Conservative Tokyo Governor Shintaro Also Backs Nanjing Massacre Denial

Tokyo’s outspoken conservative governor Shintaro Ishihara on Friday said he agreed with the mayor of Nagoya’s statement that the 1937 ‘rape’ of Nanjing by Japanese troops never happened. Diplomatic sparks flew earlier this week when Takashi Kawamura said he believes only a “conventional fight” took place in Nagoya’s sister city of Nanjing, instead of the well-documented massacre of Chinese civilians. China says 300,000 people were killed in an orgy of murder, rape and destruction when the eastern city — then the capital — fell to the Japanese imperial army, and the incident has haunted Sino-Japanese ties ever since. Beijing lodged a formal complaint over the denial and Nanjing officials said they were freezing twin city activities in protest.

A BRICS initiative on Syria

Recent media reports suggest the intriguing possibility that ‘non-alignment’ is likely gaining currency once again as the core tenet of India’s foreign policy. Life is taking full circle after almost 6 or 7 years ago when the former United States Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice exhorted Indian pundits to purge from their thinking the last trace of the doctrine of ‘non-alignment’ associated with the world of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. She sought that Indians should instead trust the United States’ determination to make their country a truly global player. Thus, in the period that followed, Chanakya (circa 3rd century BC) who is credited with authorship of the ancient Indian political treatise called Arthasatra, was brought out of the woodwork to replace Nehru and Indira Gandhi as the new game in town in New Delhi. The ‘Hindu Machiavelli’ who was forgotten for some two millennia as an archaic past if little relevance to the modern-day world, provided the ‘civilisational alibi’ for the Indian establishment to bring about a paradigm shift in its foreign policy – under the garb of ‘national interests’ – attuned to its ‘unipolar predicament’ in the post-Cold War era.

BRICS – The Basis of Multipolar World

It’s not only the common interests in the field of modernization and economic development that have made possible the strengthening of relations between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (since 2010) in recent years….

Human Rights in Ancient China

The biggest hindrance of the West and the rest of the world in understanding China is the perceived lack of human rights tradition in China. China is an old civilization and a civilization cannot continue…