ABOVE: Bishwa Ijtema Special Train 2018/ Bishwa Ijtema Munajat Special Train Services 2018 This is not a regular situation of Bangladesh Railway (BR). This video has been taken on the occasion of Bishwa Ijtema 2018 (বিশ্ব ইজতেমা/ Global Congregation) which is one of the biggest annual gatherings of Muslims in Bangladesh in Tongi, Gazipur, Bangladesh, by the banks of River Turag. 2 / 3 millions of devotees are attending and perform daily prayers while listening to scholars reciting and explaining verses from the Quran. It culminates in the Akheri Munajat, or the Final Prayer. With a view to facilitating the movement of Muslim devotees of the Biswa Ijtema, Bangladesh Railway (BR) has made arrangement to operate special trains in different routes of the country.This kind of Ijtema special or Munajat special Trains are used to bring and return those peoples in the Ijtema ground and home.
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]vercrowded? Definitely. Poverty? No question. But look at the exuberant humanity that permeates these images of people dealing with what they regard as customary in their lives, or united in a common purpose—attending some religious celebration, and the cheerful way with which they assume the high risks of transportation by such uncomfortable and dangerous methods. This is so remarkable that we have inserted here not one, but several videos of these occurrences. There's a lesson here for westerners, and it probably has to do with the near infinite degree of patience people have with inept or corrupt governments.
Incidentally, not to rub salt or insult Bangladeshis, Indians or other nationalities in any way, countries that have had more than their share of tribulations, including natural disasters in recent memory, but compare the state of dilapidation of Indian and Bangladeshi rails with China, one of the world's leaders today, it almost makes you cry. What a commentary on the sharp difference between the wages of capitalism and socialism. The comparison is apt because both the Indian subcontinent and China gained freedom from colonial enslavement at around the same time, India formally in 1947, and China in 1949. And both faced the heavy weight of horrid underdevelopment, illiteracy, and a ton of miseries issuing from inherited wounds and archaic class structures. India, choosing Gandhian idealism, took the capitalist way, with a light sprinkling of socialism (Fabianism variety). China went for Marxist-Leninism implemented in the Maoist way. As well, a video compilation of the most dangerous railways in the world (see Appendix 2) shows that every case of dilapidated trains or absurd positioning of tracks (i.e., Thailand's train passing right through a fish market) also occurs in nations ruled by utterly corrupt or reactionary regimes.
Each year in January Bangladesh hosts the three day Bishwa Ijtema festival. It is held at Tongi beside the river Turag a short way north of Dhaka. This is the worlds third largest gathering Muslim pilgrims with up to 5 million attending. To transport this number of people, the Bangladesh Government puts on for free special trains. The grossly overcrowded trains create a spectacular sight. However despite what has been written elsewhere, this is not the usual state of affairs on Bangladesh Railways. Regular trains are crowded and some passengers ride on the roof but nothing like the festival trains. The video shows trains taking pilgrims to the festival in the morning and returning back to the city at the end of the last day. Also in this video: A wholesale fish market. Trains travelling through a busy market. Trains crossing a railway bridge built by the British over eighty years ago. All trains in this video are metre gauge.
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.—Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
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Russia Just Called Out The US For Using India To “Contain” China
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister warned that the US is trying to use India to “contain” China, which shows that Moscow is well aware of the strategy at play and no longer sees the need to “play along” and pretend that New Delhi is innocently “multi-aligning”, but this public realization makes Russia’s “balancing” role in South Asia and its renewed strategic partnership with India much more important than ever before.
A hidebound conservative who leans toward Washington, Modi remains a slippery fellow, and Russia must stay alert to likely betrayals.
The Gig Is Up
[dropcap]R[/dropcap]ussian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov shocked everyone in Eurasia when he called out the US for using India as a pawn to “contain” China while speaking at the 3rd Russian-Indian forum of research centers’ heads, with TASS quoting him as saying the following:
“Frankly speaking, we do not like the fact that the US and its allies, using our friend India, are trying to add their Indo-Pacific concepts aimed primarily at addressing their own challenges in Asia to the agenda. According to our estimates, the ideas promoted by Washington together with Tokyo and Canberra are aimed at containing major regional powers and drawing dividing lines by creating closed groups and interests rather than at positive development and open cooperation in the Indian and Pacific oceans.”
It had hitherto been the height of “political incorrectness” for experts, let alone government officials, in the emerging Multipolar World Order to comment on India’s role in “containing” its notional BRICS partner China at the US’ behest, but Morgulov boldly broke the taboo and defied Alt-Media dogma.
The Cat’s Out Of The Bag
The proverbial “cat is out of the bag” now and there’s never any going back to the earlier times of “innocence” when people pretended that India was just “multi-aligning” and nothing more, as it’s now an undeniable point of Russian policy to recognize that India’s being used by the US to “contain” China. That doesn’t mean that the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership is also aimed against China, but conversely, that Moscow is the only Great Power capable of exercising responsible restraint on New Delhi in potentially counteracting the hostile role that Washington has envisioned for it vis-à-vis Beijing.
Not Giving Up Without A Fight
Russia’s “military diplomacy” is expertly being applied to this end, with Defense Minister Shoigu proudly boasting during his current trip to India that “no other state cooperates with [it] in the sphere of the transfer of armament and military hardware production technologies as close as Russia.” This is significant because it proves that Russia isn’t “giving up” on India “without a fight”, understanding just how crucial of a geostrategic role the country plays in its Afro-Eurasian “balancing” act by virtue of its location alone, to say nothing of its long-term potential as an aspiring Great Power.
What’s Good For The Goose Is Good For The Gander Nevertheless, Russia’s public realization about India’s affiliation with the “China Containment Coalition” gives Moscow the right to tacitly “tilt” its own “balancing” act in directions that New Delhi might not necessarily feel comfortable with, seeing as how its Indian “friend” is doing the same in regards to it when it comes to “containing” China at the US’ behest. What this could mean in practice is that the Russian-Pakistani Strategic Partnership, which isn’t aimed against any third parties despite whatever some Americans and Indians have speculated, might intensify next year as a means of restoring “balance” in the region.
All’s Well That Ends Well
Russia and India are the two most diplomatically dynamic countries in the world, both of which are either “balancing” or “multi-aligning” (essentially euphemisms that mean one and the same thing in principle) with one another and the rest of the world at large. While India’s “multi-alignment” has at times struggled to retain New Delhi’s reputation (whether deserved or not) for “neutrality”, Russia’s “balancing” act has been much more successful in that respect for Moscow. Ultimately, however, both Great Powers complement one another, and the end result of their diplomatic dance is that a semblance of stability has once again set over South Asia.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Korybko is a political analyst, journalist and a regular contributor to several online journals, as well as a member of the expert council for the Institute of Strategic Studies and Predictions at the People’s Friendship University of Russia. He specializes in Russian affairs and geopolitics, specifically the US strategy in Eurasia.
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
BRICS leaders, when the promise was young.
The BRICS are not what they intended to be, never really were.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]oday it’s clear that fascist-turned Brazil is out – so we are at RICS. There is not much to argue about. The world’s fifth largest economy, Brazil, has failed and betrayed the concept of the BRICS and the world at large. Whether you consider South Africa as a valid member of the BRICS is also questionable. Much of SA’s social injustice has actually become worse since the end of apartheid. Ending apartheid was a mere political and legal exercise.
Distribution of power and money in SA have not really changed. To the contrary – it worsened. 80% of all land is still in the hands of white farmers. This is what President Cyril Ramaphosa wants to change drastically, by confiscating white farmers’ land without compensation and re-distribute it to black farmers, who have no formation of how to run these farms. This is not only utterly unjust and will create internal conflicts, the last thing SA needs, but it is also very inefficient, as farming and agricultural production will decline most likely drastically and SA, a potential exporter of farm and agricultural goods, will become a net importer, a serious hit on South African’s economy.
The principle of redistributing land to the black African society is a solid one. But not by force and not by confiscation without compensation, nor without an elaborate training program for African farmers – to lead to a peaceful transfer – all of which does takes time and cannot happen overnight. There are too many example of hush-hush land reforms that failed miserably and actually plunged entire society in poverty and famine. Land reforms – YES, but planned and well organized and strategized. Land reforms are long-term propositions. To be successful, they don’t happen overnight.
On a recent trip to SA, I spoke to several people, including especially women from townships, i.e. SOWETO, who said they were better off under apartheid.
It is not a scientific statistic, but the fact that some black people dare say that the system that atrociously discriminated, exploited and raped them, was better than today’s non-apartheid system, is significant. It is a sad testimony to a generation of SA’s democracy.
So, now we could say, the BRICS are down to RIC – Russia, India and China.
Does India deserve to belong to a club that has as a goal equality and solidarity?
The caste system, about which very little is written, is a horrible, horrible mechanism of discrimination. And there are no efforts under way to abolish it. To the contrary. The Indian elite likes it – it provides cheap labor. It’s actually legalized slavehood, totally submissive to the upper class, the higher casts. It’s cultural, they say. Is such injustice excusable under principles of tradition? Hardly. Especially as this “cultural tradition” serves only a small upper class, is devoid of any compassion and has absolutely no ambition to transform itself to an equal and level playing field. That alone is unworthy of the BRICS’ principles.
" On a recent trip to SA, I spoke to several people, including especially women from townships, i.e. SOWETO, who said they were better off under apartheid. It is not a scientific statistic, but the fact that some black people dare say that the system that atrociously discriminated, exploited and raped them, was better than today’s non-apartheid system, is significant. It is a sad testimony to a generation of SA’s democracy..."
The other point, which I believe is important in considering India’s “BRICS viability”, is the fact that PM Narendra Modi is like a straw in the wind, constantly wavering between pleasing the US and leaning toward the east, Russia and China. This is certainly not an indication of stability, for a country to become a member in good standing and solidarity with a group of eastern countries, that intend to follow some rather noble human and social justice standards, like Russia and China. But that’s precisely what happened. India has weaseled her way into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
However, on 6 September 2018, The US and India signed a breakthrough security agreement, as reported by the Financial Times. According to the FT, this new compact was “cementing relations between the pair [US and India] and unlocking sales of high-tech American weaponry worth billions of dollars to the world’s top arms importer (meaning India [not considering Saudi Arabia]). Washington sees India as the linchpin of its new Indo-Pacific strategy to counter the rise of China, but has spent months pushing for closer co-operation. It wants Delhi to participate in more joint military exercises, boost its role in regional maritime security and increase arms purchases.”
“We fully support India’s rise,” said Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, during a visit to New Delhi. The FT continues, “later on Thursday the two countries signed Comcasa, a security agreement tailored to India that Jim Mattis, US Defense Secretary, said meant the pair could now share “sensitive technology”. All of this does not bode well for the BRICS, nor for the SCO, of which India has recently become a member.
The BRICS also have a so-called development bank, the “New Development Bank” (NDB) which so far has been and remains largely non-functional, mostly because of internal conflicts.
N. Modi—a treacherous player faifthfully doing the bidding of his rightwing constituency and the global plutocracy.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hen, there is the Crime of the Century committed by Indian PM Norendra Modi, who on 8 November 2016 decided to follow USAID’s advice and demonetize India’s mostly rural society – a society of almost sixty percent without access to banks, thereby committing “Financial Genocide”, in the name of Washington. Modi brutally declared all 500 (US$ 7) and 1,000 rupee-notes – about 85% of all money in circulation – invalid, unless exchanged or deposited in a bank or post office account until 31 December 2016. After this date, all unexchanged ‘old’ money is invalid. More than 98% of all monetary transactions in India take place in cash.
Thousands of Indians, mostly in rural areas, died of famine or suicide. Nobody knows the exact figures. Many rural Indians could not bear the moral burden of being unable to sustain their families, not having access to a bank and to exchange their old money for new money. This is a US-driven effort towards global demonetization. India – with 1.3 billion people – is a test case for poor countries, while demonetization, or rather digitization of money in rich western countries is already moving ahead in giant steps, i.e. in Scandinavian countries and Switzerland. See this. Modi clearly betrayed his people, following orders of the US, transmitted through the infamous USAID.
Under close scrutiny, the BRICS don’t stand the test they subscribed to in their first summit in 2009, in Yekaterinburg, Russia on June 16, 2009, and under which they were legalized and officiated in December 2010, when South Africa joined the club of four, to make it the BRICS.
At this point we are down to Russia and China – R and C are left as viable partners of the BRICS. They are also the founders of the SCO.
Washington was once again successful in dividing – according to the historic, age-old axiom, ‘divide and conquer’. The concept of the BRICS was a real threat to the western Anglo-Saxon led world order. No more. If anything, the concept and structure of the BRICS has to be rethought, re-invented and re-drafted. Will it happen?
How much longer and how many more times the BRICS can meet in lush summits and publicly declare their solid alliance as a new horizon against western world hegemony, when in reality, they are utterly divided and full of internal ideological strife – adhering to none of the noble goals of solidarity they once committed to?
*
This article is a crosspost with New Eastern Outlook.
About the Author
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.—Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
India proves [Western style] democracy is no longer fit for its purpose, while China’s model shows the way
Deep K. Datta-Ray says democracy’s reliance on people’s ability to be rational [which should be based on access to reliable, not manipulated information] is its fatal weakness. While malfeasance in politics, poverty and inequalities hold back progress in India, China is charging ahead in delivering economic growth, and freedom for its people.
India’s PM Narendra Modi at the podium, addressing a rally.
Dateline: 15 Jun 2018
Disinformation scarred campaigning in elections in the Indian state of Karnataka, culminated in an illegitimate minority government. Its downfall by covert surveillance, money politics and an opportunistic alliance of sworn enemies is no consolation.
Such odious tactics are democracy’s leitmotif globally, as Brexit and Donald Trump’s election demonstrate. In combination, they suggest that democracy is not fit for purpose, especially in developing nations, particularly since there is a clear alternative: China’s political system.
Irredeemably flawed at inception, democracy’s most debilitating characteristic is its reliance on – often illiterate – people to analyse events. This has been proved repeatedly, by electorates worldwide. India’s Narendra Modi stormed to victory in 2014 on the people’s disgust with several scams, but investigations now reveal that there were none! Disinformation continues to be harnessed, with people’s inability to reason through the morass of media reports.
Nearly 90 per cent of India’s population voted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into power regionally because they accepted its outlandish claims. Modi, for instance, asserts ancient Indians invented genetic surgery and that climate change is just people feeling colder.
Democracy’s dependence on the democratic principle to animate institutions fatally undermines it because, paradoxically, democracy is eroded by the very politics it countenances. The politicisation of India’s provincial judiciary has now reached the apex court. The Supreme Court is embroiled in an ugly imbroglio to impeach the chief justice. The opposition brought the motion, alleging politically motivated assigning of cases to judges.
Meanwhile, everyone knows justice hinges on wealth and power. Its operation was highlighted, again, by a politician’s son – no less – getting away with murder in February 2006.
Democracy is also unworthy because it is delusive. Claiming to engender equality, democracy actually succeeds by enhancing inequality. Overshadowing highly incendiary rhetoric against minorities is the rise in attacks by the Hindu majority.
Legislative inequality is also distressing. Minorities are disproportionately under-represented in Parliament, by design. In 2014, of the BJP’s 482 candidates, just seven were Muslim. None won. Muslims are roughly 4 per cent of Parliament, but 14 per cent of the population.
The story is replicated in the provincial parliaments. There, as of January, only four of the 1,418 members are Muslim. That the number of minorities exceeded 300 as recently as November 2014 reiterates that the BJP’s democratic success is contingent on eliminating minorities from having any, let alone an equal, political voice.
Ultimately, however, a political system is by definition too grandiose to be judged technically. What matters is its moral accountability, and democracy’s bankruptcy is laid bare when the metric is the only one that matters: delivering freedom.
All Indian parties sing from the same democratic hymn sheet. Yet Indians continue to be subjugated, both absolutely and relative to other developing nations, by poverty. This is often blamed on the handicap of massive colonial exploitation, which developed Europe at India’s expense. But this blame culture divests leaders of any responsibility for having failed to free people, and even permits the erosion of what little freedom they enjoy. What democracy offers then is a powerful elite empowering itself by demonising the enemy without, and by exacerbating inequality within.
Nor are the devastating effects of democracy limited to democratic states, for they wage war. India has been involved in continuous border wars since independence, at a minimum, with Pakistan. Meanwhile, China has fought less in the past 40 years than the UK, France and the US did in one weekend of bombing Syria. The West calls the Tiananmen Square incident a “massacre”, but it is insignificant compared to the deaths meted out by the democratic West’s militaries.
A pacific China is possible because its political system is moral in a manner impossible for democracies. China is moral for delivering freedom, more equitably and efficiently than, at the very least, India. Until the 1950s, India’s gross domestic product per capita was higher than China’s. In 1978, China’s was US$13 more than India’s.
That China’s political system achieved this is all the more remarkable because those decades saw the tumult of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, but no economic reform. The superiority of China’s political system is confirmed by the freedoms citizens – and beneficiaries of Chinese investment globally – now enjoy thanks to stupendous growth, distributed equitably, over the past 30 years. As the World Inequality Report notes, Chinese inequality is “moderate” because Beijing invests in everyone but Indian inequality is “extreme” because investments are made by them for themselves.
(Be sure to click on the arrows on the top right of the diagram below to see more panels.]
In short, China’s political system, without deluding its people or resorting to international violence, ensures the elite deliver freedoms to the people in a manner unimaginable in India or other democracies. Representative is the freedom to travel and think. In 2017, just 16,000 Indians, versus 88,000 Chinese, were allowed to study in the UK.
Their predecessors imported democracy to Asia, but it is now time for Indians to reassess their inheritance and for the Chinese to disseminate the truth about democracy vis-à-vis Beijing’s system.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Why democracy is no longer fit for purpose in India.
PRIDE IN THEIR NATION AND MORALE REMAIN HIGH IN CHINA Chinese dressed in replica red army uniforms take pictures at a base relief showing former Chinese Communist leaders Mao Zedong and Zhu De at a historic site of the Long March in the mountains outside Jinggangshan, Jiangxi province, on September 14.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deep K. Datta-Ray is the author of The Making of Indian Diplomacy
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.—Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
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India Calls Washington’s Bluff, Will Buy Russia’s S-400 Despite Empty Sanctions Threat
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
Franz-Stefan Gady • Fri, Jun 8, 2018 • Russia Insider
India knows it is far too big a weapons market for the US to dare antagonize. In any case Russia, not the US, is India's traditional arms supplier
India will press ahead with the procurement of five regiments of Russian-made S-400 Triumf advanced Air Defense Systems (NATO reporting name: SA-21 Growler) intended for service in the Indian military notwithstanding U.S. sanctions, Indian Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said at a recent press conference.
Speaking to the press on June 5, the defense minister emphasized the close defense ties between India and Russia. “In all our engagements with the U.S., we have clearly explained how India's and Russia’s defense cooperation has been going on for a long time and that it is a time-tested relationship,” Sitharaman said. “We have mentioned that CAATSA cannot impact the India-Russia defense cooperation.”
The United States passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) against Russia in August 2017 for reportedly influencing and manipulating the 2016 presidential election process. Core provisions of the CAATSA, including sanctions on Russian business entities and senior Russian political and business figures, came into effect in January 2018.
The Indian defense minister is expected to raise the issue of sanctions under CAATSA, which could kick in on any Indo-Russian defense procurement deal above $15 million, at the upcoming 2+2 talks between the Indian and U.S. defense and foreign ministers scheduled for this month in Washington DC.
The imposition of sanctions by the United States on India is seen as highly unlikely. Nonetheless, India’s decision to move ahead with the S-400 acquisition could impact future U.S.-India defense deals, including the possible procurement of armed U.S.-made Predator drones or the establishment of joint aircraft production facilities. India and Russia reportedly concluded price negotiations last month. The signing of the final contract is purportedly expected during a summit meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin scheduled for October 2018. New Delhi and Moscow concluded an inter-governmental agreement for the purchase of the S-400s already in 2016 (See: “India and Russia Ink S-400 Missile Air Defense System Deal”).
The total contract value is estimated at around $5.5 billion for five regiments. “The standard S-400 battery consists of four transporter erector launchers (TELs), four launch tubes per TEL, in addition to target acquisition and engagement (fire control) radar systems and a command post. (With an additional fire control radar system, a battery can consist of up to 12 TELs.),” I explained elsewhere. “Two batteries make up an S-400 battalion (also known as an S-400 division), whereas an S-400 regiment consists of two battalions.”
Neither Indian nor Russian officials have so far publicly commented on what type of surface-to-air missiles will be delivered to the Indian military under the deal.
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.—Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
