This morning Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Aung San Suu Kyi was moved from her Rangoon home to Burma's notorious Insein Prison, where she will face trial on Monday for supposedly violating the terms of her house arrest by hosting an unauthorized visitor after an American man swam uninvited to her compound and refused to leave. Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest continuously since 200...

Dear President Obama,   Successive U.S. administrations, with overwhelming bi-partisan support from Congress, have shown their support for Burmese peoples’ aspiration to live in a democratic society free from their military dictatorship .  Unfortunately, despite U.S. efforts as well as decades of peaceful attempts by successive United Nations Special Envoys and Rapporteurs to convince the Burmese...

According to Times of India dated 24.2.2009, declaring his willingness to visit Myanmar again, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the country's military government to follow up its recent prisoner release by freeing all political detainees and quickly resuming talks with the opposition without preconditions. While Ban said there should not be any preconditions to a return visit, he made clear tha...

There are victors all around us. Bangladesh: Sh. Hasina swept to power in the general elections, held by the army-backed interim administration, winning 231 of 299 parliament seats. The Awami League and its allies have been given a mandate that Erst-while East Pakistan gave her father Sh. Mujibur Rehman in 1970. My NRBD friends had told me that they were expecting her to win by a narrow margin. No...

Jharkhand by-election has threw an unexpected result wherein sitting Chief Minister Shibu Soren has lost from Tamar Assembly constituency by a margin of over 9,200 votes.   Shibu Soren contested this by-election in order to seek entry into the Assembly within a stipulated period of six months from assuming office on August 27, 2008.   The six-month period comes to end on February 27. Soren lost ...

According to a news report in the Times of India dated the 6th Jan., 2009, Golma Devi has been appointed a minister in the new Rajasthan cabinet, because her husband is a powerful Meena leader. She must be a fast learner,   because within a few days, she even learnt to sign her own name. Hopefully, before she finishes her term she will be able to dispense with the services of an aide to read the ...

According to a news item in the Times of India dated the 30th December, 2008, National Conference chief Omar Abdullah will be the next chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir heading a coalition government with the  Congress party . This was decided after Omar met Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday afternoon. The meeting was held at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's residence. Emer...

According to Times of India dated 30th December, 2008, Former Bangladeshi premier Sheikh Hasina Wajed has won a landslide victory in general elections, with her party picking up more than 75% of  seats, an Election Commission official said on Tuesday.  Commission spokesman S M Asaduzzaman said that votes in 295 of the 299 seats had been counted, and Sheikh Hasina's Awani League had won 229...

Democrat Barack Obama created history when he got elected as the America’s first black president in a historic triumph that overcame racial barriers that has existed in America for long.   The 47-year-old Democratic senator from Illinois sealed his victory by defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in a string of wins in hard-fought battleground states- Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Iowa. Obama, son...

< Democracy is the biggest humbug as it is based on presumptions which are not true. It presumes in the first place that everybody has equal intelligence and wisdom to choose the representatives of the people.  This means that an ordinary illiterate man and a highly educated intellectual are equal in their wisdom.  Such cannot be the case.  It then presumes that all lawmakers who are representativ...

Saturday is the first anniversary of the crackdown on Buddhist monks' peaceful uprising in Burma. I wanted to do something to help them in their struggle for an end to military dictatorship in Burma . Will you join me in signing an online petition to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon ? The petition asks him to take immediate action to secure the release of all political prisoners in Burma, and ...

Former Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, pulled his party out of Pakistan's coalition government on August 25th pitting the volatile nation back into state of political uncertainty and political anarchy.   This announcement on part of Nawaz Sharif was made when three days of talks in London between Sharif and Zardari ended without any conclusive breakthrough.   The Pakistan Pupils Party (PPP...

Results and Trends Update 8PM IST : Final Results The Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) has emerged as the single largest party winning 110 seats out of the 224 seats, while the Congress ended up winning 80 seats. The king-makers of the last time, HD Deve Gowda's JD(S) has been totally rejected by the electorates this time and the party finished a distant third with just 28 seats. Independents have won ...

The people of Nepal voted for rebel political party like Maoist to come ahead and take the responsibility to frame a new constitution for Nepal but come to mainstream and restore the peace in small and naturally beautiful nation like Nepal. The madate is that all parties must take country ahead with mutual understanding and let there be no autocratic rule by any one. The vote share for Maoist, Con...