View Articles

WASHINGTON: Led by Minnesota’s Tim Walz, some 743 unionists—and counting—won public office nationwide, from Congress down to county commissioner, the AFL-CIO calculates.

The pace of events was amazing. On 25 October 2018, the New York Times carried an exposé on how Google top management handled sexual harassment complaints against their top executives. When sexual harassment charges surfaced against Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile software, Google not only hushed up the matter but stealthily struck a deal for his resignation giving him a $90 million exit package, and gave him a hero’s farewell. The New York Times story also exposed that two other senior executives were given similar compromise payouts. Google employees were highly incensed at their own management rewarding the culprits instead of punishing them. Legally they could well have been dismissed without any “compensation” but still Google chose to hush up the matter after paying them hefty amounts.

BHOPAL: BJP always accuses Congress of “Parivarvad” but now it is the love of sons by several stalwarts of BJP that is the main hurdle causing delay in finalising tickets in some crucial constituencies. Incidentally they include people who have spent their whole lives in being loyal to the RSS. Topping the list is Babulal Gaur, who joined the RSS after refusing to join the business of his father about six decades ago. Gaur, a former chief minister, is seeking ticket for himself or for his daughter-in-law from Govindpura constituency from where he won consecutive ten times.

After destroying the national economy by shamelessly pursuing the pro-Corporate economic policies, the Narendra Modi government in last year of its power is bent upon conducting loot and loot of the remaining national wealth to save its skin as well as spend the looted national wealth in a manner that the people are hoodwinked.

It was two years ago, on that fateful night of November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his “historic” decision of demonetization promising that it would act as a game changer in the Indian economy by driving out black money, weed out fake notes and check terror funds but the Reserve Bank of India’s figures show nothing has been achieved in the last 24 months, whereas the informal economy still remains shattered leading to high joblessness and under employment.

“With public sentiment, all is possible; without it, nothing is,” said Abraham Lincoln. So, is public sentiment with the Hindutva call for a Ram temple in Ayodhya, as it is in Kerala for keeping women of 10-50 age at arm’s length from celibate Swami Ayyappa? Lincoln, if he was of Hindutva ilk, will say ‘yes’, and he was a conservative with a love for theatre, which was where he got shot, in a theatre.

Naeem Ahmed Qazi, a development consultant for national and foreign institutions and primarily an educationist, has reminded Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan Niazi of his past when he played cricket with a straight bat. In an acid-tongue opinion piece indicting the new government for surrender to the religious extremists - Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan- in Roznama Pakistan, a leading Urdu daily, Qazi wrote in an agonised tone indicting the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led federal government for soft stance towards TLP despite the three-day violent protests against the verdict of the Supreme Court of Pakistan on 31 October acquitting Pakistani Christian Aasiya Noreen – Asia Bibi – in a blasphemy case that kept her in death row for eight years. For nearly three days the main cities had screeched to a halt. The nation helplessly witnessed inhumane, brutal and shocking scenes during the lockdown – a murky mobocracy “looting the poorest while in others the rich had to witness their vehicles destroyed by a mob apparently chanting the slogans of Islam”.

A substantial majority of Americans went to the polls on November 6 and pulled the lever for candidates who opposed President Trump and his policies. Even in the elections for the U.S. Senate, where the GOP gained at least three seats, 10 million more people voted Democratic than voted Republican.

In the first week of this month the Prime Minister broke the news to the nation that India’s first indigenously built nuclear submarine Arihant had successfully completed its first ‘deterrence patrol’. Though the PM did not make such a claim, a section of the media claimed that the submarine-launched ballistic missiles or SLBMs Arihant is equipped with have brought both Pakistan and China within their striking range.

From ancient times, India has been a unique culture due to the Varna based classification and vocation based caste system of its social composition. The masses were so engrossed in their routines for survival that they had least contact with the political power. They had nothing to fear from and expect of the saddled power of their times. Maintenance of the composition for smooth existence of society also made imperative for the power not to interfere with lives of masses except for collection of revenue from farm producers and taxes and tolls from traders. Only forced recruitments to function as carriers in times of war were the only compulsions. The masses did not bother who was in the saddle and aggressors succeeded in capturing power in India, not one but eleven different types. They were not even aware of their political rights and independence.