In 2006, Brazil, Russia, India, and China created the BRIC group, which turned into BRICS after South Africa joined the four nations in 2011.
Director of the Center for BRICS Studies at Fudan University points out that “in this context, the emergence and development of BRICS cooperation mechanism can be considered timely”
SHANGHAI, February 11. /TASS/. The West can no longer be the so-called globalization leader, while the emergence of BRICS in this context is timely, a Chinese university professor told TASS on Saturday.
Shen Yi, Director of the Center for BRICS Studies at Fudan University, said Western countries had encountered inflation and economic problems domestically after going on a consumption spree in the wake of the Cold War. “From a global consumption point of view, this primarily manifests itself in a period where the world is facing problems and challenges, including the spread of COVID-19, economic growth, climate change, etc., and Western countries can no longer offer an efficient public product and are unable to act as the so-called leader and driving force of globalization,” he believes.
“In this context, the emergence and development of BRICS cooperation mechanism can be considered timely,” the expert said as he described the practical cooperation model as mature.
“This can lure other developing markets and the developed world,” Shen argued. According to him, BRICS can make substantial progress and expand in the next decade.
In 2006, Brazil, Russia, India, and China created the BRIC group, which turned into BRICS after South Africa joined the four nations in 2011. This year, South Africa is chairing the group for the third time.
AYUSH, by the way, stands for Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy. It is a system of healing that many hope will be amplified by this latest revelation about ayurveda and covid.
Only 300 people who received Ayurvedic medicine had to be hospitalized for the disease, Rajesh Kotecha, the union minister, explained, further noting that the other 64,700 patients experienced only mild symptoms and recovered relatively quickly.
The 9th World Ayurveda Congress and Expo recently took place in India, and a top official from the Union Ministry of Ayush revealed that among the 65,000 covid patients there who were treated with Ayurveda throughout the pandemic, not a single one ended up dying from the virus.
Only 300 people who received Ayurvedic medicine had to be hospitalized for the disease, Rajesh Kotecha, the union minister, explained, further noting that the other 64,700 patients experienced only mild symptoms and recovered relatively quickly.
All of this was uncovered by Seva Bharathi, the Central Council for Research in Siddha (CCRS), and various universities that conducted research into the matter over the past several years.
“Out of these patients, 65,000 people were in home isolation, and only 300 of them required hospitalization,” Kotecha said about the work of his ministry. “This is less than half a percent whereas the hospitalization rate at the time was 7-10 per cent.”
AYUSH, by the way, stands for Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy. It is a system of healing that many hope will be amplified by this latest revelation about ayurveda and covid.
Kotecha revealed that AYUSH is only conducted by the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), Central Council for Research in Yoga and Naturopathy (CCRYN), CCRS, and Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine (CCMRUM). More needs to be done, he added, to incorporate these latest findings into that system.
“There is a great mismatching of skilling in the sector and all stakeholders must act together to find a solution,” he said. “We need to find a mechanism that will open up possibilities for the sector, the country as well as the globe as there are lots of unanswered questions to be answered.” (Related: In early 2020, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that drinking cow urine and dung could cure coronavirus.)
Indian doctors are strategizing about how to incorporate more Ayurveda into mainstream medicine
Dr. Nandini Kumar, a former deputy director general at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), also gave a speech at the event about ayurveda and covid. In it, she stressed the importance of working together in an interdisciplinary and interprofessional capacity to figure out how to approach the ethics committee about this discovery.
Dr. K. Madangopal, a senior consultant with NITI Aayog, expanded upon this by stating that patients need a supportive system based on research data from the AYUSH industry.
Dr. Ram Manohar, director of the Amrita Centre for Advanced Research in Ayurveda (ACARA), Amritapuri, added to this that there needs to be a dramatic change in the way Ayurveda research and practice takes place across India.
Appearances at the expo were also made by Dr. Avind Chopra from Pune and Dr. Kishore Kumar Ramkrishnan, a professor at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS).
The following five Ayurvedic remedies can help you to naturally boost your immune system, which is especially important during the cold winter months:
1) Kadha or herbal tea possesses strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. It often contains Tulsi (holy basil), kalimirch (black pepper), dalchini (cinnamon), shunthi (dry ginger), and munakka (raisin), as well as jaggery and lemon juice for flavor.
2) Golden milk or turmeric tea is just what it sounds like: milk or hot tea containing turmeric.
3) Nasya involves the application of oil (i.e., ghee, sesame, or coconut) in the nostrils using a Neti pot.
4) Chyawanprash is a blend of Amla and thirty other herbs with jaggery that is consumed.
An academic study by @JasonHickel estimates British colonialism caused 165 million deaths in India from 1880-1920, while stealing trillions of dollars of wealth
The global capitalist system was founded on European imperial genocides, which inspired Hitlerhttps://t.co/2R5cdMGU0L
The meeting this week between two Eurasian security bosses is a further step toward dusting away the west’s oversized Asian footprint…
Two guys are hanging out in a cozy room in Tehran with a tantalizing new map of the world in the background.
Nothing to see here? On the contrary. These two Eurasian security giants are no less than the – unusually relaxed – Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Ali Shamkhani, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
And why are they so relaxed? Because the future prospects revolving around the main theme of their conversation – the Russia-Iran strategic partnership – could not be more exciting.
This was a very serious business affair: an official visit, at the invitation of Shamkhani.
Patrushev was in Tehran on the exact same day that Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu – following a recommendation from General Sergey Surovikin, the overall commander of the Special Military Operation – ordered a Russian retreat from Kherson.
Patrushev knew it for days – so he had no problem stepping on a plane to take care of business in Tehran. After all, the Kherson drama is part of the Patrushev negotiations with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Ukraine, which have been going on for weeks, with Saudi Arabia as an eventual go-between.
Besides Ukraine, the two discussed “information security, as well as measures to counter interference in the internal affairs of both countries by western special services,” according to a report by Russia’s TASS news agency.
Both countries, as we know, are particular targets of western information warfare and sabotage, with Iran currently the focus of one of these no-holds-barred, foreign-backed, destabilization campaigns.
Patrushev was officially received by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who went straight to the point: “The cooperation of independent countries is the strongest response to the sanctions and destabilization policies of the US and its allies.”
Patrushev, for his part, assured Raisi that for the Russian Federation, strategic relations with Iran are essential for Russian national security.
So that goes way beyond Geranium-2 kamikaze drones – the Russian cousins of the Shahed-136 – wreaking havoc on the Ukrainian battlefield. This, by the way, elicited a direct mention later on by Shamkhani: “Iran welcomes a peaceful settlement in Ukraine and is in favor of peace based on dialogue between Moscow and Kiev.”
Patrushev and Shamkhani of course discussed security issues and the proverbial “cooperation in the international arena.” But what may be more significant is that the Russian delegation included officials from several key economic agencies.
There were no leaks – but that suggests serious economic connectivity remains at the heart of the strategic partnership between the two top-sanctioned nations in Eurasia.
Key in the discussions was the Iranian focus on the fast expansion of bilateral trade in national currencies – ruble and rial. That happens to be at the center of the drive by both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS towards multipolarity. Iran is now a full SCO member – the only West Asian nation to be part of the Asian strategic behemoth – and will apply to become part of BRICS+.
Have swap, will travel
The Patrushev-Shamkhani get-together happened ahead of the signing, next month, of a whopping $40 billion energy deal with Gazprom, as previously announced by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Safari.
The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has already clinched an initial $6.5 billion deal. All that revolves around the development of two gas deposits and six oilfields; swaps in natural gas and oil products; LNG projects; and building more gas pipelines.
Last month, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak announced a swap of 5 million tons of oil and 10 billion cubic meters of gas, to be finished by the end of 2022. And he confirmed that “the amount of Russian investment in Iran’s oil fields will increase.”
Barter of course is ideal for Moscow and Tehran to jointly bypass interminably problematic sanctions and payment settlement issues – linked to the western financial system. On top of it, Russia and Iran are able to invest in direct trade links via the Caspian Sea.
At the recent Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, Raisi forcefully proposed that a successful “new Asia” must necessarily develop an endogenous model for independent states.
As an SCO member, and playing a very important role, alongside Russia and India, in the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), Raisi is positioning Iran in a key vector of multilateralism.
Since Tehran entered the SCO, cooperation with both Russia and China, predictably, is on overdrive. Patrushev’s visit is part of that process. Tehran is leaving behind decades of Iranophobia and every possible declination of American “maximum pressure” – from sanctions to attempts at color revolution – to dynamically connect across Eurasia.
BRI, SCO, INSTC
Iran is a key Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partner for China’s grand infrastructure project to connect Eurasia via road, sea, and train. In parallel, the multimodal Russian-led INSTC is essential to promote trade between the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia – at the same time solidifying Russia’s presence in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region.
Iran and India have committed to offer part of Chabahar port in Iran to Central Asian nations, complete with access to exclusive economic zones.
At the recent SCO summit in Samarkand, both Russia and China made it quite clear – especially for the collective west – that Iran is no longer going to be treated as a pariah state.
So it is no wonder Iran is entering a new business era with all members of the SCO under the sign of an emerging financial order being designed mostly by Russia, China and India. As far as strategic partnerships go, the ties between Russia and India (President Narendra Modi called it an unbreakable friendship) is as strong as those between Russia and China. And when it comes to Russia, that’s what Iran is aiming at.
The Patrushev-Shamkhani strategic meeting will hurl western hysteria to unseen levels – as it completely smashes Iranophobia and Russophobia in one fell swoop. Iran as a close ally is an unparalleled strategic asset for Russia in the drive towards multipolarity.
Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) are already negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in parallel to those swaps involving Russian oil. The west’s reliance on the SWIFT banking messaging system hardly makes any difference to Russia and Iran. The Global South is watching it closely, especially in Iran’s neighborhood where oil is commonly traded in US dollars.
It is starting to become clear to anyone in the west with an IQ above room temperature that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal), in the end, does not matter anymore. Iran’s future is directly connected to the success of three of the BRICS: Russia, China and India. Iran itself may soon become a BRICS+ member.
There’s more: Iran is even becoming a role model for the Persian Gulf: witness the lengthy queue of regional states aspiring toward gaining SCO membership. The Trumpian “Abraham Accords?” What’s that? BRICS/SCO/BRI is the only way to go in West Asia today.
International security should be a collective effort, not a “zero-sum game,” India’s defense minister has said
The minister also warned about the growing impact of “information warfare” and fake news campaigns on political stability, which he said was used for “engineering the opinion or perspective of the masses.”
A truly stable and just global order can only be created when nations cease attempting to ensure their own security at the expense of others, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh has said.
Speaking to the National Defense College on Thursday, Singh argued that the world should develop a collective approach to security.
“India does not believe in a world order where few are considered superior to others,” he said, adding that India’s own strategic policy should be “moral.”
If security were to become a truly collective enterprise, then the world could begin creating “a global order which is beneficial to all of us,” Singh added.
National security should not be seen as a “zero-sum game,” he insisted, adding that nations should instead seek to find “win-win” solutions that would benefit everyone.
“We should not be guided by narrow self-interest which is not beneficial in the long run,” the defense minister warned, calling for leaders to adopt a principle of “enlightened self-interest” that would make their nations more sustainable and resilient to shocks.
A “strong and prosperous” India should not be built at the expense of others, he said. Instead, New Delhi would prefer to “help other nations realize their full potential.”
The minister also warned about the growing impact of “information warfare” and fake news campaigns on political stability, which he said was used for “engineering the opinion or perspective of the masses.”
This information war is “most evident in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine” where both sides use social media to “spread competing narratives about the war and portray the conflict on their own terms.”
The ideas expressed by Singh resemble the arguments made by Russia in early 2022 when it sought an agreement with the US and NATO to reduce the risk of a conflict on the European continent. At the time, Moscow similarly argued that the security of one nation could not be enhanced at the expense of others.
Moscow requested that NATO refrain from any military activity on the territory of former Warsaw Pact states that joined after 1997. It also requested that NATO vow not to expand further east. Its proposals for a long-term European security architecture were rejected, however.
PATRIOT 101, [Nov 5, 2022 at 8:57 PM] 2500 cattle DEAD in the Indian state of Gujarat. Official response says its due to 'Lumpy Skin Disease'…. farmers on the ground say the deaths mounted up after they were given a 'vaccine' to help. pic.twitter.com/MludxNxaOy
Looking ahead, the IMF forecasts this to become the new status quo, with India expected to leap further ahead of the UK up to 2027 – making India the fourth largest economy by that time, too, and leaving the UK behind in sixth.
India’s growth is accompanied by a period of rapid inflation in the UK, creating a cost of living crisis and the risk of a recession which the Bank of England predicts could last into 2024.
This situation, coupled with a turbulent political period and the continued hangover of Brexit, led to Indian output overtaking that of the UK in the final quarter of 2021, with the first of 2022 offering no change in the ranking.
Looking ahead, the IMF forecasts this to become the new status quo, with India expected to leap further ahead of the UK up to 2027 – making India the fourth largest economy by that time, too, and leaving the UK behind in sixth.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet in Uzbekistan on Friday, the Kremlin has said, as the two countries aim to boost energy and trade ties.
“There are plans to discuss issues of ‘saturation’ of the Indian market with Russian fertiliser and bilateral food supplies,” it said on Tuesday mentioning the topics of the meeting to be held on the sidelines of a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a regional security bloc.
“First of all, moves, aimed at boosting bilateral trade flows, will be looked at. The trade turnover reached $11.5bn in the first half of 2022, up almost 120 percent year-on-year,” the Kremlin said.
India’s fertiliser imports from Russia rose to $1.03bn in April-July compared with $773.54m in the whole of the last fiscal year to March 31, 2022, according to the Indian commerce ministry’s website.
India is looking for a three-year fertiliser import deal with Russia.
Attempts to sign a long-term fertiliser import deal earlier this year were hit by the challenging geopolitical situation after Russia launched what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24.
Prime Minister Modi has sought greater energy cooperation with Russia despite Western pressure to cut ties with Moscow following the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
“India is keen to strengthen its partnership with Russia on Arctic issues. There is also immense potential for cooperation in the field of energy,” Modi said last week addressing a virtual meeting of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.
Putin will also meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit in Uzbekistan’s ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand. India and China are key buyers of Russian energy, helping to cushion Moscow from the effects of Western sanctions and allowing the two Asian economies to secure raw materials at discounts compared with supplies from other countries.
The two Asian nations have not publicly criticised Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, despite the outcry in the West.
India, which rarely used to buy Russian oil, has emerged as Moscow’s second-biggest oil customer after China.
Refiners in India, the world’s third-biggest oil importer and consumer, have been snapping up discounted Russian oil, shunned by some Western countries and companies.
The Group of Seven countries is working to cap the price of Russian oil from December 5 in an attempt to cut the price Russia receives for oil without reducing its petroleum exports to world markets.
So far, India and China have not said if they will join the price cap mechanism.
Oil minister Hardeep Singh Puri last week said India would examine the issue when more details are available. He also said many conversations and proposals were taking place and “we will see who is participating” in the price cap mechanism.
The Centre on Thursday said that about 57,000 cattle have died so far due to lumpy skin disease across various parts of the country and asked affected States to boost the vaccination process to control the disease.
Lumpy skin disease outbreak in India kills at least 57,000 cattle
Rajasthan has turned into a giant cattle graveyard as the lumpy virus is wreaking havoc. Overall, over 57K cattle have died due to lumpy skin disease in India. 46K have died in Rajasthan alone.
Meanwhile, the Lumpy skin disease epidemic has spread in six-seven States, including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.
The following distressing video shows thousands of dead cows in the desert of Rajasthan due to lumpy skin disease (Lumpy Virus).
The Centre on Thursday said that about 57,000 cattle have died so far due to lumpy skin disease across various parts of the country and asked affected States to boost the vaccination process to control the disease.
Lumpy skin disease (LSD) is a contagious viral disease that affects cattle and causes fever, nodules on the skin, and can also lead to death. The disease gets spread by mosquitoes, flies, lice, wasps, and by direct contact among the cattle, and through contaminated food and water.
The main symptoms are fever in animals, discharge from the eyes and nose, salivation from the mouth, soft blisters like nodules all over the body, reduced milk production, and difficulty in eating, which sometimes lead to the animal’s death.
Professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
Published On 19 Dec 201819 Dec 2018
Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, and his wife, Lady Edwina Mountbatten, ride in the state carriage towards the Viceregal lodge in New Delhi, on March 22, 1947 [File: AP]
There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India – as horrible as it may have been – was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long – the story goes – was a gesture of Britain’s benevolence.
New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik – just published by Columbia University Press – deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.
It’s a staggering sum. For perspective, $45 trillion is 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic product of the United Kingdom today.
How did this come about?
It happened through the trade system. Prior to the colonial period, Britain bought goods like textiles and rice from Indian producers and paid for them in the normal way – mostly with silver – as they did with any other country. But something changed in 1765, shortly after the East India Company took control of the subcontinent and established a monopoly over Indian trade.
Here’s how it worked. The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third)to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, “buying” from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them.
It was a scam – theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware of what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was not the same as the one who showed up to buy their goods. Had it been the same person, they surely would have smelled a rat.
Some of the stolen goods were consumed in Britain, and the rest were re-exported elsewhere. The re-export system allowed Britain to finance a flow of imports from Europe, including strategic materials like iron, tar and timber, which were essential to Britain’s industrialisation. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution depended in large part on this systematic theft from India.
On top of this, the British were able to sell the stolen goods to other countries for much more than they “bought” them for in the first place, pocketing not only 100 percent of the original value of the goods but also the markup.
After the British Raj took over in 1858, colonisers added a special new twist to the tax-and-buy system. As the East India Company’s monopoly broke down, Indian producers were allowed to export their goods directly to other countries. But Britain made sure that the payments for those goods nonetheless ended up in London.
How did this work? Basically, anyone who wanted to buy goods from India would do so using special Council Bills – a unique paper currency issued only by the British Crown. And the only way to get those bills was to buy them from London with gold or silver. So traders would pay London in gold to get the bills, and then use the bills to pay Indian producers. When Indians cashed the bills in at the local colonial office, they were “paid” in rupees out of tax revenues – money that had just been collected from them. So, once again, they were not in fact paid at all; they were defrauded.
Meanwhile, London ended up with all of the gold and silver that should have gone directly to the Indians in exchange for their exports.
This corrupt system meant that even while India was running an impressive trade surplus with the rest of the world – a surplus that lasted for three decades in the early 20th century – it showed up as a deficit in the national accounts because the real income from India’s exports wasappropriatedin its entirety by Britain.
Some point to this fictional “deficit” as evidence that India was a liability to Britain. But exactly the opposite is true. Britain intercepted enormous quantities of income that rightly belonged to Indian producers. India was the goose that laid the golden egg. Meanwhile, the “deficit” meant that India had no option but to borrow from Britain to finance its imports. So the entire Indian population was forced into completely unnecessary debt to their colonial overlords, further cementing British control.
Britain used the windfall from this fraudulent system to fuel the engines of imperial violence – funding the invasion of China in the 1840s and the suppression of the Indian Rebellion in 1857. And this was on top of what the Crown took directly from Indian taxpayers to pay for its wars. As Patnaik points out, “the cost of all Britain’s wars of conquest outside Indian borders were charged always wholly or mainly to Indian revenues.”
And that’s not all. Britain used this flow of tribute from India to finance the expansion of capitalism in Europe and regions of European settlement, like Canada and Australia. So not only the industrialisation of Britain but also the industrialisation of much of the Western world was facilitated by extraction from the colonies.
Patnaik identifies four distinct economic periods in colonial India from 1765 to 1938, calculates the extraction for each, and then compounds at a modest rate of interest (about 5 percent, which is lower than the market rate) from the middle of each period to the present. Adding it all up, she finds that the total drain amounts to $44.6 trillion. This figure is conservative, she says, and does not include the debts that Britain imposed on India during the Raj.
These are eye-watering sums. But the true costs of this drain cannot be calculated. If India had been able to invest its own tax revenues and foreign exchange earnings in development – as Japan did – there’s no telling how history might have turned out differently. India could very well have become an economic powerhouse. Centuries of poverty and suffering could have been prevented.
All of this is a sobering antidote to the rosy narrative promoted by certain powerful voices in Britain. The conservative historian Niall Ferguson has claimed that British rule helped “develop” India. While he was prime minister, David Cameron asserted that British rule was a net help to India.
This narrative has found considerable traction in the popular imagination: according to a 2014 YouGov poll, 50 percent of people in Britain believe that colonialism was beneficial to the colonies.
Yet during the entire 200-year history of British rule in India, there was almost no increase in per capita income. In fact, during the last half of the 19th century – the heyday of British intervention – income in India collapsed by half. The average life expectancy of Indians dropped by a fifth from 1870 to 1920. Tens of millions died needlessly of policy-induced famine.
Britain didn’t develop India. Quite the contrary – as Patnaik’s work makes clear – India developed Britain.
What does this require of Britain today? An apology? Absolutely. Reparations? Perhaps – although there is not enough money in all of Britain to cover the sums that Patnaik identifies. In the meantime, we can start by setting the story straight. We need to recognise that Britain retained control of India not out of benevolence but for the sake of plunder and that Britain’s industrial rise didn’t emerge sui generis from the steam engine and strong institutions, as our schoolbooks would have it, but depended on violent theft from other lands and other peoples.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article erroneously had the beginning of the British Raj as 1847. The correct year is 1858.
India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, TS Tirumurti, has accused the Netherlands of “patronizing” his country after the Dutch ambassador to the UK publicly scolded New Delhi for abstaining on UN General Assembly resolutions on the war in Ukraine.
“Kindly don’t patronize us, Ambassador. We know what to do,” Tirumurti wrote in a tweet to Dutch envoy Karel van Oosterom on Thursday.
Tirumurti’s tweet came in response to van Oosterom’s (now-deleted) warning that India “should not have abstained” from votes pertaining to Russia and the war in Ukraine and that it should “respect the UN Charter.”
Despite repeated calls and pressure to join the West in helping to isolate Russia over the Ukraine war, New Delhi has been reluctant to cut ties with Moscow.
India has abstained on multiple votes and resolutions at the UN General Assembly this year, including a vote moved by the US in April to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council over accusations of the killing of civilians.
The Asian giant also abstained from a vote brought by Ukraine and its backers in March, condemning Russia over the humanitarian situation in the country, saying then that the focus should be on the cessation of hostilities.
In a statement delivered Wednesday at the UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine, Tirumurti reiterated India’s position that “pursuing the path of dialogue and diplomacy” is the “only way out” of the crisis.
“India remains on the side of peace and therefore believes that there will be no winning side in this conflict and, while those impacted by this conflict will continue to suffer, diplomacy will be a lasting casualty,” he said.
The South Asian nation has a strong trading relationship with Russia, receiving arms from Moscow in previous agreements between the two sides. It even deemed the current situation an opportunity to broaden cooperation. The country boosted oil purchases from Russia recently, despite pressure from Washington.
Russia attacked its neighbor in late February, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbas republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
The West has been consistently persuading New Delhi to alter its position on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, invoking the morality of the country, which is considered the world’s largest democracy. However, India has remained consistent in its position, prioritising its national interests on the issue.
While the West is persuading India to join them in the so-called “global response” against Russia, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has subtly conveyed that New Delhi was revisiting its foreign policy, leaving behind an era of pleasing the world.
“We have to be confident about who we are. I think it’s better to engage with the world on the basis of who we are rather than try and please the world by being a pale imitation of what they are,” Jaishankar said on Wednesday at the Raisina Dialogue.
He made these remarks in the presence of officials and ministers of Western countries present at the Raisina Dialogue – an annual event organized by the think tank Observer Research Foundation in collaboration with the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi.
“The idea that others define us, that you know somewhere we need to get approval from other quarters, I think, that’s an era we need to put behind,” the minister added.
Sitting beside the top Indian diplomat, Joao Cravinho, the Portuguese foreign minister, conveyed to EU leaders questioning New Delhi’s stand over the Ukraine crisis that Europe should impose trust in India’s views about the situation, as the Ukrainian crisis has further underscored the need for Europe and India to strengthen their partnership.
“We can strategically trust India. It is a positive development and certainly intended from Russia’s perspective,” Joao Cravinho said.
Cravinho emphasised that weak Russia will not positively affect the global order. Several foreign ministers of the European Union had questioned New Delhi for not directly criticising Russia over its special military operation in the eastern European nation.
The Indian minister emphasised that New Delhi should be practical about how it leverages the international environment and correct mistakes made in the past by “paying more attention to hard security.”
On Tuesday, the Indian foreign minister rebuffed criticism made by some European ministers on New Delhi’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, asking where Europe was when countries in Asia – such as Afghanistan – faced a crisis.
India has urged Russia and Ukraine to cease the violence and return to dialogue and diplomacy to end the crisis. It has abstained from voting on UN resolutions 11 times since the special military operation began in Ukraine.
In India the government insisted Pfizer be accountable for their product and not just make billions in profit. Pfizer refused and is not in the country.
In Canada Trudeau purchased millions of doses until 2024, everything's a secret, and anyone protesting is met with violence.
As I was saying in the last post, many nations have had it with the arrogant US. There are so many countries abandoning the dollar for trade purposes that this new phenomenon has its own name: De-dollarization.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (L) with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi show documents to reporters in February 2018.
Iran’s switch to currencies other than the US dollar is showing the first signs of paying off.
Traders say Iran overtook Russia as the top buyer of Indian tea last year, after the two countries agreed on a rupee-rial trade arrangement.
The two traditional trade partners launched the arrangement to bypass restrictions imposed by the US, which has been pursuing a “maximum pressure” policy against the Islamic Republic.
“This boost really has come because of the rupee-rial trade arrangement that we have had with Iran,” Azam Monem, one of India’s largest tea exporters, told Bloomberg on Monday.
Monem, who is the director at McLeod Russel India Ltd., said India’s diplomacy should allow the country “to remain a partner to Iran” which is a key buyer of Indian tea and rice.
According to Bloomberg, Iran imported 53.5 million kilograms of tea from India last year, a rise of 74% from 2018.
The rise came even as Indian exports overall dropped 3% to 248 million kilograms last year as bad weather hit production in the crucial months of June and July.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently hailed longstanding relations between the two countries, emphasizing that relations between Tehran and New Delhi were unbreakable.
The remarks came less than a month after Indian media quoted Zarif as having said that India had actually put itself “on the receiving end” of US “bullying” by caving in to illegal sanctions and ending oil imports from the Islamic Republic.
“India has certainly taken a stance against the sanctions… so that’s been encouraging, (but) of course, we expected our friends to be more resilient vis-a-vis US pressure,” Zarif reportedly told a group of visiting journalists from New Delhi in November.
India was Iran’s second largest oil customer, importing 457,000 barrels of oil a day before the US unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May 2018.
India stopped importing oil from Iran In May 2019 after the White house terminated sanctions waivers for major buyers of crude from the Islamic Republic in an attempt to bring Iran’s oil exports to “zero”.
In December, Iran and India agreed to speed up the development of Chabahar port which New Delhi views as a gateway to access Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar announced the news after meeting Iranian officials in Tehran where the two sides took a stock of the state of bilateral relations after the US reimposition of sanctions on Tehran.
For Indians, Chabahar is on course to change the whole economic geography of the region because it gives them direct unobstructed access to Central Asia, to Russia and Europe.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said his country would spend $500 million to develop Chabahar and related infrastructure to boost growth and spur the unhindered flow of commerce in the region.
Launched in 2016 between Iran, Afghanistan and India, the project has faced repeated holdups, however.
is a medical doctor and social commentator on medicine, science, and technology.
5 Dec, 2019
Western historians who condemn the USSR for the deaths under Stalin’s dictatorship should shed a spotlight on the millions who died under British rule, including those in engineered famines across the Indian subcontinent.
The UK general election is a week away and a significant chunk of the country’s media, three-quarters of which is reportedly owned by a few billionaires, is hard at work digging up dirt on Jeremy Corbyn to prevent a Labour Party victory at all costs. However, this uphill task is becoming harder as recent polls show the frequently cited Conservative lead over Labour is rapidly decreasing. The possibility that Mr Corbyn will be Britain’s next prime minister, perhaps at the head of a minority government, is now grudgingly acknowledged.
When Corbyn launched Labour’s manifesto at the end of November, he pledged to conduct a formal enquiry into the legacy of the British Empire “to understand our contribution to the dynamics of violence and insecurity across regions previously under British colonial rule” and set up an organisation “to ensure historical injustice, colonialism, and role of the British Empire is taught in the national curriculum.”
The idea of teaching a population about the unsavoury aspects of its history, and in Britain’s case revealing how several of today’s geopolitical crises are rooted in the past folly and avarice-fuelled actions of its ruling class, is commendable.
It would be prudent to inform UK citizens about the British Empire’s divide and conquer tactics across the Indian subcontinent and Africa, the stirring up of Hindu-Muslim antagonism in the former, or the impact of the Sykes-Picot agreement that precipitated instability across the Middle East which continues to the present day. Doing so might enable the public to gain a better understanding of how past actions affect present realities, in turn making them more eager to hold contemporary politicians to account so past mistakes are not repeated. As Spanish philosopher George Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Some right-wingers may be quick to dismiss Corbyn’s manifesto promise as self-indulgent politically-correct onanism. Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage commented: “I don’t think I should apologise for what people did 300 years ago. It was a different world, a different time.” Yet, some of the violence perpetuated in the name of protecting the empire’s interests is not exactly ancient history, having occurred within living memory for some. The Malayan Emergency, Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising, the Suez Crisis, or the deployment of British troops to Northern Ireland are a few examples.
Segments of the intelligentsia may also feel unease at Corbyn’s manifesto promise, namely those academics who still view the British Empire as the UK’s legacy and ‘gift’ to the world. This includes those who, by extension, consider modern Britain (and the West in general) as bestowed with a cultural superiority that makes it the unchallenged arbiter of global affairs and the indisputable defender of ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’, regardless of what these laudable terms have been corrupted into justifying. The invasion of Iraq, the destruction of Libya, and the civil wars in Syria and Ukraine are a few manifestations of Western intervention.
Some Western historians fall over themselves condemning the USSR for the millions who died under the dictatorship of Stalin, with a significant proportion of these victims perishing during famines. The people of the former Soviet Union need to come to terms with their history, just like any other country. In the meantime, Western historians should shine a spotlight closer to home. Engineered famines across the Indian subcontinent reportedly killed up to 29 million in the late 19th century and a further 3 million in 1943.
The Indian subcontinent was only one of the regions under British rule and the deaths mentioned above do not include those violently killed by occupying forces. Unlike the USSR, which kept oppression confined within its borders and those of neighbouring countries under its sphere of influence, Britain together with the American Empire (to which it handed over the baton of imperialism after WWII) has interfered on pretty much every continent except Antarctica. In modern times we see the UK, now a vassal of the US-led NATO empire, condemn nations that refuse to submit to Western hegemony.
Apologists for Empire claim it brought ‘progress’ such as railways, infrastructure, education, cricket, as well as free trade and order (i.e. Pax Britannica). Irrespective of whether such ‘gifts’ were appreciated by occupied nations, this line of reasoning opens up a dangerous precedent. For example, supporters of Stalin overlook his despotism by crediting him with rapidly industrializing an underdeveloped nation that later played a major role in defeating Nazism, bestowing upon him an honour that instead belongs to millions of rank and file soldiers, officers, and commanders of the Red Army.
During the time of the British Empire, as was the case with other European empires and many dictatorships, the majority of working people were not personally enriched by the plunder of imperialism and their descendants are not to blame for the actions of the former ruling class. Nevertheless, learning one’s history is the first step to understanding the present, ensuring today’s leaders are held to account, and preventing the same mistakes from being repeated.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
“The “only nuclear criminal in the world”, according to the “supreme leader’s” successor, Ali Khamanei, “is falsely claiming to fight the proliferation of nuclear weapons”.”
“And both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers. Indeed, there was nothing more pathetic, after Pakistan’s first nuclear tests in 1998, than to travel around this other “Islamic republic” and, amid the abject poverty of its villages, gaze at the awful commemorative papier-mache recreations of the granite mountains in which the explosions took place. There is, I suppose, no point in adding that there are more armed extremist Islamists on Islamabad’s payroll in both Pakistan and Afghanistan – coddled by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency – than there are in the whole of Iran.”
Photograph Source: Leslie Groves, Manhattan Project director, with a map of Japan – Public Domain
We like our anniversaries in blocks of 50 or 100 – at a push we’ll tolerate a 25. The 100th anniversary of the Somme (2016), the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain (2015). Next year, we’ll remember the end of the Second World War, the first – and so far the only – nuclear war in history.
This week marks only the 74th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It doesn’t fit in to our journalistic scorecards and “timelines”. Over the past few days, I’ve had to look hard to find a headline about the two Japanese cities.
But, especially in the Middle East and what we like to call southeast Asia, we should be remembering these gruesome anniversaries every month. Hiroshima was atomic-bombed 74 years ago on Tuesday, Nagasaki 74 years ago on Friday. Given the extent of the casualty figures, you’d think they’d be unforgettable. But we don’t quite know (nor ever will) what they were.
The bombing of the two cities, we are told, left between 129,000 and 226,000 dead. The first US statistics suggested only 66,000 dead in Hiroshima, 39,000 in Nagasaki. But in later years, the Hiroshima authorities estimated their dead alone at 202,118 – taking account of those who later died of radiation sickness, rather than just the incinerated corpses and human shadows left in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.
In the Middle East, where Aleppo and Mosul and Raqqa count the dead from conventional bombs – American, Russian, Syrian – in the tens of thousands, you might think the 1945 statistics would leave the folk who live there pretty cold. But the book of crises unfolding in the region – by the chapter, almost every month – is of critical importance to every soul who lives between the Mediterranean and India.
For India itself is a nuclear power. So is Pakistan. And so, of course, is Israel. None of them have signed the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT). All are threatening war, over Kashmir, or over Iran, the only nation under threat which has not (yet) got nuclear weapons.
Ayatollah Khomeini originally seized on America’s refusal to express its remorse at the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings: “They’ve killed hundreds of thousands of people … many years have passed and they can’t even bring themselves to apologise,” he said, and the current Iranian leadership has continued Khomeini’s theme. The “only nuclear criminal in the world”, according to the “supreme leader’s” successor, Ali Khamanei, “is falsely claiming to fight the proliferation of nuclear weapons”.
Iran, it should be added, did sign the NPT, but was later found in non-compliance of the safeguard agreement. And Iran, of course, is the non-nuclear power now being constantly threatened with war by two nuclear powers – America and Israel – the first of which, under Donald Trump, tore up his country’s commitment to the only international agreement that ever existed to limit Iran’s nuclear programme.
As the US applies new sanctions to Iran – miserably supported by the ever-compliant banks and big businesses of Europe – Iran marginally breaks its side of the nuclear control agreement. And thus becomes the recipient of even more ferocious threats from Washington and Israel.
The word “nuclear” is not just a harmless adjective. Look at the old photographs of the blisters on the dying Japanese of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Iran itself suffered the horrors of gas warfare when Iraq – supported at the time by the US – used chemicals on Iranian soldiers and civilians. I saw their gas-gangrene wounds with my own eyes in the late 1980s and they reminded me of the Hiroshima snapshots. The Iranians really do know the effects of “weapons of mass destruction”.
Yet they, we are supposed to believe, are the nuclear “threat” in the Middle East. The Islamic republic is no saints’ paradise. Its corruption (within the government), its cruelty towards its own dissenters, its hangman’s noose justice against its own people and its prim disgust at even the most innocent demand for freedom scarcely qualify the immensely wealthy Revolutionary Guards Corps – “heroes” of a new “tanker war” and masters of Houthi drone technology – to give lectures on morality. And if we thought that the Iranians held in reserve – let us say – 200 nuclear warheads, we should be trembling in our boots. But they don’t. It’s Israel that conceals – but will not say so – perhaps 200 nuclear warheads.
Not only do we not complain about this. We regard any suggestion of their existence as akin to interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. Israel has never confirmed that their nuclear weapons exist: therefore we must not say that they do. Enquire about their exact number and you are treated by Israel’s supporters with deep suspicion. It’s a private matter, we are led to understand. Anyway, the Israelis can be trusted with such vile weapons. Can’t they?
Which brings us to Saudi Arabia. Every nation in the Middle East which seeks nuclear power – and the list includes Egypt, by the way – insists, like Iran, that the technology is needed to build power plants.
Yet when Reuters – whose investigations of human rights and secret criminal activities in the region are first-class in both courage and detail – reports on the accurate leaks that US energy secretary Rick Perry approved six secret authorisations to give nuclear assistance to Saudi Arabia, few outside congress issued a murmur of concern. Not even Israel – which always rages when America’s arms manufacturers hoover up billions of dollars from Arab arms buyers, especially from Saudi Arabia.
South Koreans – those endangered people always under nuclear threat from the Rocket Man turned good guy further north – are also bidding for the Saudi nuclear deal. So are the Russians. So how come, now that the Saudi regime has talked of “cutting off the head of the snake” in Iran, we don’t regard Riyadh as a potential nuclear threat?
How soon will it be before we wonder if the Saudis aren’t going a bit too far down the nuclear path and we suggest a nuclear control agreement along the lines of Obama’s Iran deal? After all, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman – and let’s not bring up the little matter of the Saudi evisceration and chopping up of poor Jamal Khashoggi at this point – told CBS last year that his kingdom would develop nuclear weapons if Iran did.
And as we digest all this – although we really are not talking about it at all, are we? – India decides to tear up its own legal arrangements in Jammu and Kashmir. As the only Muslim-majority state in India, it is now to be split into two union territories, diminishing Muslim power and allowing non-Muslim Indians from other regions to move into this dangerous remnant of the old Raj. The Hindu-led government used a presidential order to revoke the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan, which holds the other bit of Kashmir – both claim the whole area as their own – is understandably infuriated by this change in the status quo.
And both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers. Indeed, there was nothing more pathetic, after Pakistan’s first nuclear tests in 1998, than to travel around this other “Islamic republic” and, amid the abject poverty of its villages, gaze at the awful commemorative papier-mache recreations of the granite mountains in which the explosions took place. There is, I suppose, no point in adding that there are more armed extremist Islamists on Islamabad’s payroll in both Pakistan and Afghanistan – coddled by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency – than there are in the whole of Iran.
So this is a very good week, as we typically ignore the commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for us to remember the nuclear threat in the Middle East. At least one nation in every potential conflict in the region is a nuclear power or a prospective one. India against Pakistan and vice versa, the US with Iran, the Israelis with Iran – or just about any other Levantine power – and the Saudis versus Iran, and Iran against almost anyone else except Syria.
Oh yes, and Donald Trump has just pulled out of the Cold War Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia – blaming Russia for violating the ban on missiles ranging up to 3,400 miles. All Russia’s fault, says Mike Pompeo. The treaty is now “dead”, the Russian foreign ministry confirms. So it’s time, perhaps, to rewatch those old documentaries of the the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay and the bomb codenamed “Little Boy” and the brilliant mushroom cloud and all those scorched corpses at Hiroshima.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 
