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| THIS
OUR NORTH AMERICA |
| Canada is in for another
Minority Government |
Khushwant
Toor writes from Toronto
CANADIANS voted for the 40th time in the federal
general elections in the country on October 14.
Stephen Harper's Conservatives made significant
gains across the country from the 2006 federal
election but failed to gain enough seats to win
a majority government, as hoped by the party leader
at the time he declared the elections.More
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| Is it advantage Obama? |
Harjap
Singh Aujla writes from New Jersey
IN America it is very difficult to change the
mindset of its citizens. We must admit that we
are a very conservative society, where change
comes rather slowly. One and a half century ago
we fought a bitter civil war, in which the issue
was the continuance or abolition of slavery. Abraham
Lincoln, a Republican President of this great
nation, wanted to abolish the scourge of slavery
from this land of promise, but he was equally
vehemently opposed by a determined army of inertia
bound holdouts.More |
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| Sikh Style Capitol
Rally for World Peace |
Dr.
Amrik Singh writes from Sacramento
STATE Capitol of California recorded an
unparalleled event on October 11, 2008 when members
of interfaith groups joined Sacramento Valley
Sikhs in the March for World Peace and Capitol
Rally. The occasion was to commemorate 300 years
of spiritual leadership of Guru Granth Sahib,
acknowledged as the Eleventh and the last Guru
of the Sikhs.More |
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| ANALYSIS |
Punjab falling apart
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| Gobind Thukral |
| IT has become a routine
of sorts. Young and educated Akali finance minister
Manpreet Singh Badal and nephew of four times Punjab
chief minister Parkash Singh Badal often throws
away prudence and appeals to the ‘good sense’
of his colleagues to get rid of subsidies as these
are eating away precious resources and hampering
real economic progress.More |
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Last
Tsar’s Rehabilitation Needs History Reviewed
in East-West Context |
| Sawraj Singh writes from Washington |
RECENTLY, Russia’s
Supreme Court rehabilitated the last Tsar, Nicholas
II and his family declaring them victims of political
repression. The Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra,
their five children, their doctor and three servants
were shot dead by the Bolsheviks in July 1918
in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.More |
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| 116 suicide bombings
in Pakistan since 2002 |
WITH
an average of three suicide attacks per week in
which at least thirty persons die, there will
be 1,560 dead Pakistanis within a year. Add to
this about 15 "extremists" being killed
daily in the northern region, Pakistan will suffer
further with a total of 7,035 dead. For every
hamlet, village, and hideout bombed, and with
every "extremist" killed, ten families
suffer displacement.More |
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| LAW & JUSTICE |
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| National Judicial Council
at Last |
Joginder
Singh Toor
 AT
last on October 9, 2008 the Union Cabinet after
much deliberations, has given nod to the Judges
Inquiry Bill, 2008. The much awaited National Judicial
Council, instead of Judicial Commission as originally
conceived, is likely to come into being.More |
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| ART & LITERATURE |
| Three Arts Club: The
Revival |
Vinod
Anand
THE Three Arts Club,
a theatre group founded in the pre-independent
India was one of the first to introduce theatre
in its present form. Late Shri Om Sharma, Late
Shri R.M.Kaul and Late Shri Devi Chand Kayasth
came together in the year 1943 and founded the
Three Arts Club, comprising primarily government
employees.More
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| Life is Maya, an illusion:
a tribute to Michael Bullock |
Surjeet
Kalsey, Vancouver, Canada
ONE can appreciate
the value and the warmth of those long held associations
only after they are gone. I could not believe
my ears when I heard that Michael was gone –
something felt broken inside me. A rich, cherished
and wonderful association of 34 years was just
disappeared like an illusion.More
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25 Blasts rock Assam; 40
dead, over 200 injured | US offers to send quake
relief to Pakistan | Punjab sub-soil water level
shows upward trend | Oil climbs on weak dollar,
market rally | Anand wins World
Chess championship
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| 25 Blasts rock Assam; 40
dead, over 200 injured |
Twenty-five
co-ordinated blasts rocked busy areas of Guwahati and
three other districts in Assam on Thursday, killing
at least 40 people and injuring over 200 others, police
and eyewitnesses said. While four high-intensity blasts
are reported to have taken place in the capital Guwahati,
three each occurred in Barpeta and Kokrajhar, and one
in Bongaigaon district of the northeastern state.More
Updated on October
30, 2008 at 01:00 p.m.
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- US offers to send quake relief
to PakistanMore
- Punjab sub-soil water level
shows upward trendMore
- Oil climbs on weak dollar,
market rallyMore
- Anand wins
World Chess championshipMore
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| E D I T O R I A L |
| House of Cards |
FOR
the past eight years, the Bush administration
has been passionately busy doling out billions
of dollars in tax cuts, contracts and subsidies
to make the rich richer. At the same time, it
was hitting hard the middle and lower classes
by denying health care, increasing interest rate
on student loans and cutting down heavily on social
welfare measures.More
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| FOCUS |
Misreading
Terrorism
|
Gobind
Thukral
 EVERY
passing day terrorists leave a bloody message through
bombs blasts across India. It was Jaipur, the pink
city on May 13 where 68 innocent persons were lost.
Next was Bangalore, the industrial hub of India
where three persons were killed and in Ahmedabad
another 50 persons lost their lives.More |
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| America's system is to blame
for the problem of its banks |
Harjap Singh Aujla
THE normal duties
of banks are to safely manage the savings of their depositors
and to forward loans to the needy. In order to cover
their overhead charges, the banks charge a higher rate
of interest from their borrowers than what they offer
to their depositors.More
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U.S.: Oil companies make money as people suffer |
Stephen Leahy
 WHY
do U.S. oil companies some of the most profitable corporations
on the planet receive 20 to 40 billion dollars a year
in subsidies from the U.S. government? And, in a time
of skyrocketing oil prices and profits, why did the
George W. Bush administration in 2005 authorise an additional
32.9 billion dollars in new subsidies over a five-year
period?More
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| Crisis
of Capitalism Deepens |
Sawraj Singh writes from Seattle,
USA
IT’S becoming quite
clear that the Western capitalism is facing the most
serious crisis. America, the undeclared leader of the
consumerist capitalism at its highest stage, “Globalization”,
is going through the most difficult period in its entire
history.More
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| American
dream gets sour for Indian immigrants |
KARTHIK Rajaram, 45, an unemployed
man with an MBA in finance, killed his wife, Subasari,
39; sons Krishna, 19; Ganesh, 12; Arjuna, 7; mother-in-law,
Indra, 69, before killing himself in San Fernando Valley,
20 miles northwest of Los Angeles.More
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| FEATURES |
India
feels the heat
|
INDIAN financial
markets are feeling hurt by the global financial
crisis for quite some time. But last week they
seemed particularly vulnerable to the contagion
sweeping developed countries as well as most emerging
economies.More
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Environemnt-India: Illegal Trade Decimating Wildlife |
| Malini Shankar
A great variety of endangered wildlife species end up
feeding the illegal market for Traditional Chinese Medicine
(TCM) thanks to poor enforcement in stopping the trade,
say experts and activists.More
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Nobel honours economist who told Bush to "Please
go away" |
| PAUL Krugman,
a professor at Princeton University who is best known
for his New York Times columns -- frequently involving
scathing assaults on the policies of the George W. Bush
administration -- was awarded the 2008 Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on international
trade and economic geography.More |
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Let save ourselves from Genetically Modified stuff |
| INDIA and
her people are again threatened by the plunder of resources;
her prosperity has become subject of exploitation and
abuse. It is almost reappearance of the past.More |
| COMMENT |
Pesticides and Birds
|
PESTICIDES cause significant
bird mortality each year. Of the five billion pounds
of pesticides that are applied worldwide each year,
20% are used in the United States (U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency [USEPA], 2004). Our assumption that
because these pesticides are licensed by the federal
government their use is automatically safe, is unfounded.More
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| Vanishing
Bees: Victims of Industrial Agriculture |
 OVER
the past 30 years, honeybee populations have plummeted
50%. Many factors are contributing to the decline including
systemic pesticides, varroa mites and Nosema Disease”but
the greatest threat to the bee’s survival may be
the industrial agriculture model that promotes pesticides
and monocropping.More |
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| Afghanistan:
'Muddling through’ how long? |
ASKED in November
2003 whether the United States would "finish the
job" in Afghanistan, Sen. John McCain responded
"I'm not as concerned as I am about Iraq...but
I believe that if Karzai can make the progress that
he is making then in the long term we may muddle through
in Afghanistan.More
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