing the lives of senior officials in international charity organizations with offices in Budapest — in the course of which she has witnessed many flaws in the way they operate. And because she’s smart, she also saw that while, economically and culturally, Europe hardly knows what to do with the refugees, some are glad to have them as tools to shape domestic politics.

If you want to find out whether Hungarian people possess any measure of good will toward these poor creatures, go to the Keleti train station and take a look at the mounds of donated goods, distributed by a growing…continue reading