In which Secretary Clinton delivers a ground-breaking speech to bring LGBT rights at the forefront of the international discourse. Naz finds reference. The blogosphere has been overflowing with platitudes; and although it is too early to evaluate how the Obama administration will calibrate its foreign policy towards countries with limited or no recognition of LGBT [...]
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Posted in Foreign Affairs on Oct 7th, 2011
In my previous post, I had written about the spillover effects of the Arab Spring – how the Israel-Palestine conflict is being moulded by popular uprisings in the region; and how Turkey is looking to position itself as a key post-revolutionary player. First, the Arab-Israeli conflict. Here is a synthesized takeaway from a roundtable discussion [...]
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At its core, the Arab Spring has ushered in participatory politics and democratic aspirations hitherto repressed in the region. The cup of mass movements is now reaching its brim and threatens to overflow – naturally, the focal point of discussions has shifted from the centre to the edges. For some in the Middle East, these [...]
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Posted in Democracy, Foreign Affairs on Sep 2nd, 2011
Aymen Mohammed, a student at NALSAR, chips in with an insightful piece on post-revolutionary Libya. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the blog, or mine personally. Of everything that the ‘Arab Spring’ proves, Libya remains an exception to a few rules that this “borderless revolution” has sought to establish: One, that it is [...]
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Posted in corruption, Foreign Affairs on Jul 20th, 2011
Without a public procurement law, and a rudderless foreign policy to boot, India’s aid agency will practically be useless. The decision to set up a foreign aid agency, announced recently by the government, is a welcome measure, and long overdue. In the international community, the move will be interpreted as a sign of India’s coming [...]
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Posted in Foreign Affairs, Politics on Jul 11th, 2011
In the current issue of EPW, I respond to a rather shocking assertion made by a Mumbai-based rights activist – that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the US military-industrial complex as a pretext to go to war. Unfortunate as it was, this bit of denialism was often highlighted as the life and soul of [...]
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