The Free Press Journal | The Strategic Import of Pelosi Meeting the Dalai Lama

The last time then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went on a diplomatic mission, the world almost changed. It was August 2, 2022, and despite the stiff resistance from China, and a token opposition from President Joe Biden, Pelosi went ahead with her visit to Taiwan, a country China claims is its territory. Beijing’s retaliation was quick and unequivocal — several military exercises that may have given both the Taiwanese and Biden more than a few moments of anxiety. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Why The Young American Vote Won’t Impact Biden

Several leading American universities at present are under siege by two things: 1) Students, and 2) The shortsightedness of their managements, who have abdicated administrative responsibilities and handed them over to law enforcement. Following nationwide protests against the Israeli military offensive in Gaza that has left nearly 35,000 Palestinians dead, universities around the US allowed the police to take action against their students. In some cases, like Columbia University in New York, administrations have cancelled graduation ceremonies, locked up hostels and dorm rooms, and cancelled all classes, leaving thousands of students in the lurch. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Trump Trial Busts The Myth That in America, All Are Equal

A few years ago, a popular Hindi film actor was asked about the books she reads, to which she replied, among other things, that George Orwell’s Animal Farm can teach children to love and care for animals. Whatever one may think of Orwell and his writing, he was not a writer of children’s books, and Animal Farm is as dystopian as it can get. One of the great aphorisms the book included was a proclamation by the pigs on the farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Analysis: America’s Tragic Tryst With Gun Control Laws

On November 30, 2021, a 15-year-old boy in the otherwise quiet township of Oxford in Michigan, in the upper midwestern region of the United States, entered his high school premises with a semiautomatic handgun he had picked up from home and began shooting indiscriminately at his teachers and fellow students. Ethan Crumbley continued firing for four minutes until he was captured, but those 240 seconds were enough to kill four teenagers and injure seven others. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Analysis: Biden May Not Like It, But His Age Will Play Spoilsport

In 1984, when then US President Ronald Reagan was 73 and running for a second term, he had to debate with Walter Mondale, a former Vice President under Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party’s frontrunner against the Republican incumbent. Mondale was 17 years younger than Reagan. The debate’s host — Henry Trewhitt of The Baltimore Sun — asked Reagan on live TV: “You already are the oldest President in history. Some of your staff said recently that you looked tired after your recent encounter with Mr Mondale. I recall that President Kennedy had to go days on end without sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Any doubt in your mind whether you will be able to function under such circumstances?” Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Analysis: For Both Biden And Trump, It Ain't Gonna Be Easy

On Wednesday, February 28, the results of the Democratic and Republican primaries from Michigan state in the US were declared. Expectedly, both current President Joe Biden of the Democratic Party and former President Donald Trump, a Republican, won easily. Their victories, though, had a scratch card feel to them — you’d think you won a ₹100 cashback, but all you got was a 20% discount to a product you will never buy or is cheaper on Amazon. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Analysis: America Can’t Rein In Trump, And The World May Have To Pay

Last weekend, America’s 21st century version of pre-1933 Adolf Hitler (minus the military service) — Donald Trump — said at an election rally that he once told a NATO leader that he will let Russian President Vladimir Putin “do whatever the hell he wants” to any NATO member that does not pay its full dues to the Americans. You know, protection money. Trump, by his own admission, told the president of a NATO ally, “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them (the Russians) to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.” Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Analysis: Forget Trump, Biden Has A Bigger Problem — A West Asia Conflagration

At the 2009 Academy Awards ceremony at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, the Oscar for the Best Documentary Feature was awarded to British filmmaker James Marsh, whose masterpiece ‘Man on Wire’ had enthralled audiences the world over since its release the previous year. The movie features maverick Frenchman Philippe Petit who, in 1974, performed what was then perhaps the most dangerous stunt you could ever conceive of — a highwire walk 1312 feet above the ground on a 200kg steel cable that connected the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City. He accomplished that with just a 30-foot, 25 kg balancing pole, with no protective gear whatsoever. He walked for 45 minutes, and made eight passes along the wire, during which he even danced and sat down on the wire to salute the crowd below. He was later arrested, but released on the promise that he will perform for kids in a much safer setting (which he not only did, but he has been living in New York ever since). Read the full article here.

Bol India Bol | Why Neither Vivek Nor Nikki Can Out-Trump Trump?

Sometime in 2003, India’s Left leaders went to meet then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to convince him to not send the nation’s troops to Iraq to fight the ‘War of Terrorism’ that the United States had initiated in retaliation for the September 11, 2001 attacks. The US had created a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ and President George W. Bush wanted India to be part of it. Vajpayee was dead against it, but he had two major concerns: One, refusing the US would be diplomatically awkward; and two, some of his senior cabinet ministers, led by LK Advani, and the country’s intelligentsia, including leading editors in New Delhi, were goading the Prime Minister to send our soldiers to Baghdad and exhorting him to be “on the right side of history”. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Analysis: Vivek Ramaswamy’s VP auditions have begun

Let’s get one thing out of the way before we unpack what happened in the US this Monday and Tuesday: Vivek Ramaswamy is more ‘White’ than ‘Brown’. He is indeed proud of his Indian heritage (his parents are Tam-Brahms from Palakkad, Kerala), and has never shied away from flaunting it, but if he is to be at the centre of American politics in some way, it is not his religiosity at the family dinner table that matters, it is his social and political views. In that context, it is his childhood piano teacher who has had a greater influence on him than his parents. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Analysis: Trump and the art of electoral endurance

In the 2007 hit Shah Rukh Khan movie Chak De! India, women’s hockey coach Kabir Khan has to deal with a bunch of soloists in the team, athletes who refuse to blend in as a team and would rather make single-player runs into the opponent’s side, only to be defeated in their pursuit, because, well, the guys on the other side are smarter. The Americans have a word for this: Heroball, a derogatory term for a style of play where a single player tries to be the team's hero by taking and missing many low percentage shots. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Realpolitik Will Define Indo-US Ties, Not Pannun

The US Department of Justice’s week-old indictment of Indian national Nikhil Gupta in the alleged attempt to kill New York-based Khalistani separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun cannot be a barometer to measure New Delhi’s deep strategic ties with Washington, something both countries have worked on intensely for the last two decades. The Americans have not only been discreet in their investigation, they have been judicious in their approach by doing everything by the book in their detention and deportation of Gupta, an alleged drug trafficker and weapons dealer who is accused of trying to kill Pannun, an American-Canadian citizen. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Trump’s dangerous rhetoric as polls draw near

Donald Trump is putting American democratic institutions and processes under severe stress, more than what he did as President between 2017 and 2020 — be it the judiciary, law enforcement or the legislature. Just this past week, a lower court judge in the state of Colorado said that the former occupant of the White House engaged in the insurrection of January 6, 2021, but that he should remain on the ballot for 2024, a move Trump’s opponents say is unconstitutional. Trump is already at the centre of series of federal and state level lawsuits on serious charges under several laws that include, among others, one that is used to try underworld criminals and large-scale white-collar crimes. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | 2024 Polls: AI Fake News Will Damage Democracy Forever

I am calling it now. In 2024, when several countries around the world — including India and the US — are scheduled to go to the polls, disinformation and fake news generated by artificial intelligence software will bring democratic systems to their knees. The damage is going to be so severe that, in the worst-case scenario, we will have reached a point of no return. Even if we somehow manage to halt the fake news juggernaut (unlikely, but let’s say we do), it will take decades to go back to any kind of normalcy. Read the full article here.

The Free Press Journal | Why India Must Keep An Eye On US Republicans

In 1991, American singer-songwriter Marc Cohn wrote and composed an autobiographical song titled ‘Walking in Memphis’ which instantly became an anthem among college-going kids around the world. It became such a rage that Cohn won the Best New Artist Grammy at the 1992 edition held at Radio City Music Hall in New York (Cohn was already 32 at the time, but it was his first album). Read the full article here.