The United Nations should shut down everything except its humanitarian operations. The Security Council has little purpose left other than taking up all the parking spots on 1st Avenue.
The US has already shown the absolute uselessness of the United Nations with the second Iraq War and subsequent wars. Russia is underlining it in bold.
Uselessness of the UN Security Council of course. Their humanitarian work is good and should be expanded.
But the security council is nothing more than an oligopoly on war making.
India, not even a permanent member, also showed the toothlessness of the UNSC in 2019 by unilaterally annexing Indian Kashmir, totally ignoring that the dispute was still technically pending in the UN.
UN said or did little.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
If I may just point out, whenever "liberals" like Audrey, Anya, Rohit etc publish a letter, we signatories are happy and proud to put our names on the letters.
Whenever HAF sanghis pretend they have letters, it's always "names withheld".
Cos there are no sanghis in reality.
Any committee in any university outside India would look at the evidence presented by Truschke, Chakravarti, Chopra and see clear blatant plagiarism in the work.
By any reasonable modern definition of plagiarism.
I'm always struck by how perfectly and frequently #DerryGirls uses The Cranberries at the perfect poignant moments about everyday innocent lives traumatized and destroyed by geopolitical realities. Especially Zombie.
Don't let anyone shame you for feeling sad for Ukraine with obnoxious questions like "what do you know about Ukraine". General knowledge is not a precondition to feel empathy for victims of war. I do wish these sentiments extended to Palestine. But let's not scorn empathy.
Ah, here is a Cranberries clip from #DerryGirls. One of them anyway. They manage the perfect balance of empathy and gallows humor and cautious optimism. Imagine setting a slapstick sitcom in an occupied territory with terrorism. And still making us laugh.
Whoa, just saw a TV commercial for WhatsApp. I've never seen it advertised before.
Oh I've seen it advertised in India for years. This was the first time I actually saw a TV spot on network primetime in the United States for WhatsApp. And sold on one feature alone - e2e encryption making it safer than texts.
Remember that WhatsApp is NOT the default messaging service in the US, like it is in much of the world. The top services used for it are FB messenger & Snapchat. And of course, old text messages, which remain way more popular in US than in the rest of the world.
I'm old enough to remember the actual answer "why". Domestic politics. Jayalalitha was turning the screws and the BJP decided to conduct long awaited (since Rao) tests of the weapons to change the narrative. Led to a huge jump in Vajpayee's popularity. And he won again in 99.
India never signed the NPT or the CTBT. Refusing nuclear apartheid was always Indian policy doctrine, across governments. Vajpayee didn't invent it in. He was just in power at the time. And greenlit the tests delayed primarily cos political uncertainty.
The option to greenlight those tests (different from 1974 which was not yet weaponizable) was there for Rao, Chandrasekhar, Gujral, Deve Gowda, all of them. They didn't postpone because UN says you can't have nukes. It was just a very uncertain time in Indian politics.
At least in Sushma Swaraj days, the MEA used to take care of these things in time. Under the current MEA, the priority is more on throwing tantrums about people criticizing Modi, and keeping an eye on Indians abroad protesting against Modi
Yeah, this advisory from Feb 15 is so not enough and in fact embarrassingly irresponsible. There should have been details of dozens of planes arranged by the MEA for Indians to leave. Not just "y'all should leave". You're not a news agency. You're the embassy!