Here’s wishing everyone health, wealth, prosperity and happiness in 2010. Happy holidays!!!

UPDATE: FBI says the “US citizen and Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) operative David Headley had allegedly discussed with Pakistan-based co-conspirators the logistics of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. “This has been stated in an affidavit submitted last week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in a Chicago court. Headley had talked of the ‘potential landing sites for a team of attackers who would arrive by sea in Mumbai’. “The affidavit, the latest...

Why is the USA not allowing India to interrogate American national David Headley, the Mumbai 26/11 terror attack suspect of Pakistani origin. Is it because Headley is also an American spy? This has become a hot news topic in the Indian media. Headley, and accomplice Tahawwur Hussain Rana, was arrested by FBI in October for conspiring to bomb public places in India. David Headley was born in Washington, D. C., where his father, Sayed Salim Gilani, worked for the Voice of America, and his mother,...

Pets, such as dogs and cats, evoke strong and diverse emotions even within the family members. Of course, there are individuals who love all animals/pets. What happens when “dog people” and “cat people” each passionately express their belief that their preferred pet is superior? With researchers now doing some serious work on the subject, could it be time for a showdown? The News Scientist reports: “Until a decade ago, there was very little scientific evidence either...

How do you defeat your perceived “enemy”? Use bombs, grenades and drones? Substitute the bombs with books? Or, have a mix of both? Greg Mortenson, a humanitarian worker and author of two best-selling books, has demonstrated the power of books, and education, even in the highly violence-ridden worlds of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson is finding admirers in unlikely places. In the words of Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff: “What Greg understands better than...

What are the long-term gains/losses for the USA in sending more troops to Afghanistan? Is it a smoke-screen for America’s “other” ambitions? Or, is this another naive manifestation of the decade-old American foreign policy? Will the US “surge” in Afghanistan lead to more violence locally and elsewhere? In terms of future US containment strategy of China, Afghanistan air bases offer better prospects than Pakistan, provided USA stays embedded in Afghanistan, says Dr Subhash...

The US administration is all set for a decisive action in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama’s new strategy being set in motion “for the long haul” has the active support of India and Australia. The sending of additional US troops seems part of a long-term plan, which is likely to witness strategic involvement of the two above mentioned powerful Asia-Pacific nations. It appears that President Obama has worked out a major alliance with India and Australia. Australian troops have...

Poor Barack Obama! All eyes and ears will turn to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) where the US president would announce whether he would send more troops to Afghanistan or withdraw them. Once again the world witnesses the tussle between powerful American war machine and “a multitude of young people who were the backbone of Obama’s campaign.” (Update: Meanwhile President Obama will today announce the deployment of an extra 34,000 American troops to Afghanistan, according...

I still continue to visit art galleries and museums in New Delhi and Chandigarh (or wherever I am in the world) as a matter of habit. I am one of those ‘art for art’s sake’ type. I am neither an art expert or a buyer. But I do discover vibrational links with certain works/creations of art, and feel very comfortable in the company of artists. So the following information about art/commerce/recession fascinated me. In the wake of the economic meltdown last year, “the best that...

On my trips abroad, I have rarely found an Indian restaurant that would satisfy my native taste buds. In the West, there has been a “curry” revolution and its impact has been the most in Britain. However, there is a growing realization that Indian cooking is not just meant to set your tongue on fire or titillate the palate, it actually mixes common sense with the ancient science of Ayurveda, gaining popularity as alternative medicine. “Ever since the first British curry house...

The media will continue to speculate about the outcome of President Barack Obama’s visit to China. However, small gestures matter. The Times of London observes that Obama carrying his own umbrella while alighting from the Air Force One “may be just the right stick for China”. “Perhaps that simple umbrella moment really mattered. It showed China’s people that the arrogant America of their perceptions can also show humility, and that their own leaders risk becoming just...

Claude Lévi-Strauss, who died on October 30th (aged 100), made the study of anthropology as fashionable as philosophy and poetry. The Economist pays a tribute: “Before Claude Lévi-Strauss revolutionised the discipline, anthropology in France, and generally elsewhere, was a matter of ill-attended lectures in small, cold halls, and the collection of feathers and fish-hooks as evidence of the quaint divergences of the ‘primitive’ tribes of mankind… “As he faded, he mourned...

Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd batted spiritedly during his recent India visit and delivered a googly to bypass ticklish issues and move on to substantive bilateral economic and strategic issues that would help strengthen ties between India and Australia. Rudd squarely faced the contentious issues of racial violence against Indian students in Australia, as also the continuing ban on the supply of uranium because India has not signed the non-proliferation treaty. “Kevin Rudd says he...

Pakistan, rightly or wrongly, is generally described as an “exporter” of terrorism. Now it is trying to export something different – its famous Murree beer produced at the nearly 150-year-old Murree brewery, Pakistan’s sole producer of beer. “Understandably, making beer and whiskey in a Muslim country, where 97 per cent of the population is officially banned from enjoying your products, has never been an easy business,” reports The Independent. “And amid...

The production of a Hollywood film on the romance between Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, and Lady Edwina Mountbatten, wife of the last British viceroy of India, has been temporarily halted. The Indian government wants an assurance that the movie, Indian Summer, starring Cate Blanchett and Hugh Grant, would not contain physically intimate scenes. (Nehru’s name was also romantically linked with famous artist Amrita Sher-Gil and Padmaja Naidu, Sarojini Naidu’s daughter). Film...

It came as no surprise to me when I read a recent article “Saudi jailed for ‘bragging’ about sex”. You see, like an average man (or MCP) I, too, never lose an opportunity to brag…well, about everything!!! So, when I landed in Jeddah in the late-1970s to take up my journalistic assignment, my friends warned me to be very, very careful about two subjects — drinks and women — especially when bragging about these in public. Early this month, Caryle Murphy wrote...

In many parts of India you can see people enjoying bhang/hashish (or cannabis/marijuana) by the roadside without attracting a look of surprise or disapproval. It is only when the Western world began to raise hue and cry that people in the urban areas began to smoke/drink it discreetly at the occasional activation of the dormant laws. In nearly 80 per cent of India it is still openly consumed (generally in moderation); some places even have legal shops. India does not suffer from the Western world’s...

What is common between Saudi and Chinese officials/leaders? Whenever they speak be prepared to leave a lot of room for interpretations. So let’s see what it means when Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal (the long-time director general of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, the Al Mukhabarat Al Aamah, and the Saudi ambassador to the US) finds similarities between Osama bin-Laden and Robin Hood, a hero in English folklore. In an article in the Oped page of the Christian Science Monitor, Prince...

As a journalism teacher I am often asked: Should media cater to what interests the public or PUBLIC INTEREST? In recent times the media, with honorable exceptions, has brazenly catered to the lowest common denominator (generally pandering to the basest instincts) under the cloak of infotainment. Arianna Huffington, the moving spirit behind Huffington Post, has started HuffPost Impact to talk about issues that concern ME and YOU. The real BREAKING NEWS is harsh realities of life — homelessness,...

How much danger terrorists pose in Britain? “The campaign I am talking about is not being planned by Jihadis or fringe Irish nationalists but by white ‘neo-Nazis’ who want to murder Asians, black people, Jews and gays in the bizarre belief it will trigger a ‘race war’, says Johann Hari in The Independent. “The police are warning ever-more urgently that similar attacks seem to be coming today. The West Yorkshire Police recently launched a huge series of raids...

When we were growing up, teenagers, especially girls in our extended family, were mostly Archie fans. These comic books, to be found scattered around in many teenage bedrooms, invited my occasional curiosity. Interestingly, the nearly 70-year-old Archie is still evergreen and his romantic pursuits still invite media spotlight. “That perennially teenage redhead from Riverdale made headlines around the world when word leaked, back in May, that he would propose to his longtime love interest,...

The New Yorker has an intersting poem “Thought Problem” by Vijay Seshadri, and here it is… How strange would it be if you met yourself on the street? How strange if you liked yourself, took yourself in your arms, married your own self, propagated by techniques known only to you, and then populated the world? Replicas of you are everywhere. Some are Arabs. Some are Jews. Some live in yurts. It is an abomination, but better that your sweet and scrupulously neat self emerges at many...

Osama bin Laden has all but vanished from the radar of the American media/public. Even president Barack Obama seems no longer interested in bin Laden, while the world had thought that the “war against terror” was all about capturing bin Laden! The present chase to capture al Qaeda looks like fighting with the severed tail of a lizard. Meanwhile Osama, dead or alive, manages to come back into spotlight. Whether one hates him or not, one can’t but admire his wife Najwa bin Laden....

Granny’s tales, and their actions/thinking, have remarkable similarities be they Christians, Jews, Muslims or Hindus. Perhaps it’s because of them the world survives despite the harshness and cruelty that we see around us. Vlasta Molak, a friend, has kindly sent me a moving story of one such grandmother, who at times appears as if she was mine. Here is an excerpt in the NYT from a book to be published in November. “My grandmother never set a place for herself at family dinners....

Van Gujjars are India’s legendary & colorful nomads, mostly Muslims, tending to their buffaloes in the green pasture land in the Himalayas or its foothills. Their entry into forests, their abode for centuries, is now being increasingly blocked in the name of environmental protection. The New York Times brings this poignant story alive in a beautiful photo-essay Showcase: Traveling With the Van Gujjar Tribe. “The Van Gujjar have been living and migrating with the buffalo for more...