A culture of exceptionalism is eating away at hard-won military gains — in armies across the world
1| The Bearded Warriors
Australian Major General Justice Paul Brereton had his work cut out when he took over one of his most challenging roles over four years ago. He was tasked with investigating allegations that a small group of elite Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers and other commando regiments brutalised and killed Afghan civilians, planted evidence to justify their actions among a series of other troubling behaviour.
His report, released on 19 November 2020, found that 39 Afghans were unlawfully killed in 23 separate incidents either by special forces or at the instruction of special forces. Most damning of…
A Tale of Two Abduls
As the Indian Navy’s aircrafts pummelled East Pakistan into submission in early December 1971, the very waters the aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, used as a runway — the Bay of Bengal, prepared for the entry of a much larger predator. The US Navy’s Task Force 74 of the Seventh Fleet, led by the largest warship in the world, the nuclear powered 75,000 ton, USS Enterprise was deployed to the Bay of Bengal. On board were more than 70 bombers and fighter aircrafts and accompanying it were a flotilla of powerful destroyers. …
Texas’ unprecedented cold snap has tested the renewables story
They don’t make cold like this very often — and for good reason. More than 2 million homes were plunged into darkness as an intensifying cold wave gripped central US. Electricity outages began spreading through a 14-state grid across the Southwest. Electricity prices in Texas hit the maximum permissible $9000/MWh, and gas in nearby Oklahoma changed hands at $600/mmbtu. Less than a year on from negative oil prices — record high gas and power prices are grabbing the headlines. For context — those two numbers are typically around $30/MWh and $3/mmbtu.
Small electricity retailers in Texas were paying customers to…
The birth of the cantonment and its fraught relationship with the Indian public
The cantonment has had a love-hate relationship with the Indian cities they reside in for all of their existence. This has become especially acute over the past two decades as large urban centres like Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kolkata have developed and an urban sprawl has mushroomed around the cantonment — originally intended to be well away from the city centre.
The monsoon had yet to reach India, and the northern plains scorched through the summer of 1857. A crisp drink in the night was the only reprieve, apart from the breeze blowing across the Yamuna. Lieutenant Cox, an East India…
It is not about the crash/rise — it is what comes after
How does a stock unite politicians from across the spectrum, get billionaires to bat for the ‘little guy’, and hedge funds to ‘lose’? Simple — our cancel culture on steroids.
GameStop’s meteoric rise and fall was pitched as a battle of the ‘regular’ retail investor versus a money grabbing hedge fund, but what it crucially neglected was the fact that ultimately retail investors were ultimately left holding the can for the carnage. True hedge funds lost tens of millions, if not more (no sympathy — that is the business they are in). But who was buying at the top? …
Five of the eight Commander-in-Chief level posts will have new incumbents this year
As far back as October 2015, Lt. General Praveen Bakshi was identified as the next army chief, poised to take over from General Suhag in December 2016. At the same time, Major General (later Lt. General) Devraj Anbu was identified as the successor to General Bakshi in 2019, whilst he was still commanding 17 Mountain Division. Lt Gen. Anbu went on to head IV Corps in Tezpur (which, along with III Corps in Dimapur, has historically been a launchpad to the higher office) and the Northern Command as GOC-in-C. As things turned out, however, Lt. Gen. Bakshi retired after heading…
The nation of action, and civil servants, is clueless in an emergency
I wrote Covid-19 Shines a Light on Britain’s Decline on May 4th, 2020. The immediate, largely angry, feedback I received can be summed up as — ‘time will tell’. I said, yes, ‘time shall tell’. Here we are in December, having had a free for all over the summer, a rag-tag bunch of ‘tiered’ restrictions, devolved administrations going to war with the central government, and finally, via another national lockdown, in a newly invented ‘Tier 4’, with a mutant ‘Grinch’ virus apparently wreacking havoc.
I don’t take any joy in short-selling Britain’s response to this emergency — the biggest takeaway…
The nuclearisation of the Indian sub-continent
As the Indian Navy’s aircrafts pummelled East Pakistan into submission in early December 1971, the very waters the aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, used as a runway — the Bay of Bengal, prepared for the entry of a much larger predator. The US Navy’s Task Force 74 of the Seventh Fleet, led by the largest warship in the world, the nuclear powered 75,000 ton, USS Enterprise was deployed to the Bay of Bengal. On board were more than 70 bombers and fighter aircrafts and accompanying it were a flotilla of powerful destroyers. …
The cash guzzling and inept Government-owned businesses in India need to go
1| The Maharaja’s Privy Purse is, Finally, Clipped
In a country where the privy purse was abolished by Indira Gandhi in 1971, the real Maharaja has survived on government handouts for another 50 years.
The government has finally announced that they will put Air India on the market with no preconditions attached. This has been hailed as some of the most welcome ‘economic’ news in recent years. This says a lot more about the state of the economy than meets the eye. Some commentators have equated this sale with the government having, finally, come to the realisation that it has…
“Prices will have to rise” is the only recourse left
Self-help is an all-encompassing term public companies (especially commodity companies) use to reassure investors that they aren’t purely beholden to commodity prices. For example, if oil prices go from $100 a barrel to $40/b, that doesn’t mean profits slip by a commensurate amount. A lot of non-essential middle-management fat is cut, operations are streamlined, unprofitable fields are idled, contracts for rigs are cancelled and so on.
Self-help, however, can only go so far without jeopardising lives and, the other non-negotiable, big oil dividends. Both are being buttressed by debt as Covid-19 continues to bite into demand — with the big…
