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.
Since 2004 when the drone strikes were started by US in Pakistan, an estimated 158 to 965 civilians have been killed, which includes 172 to 207 children. Military documents have claimed that only 13% of deaths being the intended targets in Pakistan!
Amnesty International, a US based Human Rights organization says that some of the drone killings could tantamount to war crimes!
Would the Americans like if someone in Pakistan files a lawsuit against US for compensation and the Supreme Court attaches US assets – including the embassy – in Pakistan to pay for the damages?
Well, that is what the Congress is routing for!
Both, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have not just overwhelmingly voted for a law that will allow the families of those killed in the 2001 attacks on the United States to seek damages from the Saudi government but to veto President Obama’s order to stop this law.
If there is one country in the world which is involved in war and battle issues in every nook and corner of the world, then it is the US.
The 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of the US was to push for Soverign Immunity globally. Under the concept of Soverign Immunity, countries are immune from legal proceedings in another state.
Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine by which the sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution. This principle is commonly expressed by the popular legal maxim rex non potest peccare, meaning “the king can do no wrong.”
All this is based on the general view of the public in US that Saudi Arabia state and monarchy was responsible for the 9-11 attacks because 14 out of the 15 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
The truth, however, is obviously far more complicated than that! Based on evidence from credible news reports, one can more conclusively say that 9-11 was more an act of the Pakistani Government as opposed to the Saudi government! But then, most Americans are not particularly good when it comes to hearing and understanding truth or factual reality!
Remember how everyone wanted to obliterate Iraq for all the wrong reasons? How everyone wants to beat Iran down and blow the treaty with that country simply because they think Iran will make nukes, little realizing that Pakistan already has nukes that can hit Israel right today!!
It is that population that we are entrusting with a legislation that provides space to the US to work its ways so as to prevent crazy powers from doing further damage. Sometimes, as in Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, and Syria, it ends up doing collateral damage that can make a case against the US!
In those circumstances and with that trigger-happy a Congress, to do what US House and Senate just did is to push your country to being litigated in every central court on the planet!
US is not the “greatest nation” on Earth – or at least the strongest – because it can bomb everyone. It is so because it has led the world to create laws that work in its own favor. One can understand that many who have had the “Trump kool-aid” think that taking the world to the Wild-west ways where everyone pays for himself and fights for himself is the “right way of doing things”. These geo-political imbeciles forget that the day Germany, Japan, Korea, Australia, and other Western countries start building their arsenal because they are “on their own”, the Wild West will be hardly anything pleasant!
It was a sheer stroke of luck that Hitler ran amok and spread himself too thin and the Russians beat him back at the right time. If he had made just a few good decisions, today most of the Western world wouldn’t have been a fraction of what it is today!
And, that is what NATO, UN and other international agencies and laws ensure. That those with the capability, know-how, and money in the Western and Eastern world do not become competitors! Yes, US tax payers pay more for that to happen in the world, but then they enjoy the fruits of this arrangement far more than others in the world! After all, the world’s trade happening in US Dollars has been to the greatest advantage of the US itself!
All one can say at the passing of this law in the US Congress is that we in the US are officially marching towards this country’s misfortune. It is one thing to bully around in your school or sub-division or beat down “Little Marco” or “Stupid Jeb”. Wait till you have to fight fully armed and strong nations like Germany, France, Japan, China and Russia – all fighting for the same space at the top. And, their proxies in Iraq, Pakistan and Libya bringing down US government by entangling it in one law suit after another for damages, while these powers back them up all the way to Hague!!
Good luck with the Wild West masochism!
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.
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