Category: OPINION

By Jeya Rani*

CHENNAI (IDN) – Even as you read this whever you are, somewhere in India someone is being killed or raped, humiliated or outraged, just because she or he was born in a lower caste (known as Dalit).

The ‘not so changing’ statistics of National Crime Records Bureau say that a Dalit is assaulted every two hours in India. At least three Dalit women are raped every 24 hours. Two Dalits are killed every 24 hours. Two Dalit houses are burnt down.

There is no dearth of breaking news or good TRP ratings in reporting atrocities against Dalits across India. But, why are these stories not getting the coverage it deserves in the country often touted as the world’s biggest democracy?.

By Dayan Jayatilleka*

COLOMBO (IDN) – It was perhaps the biggest Sri Lanka related news story of the year that is about to end. It should have been picked up by the international media but unsurprisingly it wasn’t. More shocking however is that it made to the local media but the biggest news was not focused on. There has not been, for instance, a single editorial on it or feature spun off from it. 

Let me back up a bit. It was the doyen of foreign correspondents in Sri Lanka, a true Sri Lankan hand of the old school, PK Balachandran of the New Indian Express, who surfaced it, and it was Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror that ran it first in Sri Lanka and it was the best reporter-cum-journalistic commentator on Sri Lankan affairs, DBS Jeyaraj, who gave the story the treatment it deserved.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – An abiding fear for Donald Trump is that the Middle East dictators’ successors in power will be militant Islamists who once elected will stop at nothing. At one time in the presidential campaign he threatened to “nuke” them. Even though the secular-minded President Bashar al-Assad appears to be winning the civil war in Syria the Islamists will sit on his tail.

Violent-inclined Islamists point to the Koran and the Hadith to justify their violence. Indeed, there are sentences in both that are close to their interpretation. Even though they may hype up these passages and ignore other more peaceful ones the truth is that Islam does have a tradition of the hard school. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of Muslims today don’t subscribe to it.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – President-elect Donald Trump has decided to poke China in the eye. He has phoned the president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, assuring her of America’s support. Yes, the US has always supported Taiwan but usually behind the scenes, apart from its arms supplies. It does not recognize it diplomatically. China was angry. After Sunday’s (December 11) news that Trump was reconsidering the US’s long-held “One China” policy Beijing is furious.

When, last November, President Xi Jinping met Ma Ying-jeou, then Taiwan’s president and leader of the Kuomintang Party, I observed that if China continues to play its hand quietly it can, if it is shrewd, in the end win re-unification. But perhaps it will be over Trump’s dead body.

By Kooi F Lim*

KUALA LUMPUR (IDN-INPS) – The Nalanda University website introduces the institution as the University that is “inspired by and aspires to match the ancient Nalanda which was an undisputed seat of learning for 800 years till the twelfth century, CE”.

But not all is well with the reincarnation of this famous ancient university.

On November 23, Nobel laureate Prof Amartya Sen resigned from the governing board. He was the inaugural chairman of the Nalanda Mentor Group (NMG), which governed the establishment of Nalanda University.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – President-elect Donald Trump is about to make the American rich even richer with his plan to cut their taxes. A cause for shame. Nevertheless, the history of America is that poorer people have done better than is commonly thought over the last two centuries.

Today they have indoor plumbing, heating, electricity, smallpox and tuberculosis-free lives, adequate nutrition, much lower child and maternal mortality, doubled life expectancy, increasingly sophisticated medical attention, the availability of contraception, secondary level schooling for their children and a shot at university, buses, trains and bicycles, much less racial prejudice, longer retirement, a rising quality of the goods they buy, better working conditions and the vote.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Donald Trump is changing the right wing’s economic spots. He is doing what Franklin Roosevelt did at the time of the Great Depression by increasing government spending – although it was the rearmament brought on by entering World War 2 that was an even more important factor in lifting America out of the doldrums.

Trump is following what Hitler did so successfully before World War 2 when he rebuilt Germany’s economic strength with autobahns and industrial subsidies (not rearmament in the beginning, as is often said). He is walking in the footsteps of President Richard Nixon who when he changed course with a new economic policy said, “We are all Keynesians now”.

By Jayantha Dhanapala*

COLOMBO (IDN) – The bipolar Cold War contest between capitalism and communism appears in hindsight to be, frightening as it was, far more simple than the conflicts and tensions of the modern multipolar world. It was a struggle between two clearly identifiable ideological alternatives entrenched in two nuclear weapon armed military alliances wedded to a Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine.

Today the situation is not as clear-cut. A global revival of nationalism – especially economic nationalism – laced with a complex mix of populism, anti-immigration policies and extremism of various forms transcends national boundaries together with rampant consumerism encouraged by globalization.

By Dr. Patrick I. Gomes, ACP Secretary-General

Note: The following text is based on ACP Secretary-General’s address on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) on 21 November 2016 in Vienna.

VIENNA | BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – UNIDO cooperation has been very fruitful in strengthening investment capacities in the 79 member states of the ACP Group, particularly to promote sustainable energy, value addition to commodities and development of small and medium enterprise.

In responding to the questions: How the ACP Secretariat is contributing and will be contributing to the promotion of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Developments Goals we are happy to highlight two principles that underlie the approach of the ACP Group to sustainable development.

By Jonathan Power

LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Trotsky, the one-time close comrade of Lenin, reportedly said, “You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you”.

This is how it seems to have been with President Barack Obama when it comes to his policy towards Russia. Having come to power with President Vladimir Putin open to a closer relationship after the aggressive pushing forward of NATO’s frontier during the time of presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama will leave the presidency with a state of hostility between the Russia and the U.S. that most thought had evaporated once the Cold War ended in 1991.