As long as there is an Assad, there will be an Isil – he’ll make sure of it

Vladimir Putin replaces Dmitry Medvedev as Russia’s president – billboard. Russia Now. / Picture from Telegraph UK

TELEGRAPH UK | DAVID BLAIR | DECEMBER 7 2015

In the tangled world of the Middle East, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” is the dictum most likely to cause tragic mistakes. Very often, the saying would be more accurate if adapted to read: “Beware the tyrant who cynically poses as an enemy of your enemy in order to strengthen his grip on power.”

“Forget the notion that allying with Assad against Isil is comparable to teaming up with Stalin against Hitler. From 1941 onwards, Stalin was at least fighting Hitler”

So it is with Bashar al-Assad in Syria. From the very beginning of his country’s insurrection, Assad has done his best to help Islamist zealots hijack the Syrian opposition; he worked particularly hard to create ideal laboratory conditions for the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). His supremely cynical aim was to convince the West to…continue reading

France’s cowardly elite is to blame for the rise of Marine Le Pen

 

THE GUARDIAN UK | Natalie Nougayrède | DECEMBER 7 2015

The first time we really started paying attention to the Front National was in 1984, when it gained nearly 11% of the votes in European parliamentary elections. It symbolised a dark side of French politics and French history. No one could forget that its roots dug deep into a traditionalist, authoritarian, ultra-Catholic and anti-republican far-right political heritage.

The Front National’s founder (and leader, until 2011), Jean-Marie Le Pen, was a lieutenant in the French army during the Algerian war in the 1950s, and stood accused of having been personally involved in torture (something he denied). In 1985 the daily newspaper Libération ran the headline: “Tortured by Le Pen” – with the alleged testimonies of victims. This bears repeating, because 30 years ago no one would have bet that his creation would become the nationwide phenomenon that it is today – France’s leading political party, with a good chance of taking control of six out of the country’s 13 metropolitan regions. But how did we get to this?…continue reading

 

All For Glory

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OUTLOOK | George Monbiot | DECEMBER 5 2015

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Where you would expect to see caution and circumspection, instead there is a rush to action. Where you would expect to see determination and resolve, there is only vacillation and delay. The contrast between the government’s handling of the Syrian crisis and its handling of the climate change crisis could not be greater. It responds to these issues with an equal and opposite recklessness.

“We have to hit these terrorists in their heartlands right now,” David Cameron told parliament last week. While it is hard to contest the principle of fighting Isis, to do so without a clear strategic purpose and intelligible objectives is lunacy.

The 70,000 fighters Cameron believes he can call upon might exist, but most of them are fighting President Assad in other parts of the country. Does he really intend to draw them away from that fight, even if — and this seems unlikely — they are willing to be drawn? After all, he insists (correctly I believe) that “we will not beat ISIL if we waver in our view that ultimately Assad must go.” Redeploy Assad’s opponents against a different enemy…continue reading

Lull Before The Storm

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OUTLOOK | RK MISHRA | DECEMBER 4 2015

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Soon after voting ended in the local body elections in Gujarat on November 29,the core group of the ruling BJP met at the official residence of chief minister Anandiben Patel in Gandhinagar for a final review. Present were ministers and key leaders helming various poll related responsibilities.

The sum and substance of the deliberations were that the party would be able to retain control of the six municipal corporations but was facing  a total rout in eight district panchayats while five could go either way. Similarly the party expected to lose about 100 to 110 tehsil panchayats, the chief minister was told, although the party hoped to bag about 35 municipalities.

Whatever the outcome, the core group decided that wherever BJP would win, celebrations should be so extensive and intense that the overall impact would not only overshadow Congress enthusiasts but also lift the morale of the BJP workers. Under no circumstances, it was decided, should a message go out that the ‘Patidar effect’ was the reason for the party’s defeat…continue reading

Horror in Paris

THE HINDU | EDITORIAL | NOVEMBER 15 2015

With at least 127 people dead by Saturday evening and many more wounded, Paris will keep counting its dead for a while. It may take longer yet to come to grips with the scale of the tragedy that took so many lives on Friday night, people out in the City of Lights for a concert, a meal, a football game, a stroll even. The terrorists had chosen their targets with chilling care, picking sites where strangers share an unspoken camaraderie. The aim was to do more than take innocent lives — it was to provoke an us-versus-them retaliation, to make its people and visitors fearful of going about their everyday routines and enjoyment. Paris has the strength of spirit to carry on as the great city it is. Just as India saw Mumbai bounce back, even as it mourned the toll of 26/11. Great cities and ordinary people do that — they dig deep into reserves of shared humanity. So, as…continue reading

The stockman who built an Australian cattle empire

Anna Creek Station’s homestead and yard in 1896 / Picture from BBC

BBC | NOVEMBER 20 2015

Chinese conglomerates were the last standing in a bidding war to buy an extraordinarily large slice of Australia and its pastoral history in November. The Kidman cattle empire is Australia’s largest landholding, encompassing some of the driest and toughest country Australia has to offer. Its story begins in the 1890s with Sir Sidney Kidman and his elder brother Sackville, who embarked on an ambitious venture that would transform agriculture in Australia. The two brothers wanted to grow…continue reading

Thank You, Nitish

 

NDTV | MANI SHANKAR IYER

There are firecrackers bursting all over India. And it’s not for Diwali. It’s in celebration of the drubbing Modi’s BJP received in Bihar. The hijacking of the Idea of India has been stopped in mid-heist. We are saved. Thank you, Nitish.

For what has happened in Bihar is not just an election but the Rediscovery of India in the nick of time, on the very eve of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary celebrations. When the forces of malevolence won the Lok Sabha elections last year, too many Indians voted for Modi thinking they would thus end corruption in governance and accelerate the processes of growth. It was called Modi’s “development agenda”.

But as the year progressed and moved towards the end of 2015, the hidden agenda came all too sharply into focus. Modi’s finger that trembles all the time on his Twitter account held firmly back as the real representatives of his thought processes – the Mahesh Sharmas and the Sanjiv Balyans, veteran colleagues in the Sangh Pracharak brigade and ministers to boot – proclaimed aloud with no restraint the steps they were taking to convert our liberal…continue reading

TRICKED AND INDEBTED ON LAND, ABUSED OR ABANDONED AT SEA

FROM NEWSPAPERS

Seamen crowded on Kalaw Avenue for an event that advertised free food. Credit Hannah Reyes for The New York Times / Picture from NEW YORK TIMES

NEW YORK TIMES |  IAN URBINA | NOVEMBER 9 2015 

LINABUAN SUR, the Philippines — When Eril Andrade left this small village, he was healthy and hoping to earn enough on a fishing boat on the high seas to replace his mother’s leaky roof.

Seven months later, his body was sent home in a wooden coffin: jet black from having been kept in a fish freezer aboard a ship for more than a month, missing an eye and his pancreas, and covered in cuts and bruises, which an autopsy report concluded had been inflicted before death.

“Sick and resting,” said a note taped to his body. Handwritten in Chinese by the ship’s captain, it stated only that Mr. Andrade, 31, had fallen ill in his sleep.

Mr. Andrade, who died in February 2011, and nearly a dozen other men in his village had been recruited by an illegal “manning agency,” tricked with false promises of double the actual wages and then sent to an apartment in…continue reading

The Pakistan Nuclear Nightmare

NEW YORK TIMES | THE EDITORIAL BOARD | NOVEMBER 7 2015

Anthony Russo / Picture from NEW YORK TIMES

With as many as 120 warheads, Pakistan could in a decade become the world’s third-ranked nuclear power, behind the United States and Russia, but ahead of China, France and Britain. Its arsenal is growing faster than any other country’s, and it has become even more lethal in recent years with the addition of small tactical nuclear weapons that can hit India and longer-range nuclear missiles that can reach farther.

These are unsettling truths. The fact that Pakistan is also home to a slew ofextremist groups, some of which are backed by a paranoid security establishment obsessed with India,…continue reading