By IPS correspondents KOLKATA – They emerge stealthily from the jungles, ambush police posts, kill government supporters, kidnap officials, trigger landmines and disappear back into the forest with looted weapons as Indian police suffer like sitting ducks. The Maoists killed 24 policemen in eastern India’s West Bengal state last Monday. This was followed by another deadly attack that killed 11 villagers in the neighboring state of Bihar. This exposes the inability of the Indian police to fight the Maoists rebels, who have armed themselves to the teeth and who are fully trained in guerilla warfare. “The attack by the Communist … Continue reading India’s red rebels are the ‘biggest threat’

By Christopher Johnson TOKYO – Japan was not a fun place to own a car even before wide-ranging recalls from Toyota and Honda sullied the country’s reputation for producing quality automobiles. Roads are crowded, narrow and dull; highway speed limits top out at 80 kilometers per hour, and the toll fees are steep – drivers on the 325-kilometer trip from Tokyo to Nagoya before the financial crisis broke last year had to pay 7,100 yen (US$77.47). Within Tokyo, a parking space costs the equivalent of US$300 a month and up. Regulations and taxes add to the pain of car ownership, … Continue reading Japan beset by auto apathy

A book for all —by Samia Saleem Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time By Karen Armstrong Harper Collins; Pp 249 Reviled by her critics and applauded by her admirers, Karen Armstrong has revealed her story-telling skills, brilliant perception and painstaking research yet another time in Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time. Written expressly with the purpose of removing misunderstandings about Islam in the West in the aftermath of 9/11, the book goes beyond simply highlighting the tolerant and pluralistic character of the faith proclaimed by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in 7th century Arabia while recounting his life’s journey. She brings it … Continue reading Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

Ishtiaq Ahmed Conspiracy theories and their authors become a cause for concern when they begin to hallucinate and can no longer distinguish between their own flights of imagination and the world around them. When they hijack a whole nation or community into another world, then they ought to be held accountable These are very troubled times. Such times are a bonanza for conspiracy theorists because they know how best to simplify extremely complex situations while simultaneously grossly exaggerating the evil ingenuity of the plotters, and thus create thorough confusion. If such confusion can generate panic, then the conspiracy theorist has … Continue reading Conspiracy theories and theorists… Is this what Pakistanis really think?

“I think he should work on getting closer to the stumps. A lot of the times he will be pitching the ball such that it is knocking middle stump and hitting the batsmen on the pad. But its not out as it is pitched outside leg stump,” Boycott said of Mohammad Aamer. Legendary former Yorkshire and England batsmen turned commentator Geoffrey Boycott believes Pakistan’s newest pace find, Mohammad Aamer, needs to fine tune his run-up and final delivery stride in order to become a more effective bowler. The lanky 17 year old left armer from Gujjar Khan, who suffered a … Continue reading Aamer needs to work on his delivery stride: Boycott

The kingdom has got its knickers in a twist over the delicate question of who should be allowed to sell underwear to women Brian Whitaker guardian.co.uk Selling women’s underwear has always been fertile territory for a certain kind of comedy – the kind we saw in Britain with the long-running department store sitcom, Are You Being Served? Now it’s the turn of the Saudis to get their knickers in a twist (so to speak) over the question of who should serve the customers: a man or a woman? Under the rules established by the Wahhabi sect, unrelated men and women … Continue reading Are Saudis being served?

Henry Adams Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education, but several years of arduous study in the neighbourhood of Westminster led Henry Adams to think that knowledge of English human nature had little or no value outside of England. In Paris, such a habit stood in one’s way; in the US, it roused all the instincts of native jealousy. The English mind was one-sided, eccentric, systematically unsystematic, and logically illogical. The less one knew of it, the better. This heresy, which scarcely would have been allowed to penetrate a Boston mind — it would, indeed, … Continue reading Eccentricity

Shahzad Chaudhry Current American thinking is rather defensive; having blasted the Taliban for all this time, it is only a sheepish return to integrating the same elements into the mainstream Afghan fabric The US, the principal player in Afghanistan today, is stuck with a dilemma. How important is Afghanistan to its security interests? Having spent close to a trillion dollars on this misadventure, is the US any closer to achieving the objectives it must have laid out for itself when venturing into Afghanistan? How does the US satisfy a predominant global curiosity on how a superpower deals with an imbroglio … Continue reading Wages of misconception