In 58 posts with close to 100k words, we shared a lot in 2024! Explore 2024’s biggest geopolitical shifts, cultural battles, and bold insights with Drishtikone’s year in review. See you in 2025! Happy New Year! Be safe!
When you see Russia get into existential war over Ukraine, or Israel bomb Syria or India battle with Pakistan or Bangladesh, it is not because of some whim. It has a historical and geographical context. That is critical to understand for analyzing geopolitics.
Dive into the shadowy world of the Deep State—its hidden structures, powerful networks, and the far-reaching impact on global events and control.
A summit was organized in 1996, sponsored by National Association of Evangelicals – which is an umbrella group of 42,000 Evangelical Churches. The gathering was the handiwork of Nina Shea, the director at the right wing Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute. The summit ended with the pledge to – “take appropriate action to combat the intolerable religious persecution now victimizing fellow believers and those of other faiths.”
This paved the way for installing Christian evangelism and protection of Christians as central to the American Foreign Policy. This resulted in the legislation euphemistically known as International Religious Freedom Act.
To operationalize this legislation a government-funded agency was created called the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Its main aim was to promote and force Christianity on other countries and use the evangelical lens to evaluate the “freedom” in those societies.
What was started as a tool in the hands of right wing Christian nationalists and evangelicals, USCIRF has over the years also aligned with the Islamist interests.
In its 2017 report, the commission effectively supports the right of Islamist extremists to operate in several Muslim-majority countries, Iranian mullahs to spread radicalism abroad, and hardline Islamist organizations to receive foreign funding. It also castigates policies that promote secularism, such as bans on headscarves for girls in public schools. In its quest to protect freedom of religion, the USCIRF is championing the rights of groups that aspire to impose religious coercion on others. – Foriegn Affairs 2017
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat was denied visa because of the influence of Evangelicals in how they used the tool President Bush’s government had provided to them while working with Indian expats with dubious intentions.
Of course, none of its allegations and the basis on which it denied visa to Modi had any basis in fact as decided by every court in India. But then, since when did anyone accuse USCIRF of respecting democratic institutions of soveriegn nations? It is brazenly given to its own spin and false propaganda. And, in the current case – open blackmail!
It is this commission, which is now again active to undermine the democratic institutions of India to further its own twisted idea of religious freedom by falsely spinning the Citizenship Amendment Bill passed by Lok Sabha yesterday. In a mischievously written release, USCIRF supposedly raises “concerns and eyes sanctions” while openly challenging vote in and actions of democractically elected Parliament of a soverign nation!
In the most bizarre displays of arrogant intervention in the functioning of democratic institutions of another nation state, the United States Federal Commission openly threatens:
If the CAB passes in both houses of parliament, the United States government should consider sanctions against the Home Minister and other principal leadership.
Excuse me?!
In a classic “My way or else” kind of communication, USCIRF openly threatens and blackmails Indian Parliament!
Who is USCIRF to dictate its policies to the legislature of another country and threaten action against the Home Minister? If the Russian intervention in US democracy was hideous, this is brazenly hostile!
The Indian Government response to this brazen and shameless interference in Indian democracy was solid and direct.
A Commission which has openly promoted evangelism as a tool of state-craft and then was hijacked by the Islamists to shelter the fundamentalist radical Islamists regimes, wants to push through its theocratic agenda on India. It’s obvious and fanatic Hinduphobic agenda is difficult to miss.
Of course, its very interpretation of the Citizenship Amendment Bill is mischievously false – because CAB does not discriminate against the Muslims in any way. It merely allows ONLY minorities from the adjoining neighbor states – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh to seek refugee status in India. As for giving citizenship to Muslims who come seeking through other channels, there is a very prominent Muslim – Adnan Sami, a popular singer – from Pakistan, who got citizenship in India. He is the son of a decorated Pakistan Air Force officer.
If Modi government was against Muslims getting Indian citizenship, then how did Adnan Sami receive his citizenship in 2015 under Modi Government?
It is indeed strange that a federally funded Commission is busy indulging in fake propanganda while interfering and threatening action in the democratic processes of sovereign nations.
Just as no other country (like Russia) should interfere with the democratic processes in the US and other Western democracies using social media and other tools it has legitimized, it is also equally important that the federal US bodies and the US government does not interfere and / or threaten to blackmail Parliaments and democratic institutions in other democracies.
Such blackmail tactics as used by USCIRF stink of their own religious fundamentalist record, which is well documented. They used falsehoods in denying Modi visa back in 2008, where there was no proof against him. All that the USCIRF went by was the shoddy and ideologically bigoted “atrocity literature” prepared by the flunkies of USCIRF members. The Commission indulged in false propaganda then. And it is doing even worse now. Blackmailing the Parliament of a sovereign country!
America's Justice Department and SEC have targeted India's Adani Group with a bribery case. Using Nationalistic sentiment doesn't help. Yes, law has been weaponized and India's sovereignty compromised but not how they think. A definitive guide to understanding the case.
There was a clear warning from Putin on provision of long range missiles that could hit deep into Russia to Ukraine. It would be consider as a direct attack by NATO on Russia. Biden has done just that!
The premise and the mindset apparent in the new Trump team points to an interesting world out there. Things will not be rosy, but they will be very different. Very, very different.
The US, and indeed the world has seen a watershed event of Donald Trump's victory. It will change the US direction and may have pushed a World War by at least 3-4 years.
Every Sunday AM (US Time)/ PM (India time), we send out a weekly detailed newsletter. We also share other insightful notes during the week. Its free. Do sign up and share with friends!
