18 months back, the EU treaty was in a bad state. A negative referendum by the Irish people had put paid to the chances of the treaty from proceeding (since it required all the member countries to accept the treaty). Further, there was opposition from the Czech and from Poland, which was in turn impeding the treaty from moving ahead.
What has changed in the last 18 months that the Irish people have over-turned their opposition ? The Irish voted with a 2/3rd majority to pass the referendum this site, giving a huge boost to the treaty, and putting pressure on the Czech and Poles to play their part in giving the final approval to the treaty. Well, the last 18 months has seen a huge financial depression in the world economy, and would have scared the Irish. When things are bad, it makes sense to be a part of a larger economy that provides the support that people desperately need, and this would have been the over-riding sense that cause the Irish population to say yes to the treaty (link to article):

continue reading "EU treaty gets a boost with plus vote by the Irish"

From time to time, you hear of political correctness gaining ground. Removing sex based discrimination is a noble quest, such as when jobs are reserved for either only males and females. However, in recent years, there has been a push to remove all traces of traditional male dominance in the nomenclature of professions, so a profession such as ‘sportsmen’ should now be re-designated ‘athletes’ since ‘sportsmen’ has the term men in the name. Read more about this in the following link:

continue reading "Changing lexicon to make it more politically correct – over the edge"

This is a mighty strange situation for the West to be in. Ever since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, there has been the feeling in the Western Countries that Russia could be a strategic partner, one that shares the democratic values of the West and will be an effective partner. Initially, things seemed to be going in a different way. Under Boris Yeltsin, Russia started going through political and social turmoil, and it seemed to be a decaying country (with high inflation, potential leakage of arms and nuclear material, negative to zero growth, corruption, mafia, and so on). And then came in this former KGB man, Vladimir Putin, a person who saw the death of the Soviet Union as a disaster, and who bemoaned the loss of status of Russia. By himself, he could not have invented a new powerful Russia, but he got the benefit of Russia’s growth as an oil and gas producer, coupled with increasing prices.
This growth of Russia was not in the way that the US and other countries thought. Russia would go the way that Vladimir Putin wanted it to, and he managed to sell his vision of a resurgent Russia to the population as well, thus diminishing the possibility of any successful internal opposition. The same support also allowed him to stamp away any perceived opposition, including independent media, and other opponents (an example was the trial and imprisonment of the oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was starting to stand upto Mr. Putin). The net result was a system where only support to Valdimir Putin was allowed.

continue reading "The West’s dilemna over relations with Russia"

The fight over Georgia has been seen as having 2 bigger objectives;
1. Russia wants to ensure that it is seen as the Big Brother of the neighborhood, and is willing to put force to ensure that this happens
2. Georgia has been seen as a region that was being projected as an alternative route for an oil pipeline that would bypass Russian territory
Both of these are issues that impact Russian interests pretty strongly. For a country that used to consider wide swaths of territory in Europe and Asia Minor as its area of influence, the movement by many of these areas towards greater integration with NATO and the United States must be galling. Already, US based in Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan ward off Russian influence in the strategic oil-rich regions of Asia. Combine this with the movements by states such as Poland, Ukraine, etc to move to greater integration with NATO must be real painful to the strategic community in Moscow. And then the movement in a region that is actually under Russian control (granted to it by the Commonwealth of Independent States – CIS); South Ossetia, a region in Georgia that is over-whelming tilted towards Russia. Georgia invaded South Ossetia, and launched a bombing campaign that started killing people in the capital of South Ossetia. This would have just been the motive for Russian interests to start a reverse action – they marched in troops, tanks, and even fighter jets and pushed the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia.

continue reading "Russia signs cease-fire accord in Georgia"