Ramesh Thakur Op-Ed ContributionsRamesh Thakur Op-Ed Contributions
Reach out to Israel
India is the world's most populous and Israel the Middle East's only democracy. Judaism and Hinduism are among the world's ancient civilisations and "root faiths" that have sprouted other major religions.
Protection and punishment
Dec. 9 and 10 marked the anniversaries of the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Both were an acknowledgment of the dark side of European history and embodied the determination to ban vices that had been let loose with terrible consequences by Westerners.
Howard on the nose, Labour by a Ruddslide
Poor John Howard. Reckless on Kyoto, clueless in Iraq, fickle on civil liberties, mean to migrants and minorities, ruthless towards the workers - and now jobless. He has lost his own seat, which he has represented since 1974, the first sitting Prime Minister since 1929 to do so.
No nukes, no proliferation
The rising anxieties about nuclear weapons are rooted in two major and parallel developments: a renaissance of nuclear power and a resurgence of old-fashioned national security threats that supposedly had ebbed with the end of the Cold War.
Musharraf cannot be part of the solution in Pakistan
Clearly, a general election in Pakistan is free and fair if it delivers the election to the general. Pervez Musharraf's mastery of Orwell-speak is unmatched among contemporary leaders beyond Burma. Benazir Bhutto is under house arrest for her own safety.
The general's on his last legs? Think again
For outsiders, as for Pakistanis, the choice is between worse and the worst: a militantly Islamic, 165-million strong, nuclear-armed failed state at the strategic crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. President Pervez Musharraf has been triangulated ever more tightly by the jihadists, Islamists and judiciary.
War in our time: the myth of appeasement
The European backing for "tough" American policy towards Iran suggests that the age-old instinct for appeasing the predatory propensity of the great and powerful is alive and well.
Bhutto the beneficiary of dynastic democracy
Benazir Bhutto's 1990 autobiography was titled "Daughter of Destiny." The sense of destiny manifested itself on Oct. 18, when she returned to Pakistan to reclaim the family legacy of ruling over the volatile, nuclear-armed country that has been buffeted by increasingly strong Islamist crosswinds.
Topple tyrants with courage, unity and rule of law
The violent crackdown against the mass protests led by Buddhist monks in Burma is the latest, but surely not the last, call on our conscience without borders.
US, Iran play with fire
THE RECENT in-your-face introduction by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have delighted the US audience, but it has compounded America's image problem in the rest of the world.