Even as John Foley, the American journalist was being beheaded by the Syrian jehadi militants, the world woke up to the startling fact that several of the militants associates with the ISIS are white men from USA, UK, Scandinavia and even Russia. USA has been doing everything in its power to help the jehadi forces gather strength and move towards establishing their stranglehold  over Sunni Arab states. The refrain that is being heard from Washington that ISIS is beyond anything "we have ev...

Israel has shocked the world with the savage violence it has unleashed against the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, a thin sliver of land with an area of 365 square kilometers.  Nearly 2 million people crowd that strip making it one of the most densely populated areas of the world. And Israel has been bombing the civilian sectors of the Gaza Strip for the past three weeks without any letup. The death toll has crossed 1200 already and is climbing. The fact that Bar...

The State of Israel owes its origin to the crimes of the Europeans, the Germans who massacred around 6 million Jews during the last two years of the Second World War. Of course this horrendous crime had to be expiated and the Americans and the British made the Palestinians pay for the crimes of their fellow white men. Israel is fast losing the sympathy it has rightly won for its several outstanding achievements: its civic programme, its educational institutions, its fairly successful practice o...

  Reading has become increasingly dependent on technology. The book under review by the celebrated historian Professor Robert Darnton is an interesting analysis of the ways in which the advent of digital technology has changed the reading practices of people. The joy of reading the printed book cannot be experienced by one reading the most thrilling novel on kindle. The sight and smell of a book is a delightful experience and only those who savour the joy of reading can understand what...

Playing the Game of Thrones in the real world is not easy and USA is finding it increasingly difficult to be relevant in the Asian region. I do not want to use the label Asia-Pacific Region as the very term legitimates US domination or attempted hegemony over a part of the globe which is increasing feeling uneasy with US ambitions. The misguided and some would even say illegal war launched against Iraq has now led to the worst humanitarian crisis is the contemporary world and added to this is t...

The steady and relentless march of ISIS fighters toward Baghdad is proof that Barack Obama's policy of "no boots on the ground" has fallen apart and he is left with few options. Indeed one can say that Barack Obams has been reduced to a mere on looker as Iran seizes the opportunity to bring about a semblance of stability in a region which has been utterly devastated by the ill advised US  intervention. The  fact is that the Government of al Malaki has been waging a covert war agai...

Georgia, a tiny Christian kingdom, lying on the border of the expanding and fiercely Shia Safavid Empire, was conquered by Shah Abbas I the Safavid ruler snd the captured queen was brought in chains to Isfahan where according to Augustinian sources she was imprisoned for 11 years. Shah Abbas i gave her the unenviable choice between death or life in his harem and the valiant queen chose martyrdom. Her son Teimuraz, for whose safety and protection, the Queen offered herself as hostage to the Safa...

When the twentieth century looks back on its past and tries to locate the intellectuals who strove to make sense of the past in a meaningful way, then the names of  Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel, E J Hobsbawm, Georges Duby and Jacques Le Goff will crop up. With the exception of Hobsbawm all the others belonged to a school of historical thought, reflection and method which is generally referred to as the Annales School. While there is considerable disagreement between different historians on ...