Americas
General Colin Powell: A Decent Man in Indecent Society

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s (1892-1932) famous treatise Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) needs significant revisitation through a personal case: former Jamaican-American Secretary of State and Chair of Joint Chief of Staff General Colin Powell who, at age 84, died on October 18, a few days ago, from the effects of COVID-19 while fully vaccinated as he struggled against cancer. Our present still early 21st Century era, remains very much like the interworld war time context of Niebur penning his classic .Namely “now” continues to be a time in America in which truth telling is, in too many respects,much more myth making rituals than the presentation of reliable and valid knowledge based evidence .This is especially the case when it comes to matters of racial justice and the justice problems of other historically marginalized and oppressed populations such as girls and women, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the poor at large; particularly those who are Non-White.
Plus through the generations, there have been American power elites using disproportionately the bloodshedded lives of the poor and otherwise marginal on their conceived battlefields , who choose to make wars be it during their internal theft of land from indigenous peoples or other peoples such as the Mexicans of the West and South West ;the World War II internment of the too competive Californian Japanese American farm owners, and Polynesians in late 19th century Hawaii or the grabbing of land from the crumbling Spanish and French empires such as the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Hati or aiding European colonial rulers engagements in their thirst for controlling Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans in their more or less conquered societies.
As the contemporary American right is making much to do over critical race theory, whatever that really is, wanting the continued White Supremacy coverups about the historical inequalities and deep insidious prejudices which cripple the well being of all Americans and brings injury to efforts to be a role model of justice to a world which knows what the deal of hypocrisy really is, we reside in a society in which the emperor declaring decency no more has clothes, as scanty as they have been. Even much weaker nations let alone our mortal superpower rivals are no longer afraid when it comes to casting stones at the blatant moral decency lies, we Americans have been taught to live by and have encouraged or forced others to live by over the generations.
It is difficult to get over to people like the American far right and their foes neoliberal progressives, ironically enough, and those elsewhere in the world with glitters in their eyes when the name America is conjured up ,to realize how much truth has been tainted in America since its slave holding and indigenous people’s extermination colonial origins. The compromise of truth about the dehumanizations which pathologically marks the lives of all Americans in the effort to paint America as the land of freedom and milk and honey for all has come to propagate generations of injustices which have sources and manifestations of massive amnesia or placed in siloed boxes of marginality or exclusion such as the authentic history telling of too usual abysmal Non-Whites experiences in America.
But as untruthfulness has been so much a norm in the telling the truth about America, we have in recent times fallen into the deepest gutter of indecency as a society. We began to slip and slide into being an indecent society with the questionable if not unsolved Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcom X assassinations of the 1960s and Viet Nam and Watergate ending in disgrace in the 1970s.
It was also a time when Colin Powell began to make his climb in the military and in public service. It was when there remained the Jim Crow norms, still very much here, which dictated that if you were Black and wanted to climb in a society opening you had to have a clean nose and a willingness to conform to racist standards which required you to be a gentle soul with a charming, good sense of humor. He was a symbol of success in the 1970s and 1980s era to the extent to which in the 1990s his name was touted as a possible candidate for the Presidency as he was so popular.
But what made Powell so popular was getting himself involved in leading militarily an unjust war which even he later regretted. A war began by the first Bush I which he would be unjustly rewarded by Bush II who fired him after he did public dirty work which as he would note, tarnished his sterling career for good. But it was the beginning of the rotten eggs era where Presidents from Nixon through Trump and now Biden would find themselves being entangled in webs of indecency if not weaving themselves. Preferring to look the other way and pretend that which was indecent was righteous patriotic duty.
It came to the point that Powell as the decent man he was became a rarefied symbol of pioneering racial change in an integrating society which was becoming increasingly indecent by the day where morality became associated more with right wing ideologies than the basic meaning of morality meaning decency. In fact, much later even right-wing evangelicals such as Jerry Falwell, Jr. and his wife like Jim Baker in the 1980s would become illustrations of how much morality became empty in true meaning as they became engulfed in public indecent charges while waddling in their private jets and mansions.
So, when Trump came along in 2016 with his indecent immorality charges and his love for constantly lying, it was the result of the normalization of indecent politics where lobbyists hold elected officials in their deep monied pockets coaxing them to stand up against measures to promote taking care of the human rights of their constituencies. Where nothing is done about gun violence due to the lobby power of the National Rifle Association and where fossil fuel companies hold efforts to clean the air up through dipping money into the bank accounts of Congress men and women. Where drug companies and medical insurance companies keep the quality of medical care low while Americans pay health costs through our noses. Trump did not create indecency in American mainstream politics, it has been emerging for years and now is well here. He just made indecency fashionable as seen in his post-election fan club fawning over his lying claims of really winning the 2020 Presidential election.
It is here in the emerging indecent society, where we see Powell feeling compelled to support policies which he was morally against only to regret the consequences. He was in the second Bush administration the failed stopping gate of Bush II, Cheney, and Rumsfeld who shoved the United States into an unconstitutional pro-active war with Iraq and fake nation building claims for invading Afghanistan all for the oil, opium, race against the Russians and the Chinese, and to make arms selling profits. As said earlier in a slightly different way, after Powell’s Weapons of Mass Destruction UN speech, a grotesque gesture of public political indecency, with a tarnished reputation for the rest of his life, Bush II in the beginning of his second term fired him.Powell did not see it coming from the jovial Bush II who once told him jokingly in front of Biden then Chair of the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee to make sure he packed clean underwear as he prepared for a trip to Europe.
Powell’s support of Democratic candidates and Presidents in the aftermath of his push out from the Bush administration made it clear there was no more place for him in a Republican Party veering to the right eating its own decent luminaries such as John McCain ,Lyn Cheney, and Mitt Romney in the process.
His support for Democrats did not mean he became one and in fact described himself as being party less. That is a long way from the mentoring he received from Nixon, Regan, and Bush I Republicans in their patronizing way felt that Powell was a deserving symbol of racial integration in an opening desegregating key sector in American society to admire while of course they tied his hands since though it is a tad bit better now, it has always been the case if you are Black and wish to climb to the top of some system you have to be what one Black Chair of a University search committee told me in the late 1980s, you got to be a good boy or girl though of course in an adult body. You must be decent even though decency may not be the norm environment. Certainly not a standard requirement for status climbing ill-tempered White men and even increasingly White women who are given a pass due to their intellectual gifts or
/and high technical skills,even though they are cold, humorless, ego maniacs allowed to climb and climb to the highest berths of politics and other key systems such as corporate business, law, medicine, and higher education.
I remember vividly living in London in 1990 when Bush I was gearing up to invade Iraq. The British press was in a feeding frenzy not only about the coming war with Maggie Thatcher in full support swing but most importantly in fascination with the Black man Colin Powell being the Chair of the Joint Chief of Staff. Journalists were more interested in conveying how nice and charming Powell was forgetting he was the most authoritative American military man not a pastor. And that has remained the public relations image of Powell while being characterized as being more of a technician or as he would put it, a pragmatist, rather than as a big picture visionary guy, which is usually an image reserved for White male military leaders in contemporary America such as General John Mattis and David Petraeus. Meanwhile, from the 1990s through the day he died, Powell, who insisted that race made no difference in his career climb though he was always characterized in the media as the first Black this and that, so it was always a factor in the equation of his promotion and climb, became increasingly a marginalizing icon of decency in a society in which indecency has become the driving norm. Joining Bush II’s administration after he got over through such indecent means engineered through Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court should have been enough for him to realize it was a bad omen for things to come, which did. But he felt his decency, his love for country, his love for American in military garb and civilian dress would be enough to be a moral counterweight in an indecent administration. Instead, he would lose battles to keep us out of un-necessary wars; ignored and then fired.
General Colin Powell then is a tragic symbol and indicator of how indecent public life has become in American society over the course of the last 50 years. And then we wonder why. We wonder why there is so much avoidance of public service by young people who are decent people, our future but who refuse to become involved in what has become a rotten society. We see what is happening to decent Joe Biden, going down the tubes quickly since he came into office only to find decency, trying to do the right thing is not on the mind of those who hold the purse strings in politics. They don’t care about climate control, they don’t care about providing provisions to help the poor, the unemployed, and the sick. They don’t care about voting rights or the rights of women, older persons, or the disabled. Any effort to help is called socialism unless it is to help the wealthy and otherwise privileged.
Religion has become a plaything for entertainment and to generate revenue than caring for the souls of people and being a voice for decency in a society becoming increasingly indecent regarding public norms and expectations. It is no wonder why religious leaders are the last to be thought about when it comes to public policy consultation or comforting protestors advocating their human rights, or boldly standing up for what is right in their own congregations, in society, and in the world. Religious leaders are more concerned about remaining employed by their congregations and supervisors and moving up the career ladders of their organized faiths than telling them the truth and urging them to tell the truth about the need for decency in an indecent society.
God in an indecent society becomes a trinket worn around our necks for show and tell and nothing else except perhaps a circus clown or an ATM machine. We don’t need God any more in an indecent society since we have all the brains and all the answers. We live prosperous lives and when that is indeed the case, we have the benefits to cover our health care, home mortgages, and educating our kids. We don’t need God anymore to bless us and deliver us since we become gods. All we need to do, to paraphrase Powell on the eve of invading Iraq, is, when need arises, to get the enemy in our crosshairs and kill them because we have the arms which can do so and who cares. And then when it is all over, when we too have been crumbled up and tossed away like a soiled paper bag, we still don’t get it since God does not live in an indecent society or at best if so, God is in some small corner some whereas an exotic old man with a beard who has nothing to do with the rest of us.
So, what is to come of us, those who are still walking on earth still breathing as we grieve the death of this decent man who tried his best to maneuver in a society which lost the little it had like the sort of decency which his hard-working immigrant parents had only to be outstripped and replaced with expectations of indecency in public life as he began to climb up. What is our calling, what is our task? Is it to continue to go with the flow of public indecency thinking and practices we will get to kiss a golden ring one day of ultimate success only to find that rot begats rot? And the begatted rot gets worst and worst and never leads anywhere except the worst dying with tarnished legacies of lives which meant well but got caught up in what becomes normal in an indecent society which abuses its young and those trying to do decent things in need of some bodies and minds for justice finding their backbones and standing and speaking out for what is right and telling what is wrong. If not a person of faith, that is at least what a patriotic person does in the interest of the citizens of their nation. We are living in an America in which more of us need to quit and speak up about why like Biden’s envoy to Haiti in protest of the treatment of Haitians attempting to be refugees rather than going along for the ride to get career perks.
Or Colin Powell quitting rather than putting up a public front in supporting a war he knew was wrong. And now there will always be a ” but” or a question mark after remarks about him while preserving the least important in terms of his racial break through symbolism and his charm. He deserves to be remembered for much more than that and could have if he had just quit and told the American public why since what was going on was indecent in how the structure of the web, he was entangled in was and no one person can fight against structural rot.
So, when you are there and have stature, have the backbone to quit before they toss you away anyways. My prayers and condolences to the Powell family. God bless this decent man in such an indecent society who did the best he could but could not but could.
Americas
Quad foreign ministers meet in New York for the third time

Quad foreign ministers met in New York for the second time this year and the seventh time since 2019. The four-nation grouping’s ambit of cooperation has clearly expanded and diversified over the years. What were the key talking points this time? I analyse.
The foreign ministers of India, Japan, Australia and the United States – four key maritime democracies in the Indo-Pacific – met on the sidelines of the 78th annual session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on September 22. This was their seventh meeting since 2019 and the second of 2023. Notably, exactly four years ago, this four-nation Quad was raised to the foreign ministers’ level amid a UNGA session. Earlier in 2023, the ministers met in March on the sidelines of the G20 ministerial in New Delhi and in May, this year, the Quad leaders’ summit was hosted by Japan on the sidelines of the G7 summit. Having met twice in 2022 as well, the ministers congregated six times in person and virtually once so far.
The previous ministerial in New Delhi saw the four-nation grouping making a reference to an extra-regional geopolitical issue for the first time – Ukraine – and also the initiation of a new Working Group mechanism on counter-terrorism, a key agenda item for India and the United States, among other themes of discussion. Following the seventh meeting, India’s foreign minister Dr S. Jaishankar tweeted, “Always value our collective contribution to doing global good”, while U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken remarked that the grouping is “vital to our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific, and together we reaffirmed our commitment to uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter”.
Diversifying ambit of cooperation
The ministers have clearly doubled down on the commitments taken during their previous deliberations, particularly to improve capacity-building for regional players. The joint statement that followed the meeting read, “The Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness is supporting regional partners combat illicit maritime activities and respond to climate-related and humanitarian events.” Similarly, the Working Group on maritime security promised “practical and positive outcomes” for the region. Prior to the recent ministerial, the Working Group on counter-terrorism conducted a Consequence Management Exercise that “explored the capabilities and support Quad countries could offer regional partners in response to a terrorist attack”, the joint readout mentions.
Later this year, the U.S. island state of Hawaii will host the Counter-terrorism Working Group’s meeting and tabletop exercise, which will focus on countering the use of emerging technologies for terrorist activities, while the Working Group on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) will be convened in Australia’s Brisbane for its second tabletop exercise. Earlier in August, this year, all four Quad navies participated in Exercise Malabar for the fourth consecutive year, off Sydney, the first hosted by Australia. However, as in previous meetings, the ministers didn’t specifically mention Russia or China with regard to the situations in Ukraine and maritime east Asia respectively.
On the Ukraine question, the ministers expressed their “deep concern”, taking note of its “terrible and tragic humanitarian consequences” and called for “comprehensive, just, and lasting peace”. In a veiled reference to Russia, the ministers rebuffed the “use, or threat of use, of nuclear weapons”, underscoring the respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, and called for the resumption of the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allows for the export of food grains and fertilizers from Ukraine to world markets via a maritime humanitarian corridor, amid the ongoing conflict with Russia.
Similarly, in another veiled reference to continuing Chinese belligerence and lawfare in maritime east Asia, the ministers stressed upon the need to adhere to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and to maintain “freedom of navigation and overflight consistent with UNCLOS”, reiterating their “strong opposition to any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion”, including with respect to maritime claims in the South and East China Seas. Going further ahead, the ministers expressed their concern on “the militarisation of disputed features, the dangerous use of coast guard and maritime militia vessels, and efforts to disrupt other countries’ offshore exploitation activities”. The joint readout also had mentions of North Korea and Myanmar.
The evident and the inferred
Today, almost all the areas of cooperation of Quad countries happen to be the areas of strategic competition with China, the rapid rise of which necessitated the coming together of the four nations, even though this is not openly acknowledged. In this new great game unfolding in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S.-led Quad is trying to balance China’s overwhelming initiatives to capture the support of smaller and middle powers in the region and around the world. Placid initiatives such as the Open Radio Access Network, the private sector-led Investors Network, Cybersecurity Partnership, Cable Connectivity Partnership and the Pandemic Preparedness Exercises should be read in this context.
With the rise of Quad in parallel with the rise of China and other minilateral groupings in the Indo-Pacific such as the AUKUS (a grouping of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States), the existing regional framework based on the slow-moving, consensus-based Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was put to test. However, allaying all doubts, Quad deliberations at both the ministerial and summit levels continued to extend their support to ASEAN’s centrality in the region and also for the ASEAN-led regional architecture that also includes the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum. Despite somewhat differing regional outlooks, the Quad likes to see itself as “complementary” to the ASEAN, rather than an “alternative” to its pan-regional influence.
India, the only non-ally of the U.S. in the Quad, will host the fourth in-person Quad leaders’ summit in 2024. The Asian giant is often dubbed as the weakest link in the grouping, owing to its friendly ties with Russia, but other members intent to keep India’s bilateral equations with other countries away from the interior dynamics of the grouping, signalling an acknowledgement of India’s growing geopolitical heft in the region and beyond. This seems to be subtly reflected in the stance taken by individual Quad members in the recent India-Canada diplomatic row, in which they made sure not to provoke New Delhi or to touch upon sensitive areas, even though a fellow Western partner is involved on the other side.
Quad Foreign Ministers Meeting | Month & Year | Venue |
First | September 2019 | New York |
Second | October 2020 | Tokyo |
Third | February 2021 | Virtual |
Fourth | February 2022 | Melbourne |
Fifth | September 2022 | New York |
Sixth | March 2023 | New Delhi |
Seventh | September 2023 | New York |
NB:- All three Quad ministerials in New York were held on the sidelines of the respective annual sessions of the UN General Assembly i.e., the first, the fifth, and the seventh meetings.
On the multilateral front, the four ministers reaffirmed their support for the UN, the need to uphold “mutually determined rules, norms, and standards, and to deepen Quad’s cooperation in the international system, and also batted for a comprehensive reform of the UN, including the expansion of permanent and non-permanent seats in the Security Council. While China and Russia, two powerful permanent members of the Security Council, continue to denounce the Quad as an “exclusionary bloc”, the Quad ministers and leaders tend to tone down any security role for the grouping.
However, a recent comment made by Vice Admiral Karl Thomas of the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet during this year’s Exercise Malabar is noteworthy. He said the war games were “not pointed toward any one country”, rather it would improve the ability of the four forces to work with each other and “the deterrence that our four nations provide as we operate together as a Quad is a foundation for all the other nations operating in this region”. Even in the absence of a security treaty, in a way he hinted at the grouping’s desire to cherish its collective strength across all fronts and to check on hegemonic tendencies that may manifest in the region from time to time.
Americas
Dynamics of the Sikh Vote Cloud Canada’s Diplomatic Relations with India

Operating across British Columbia (BC), Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, gangs made up of Indo-Canadian Punjabis – Brothers Keepers, Dhak-Duhre, Dhaliwal, Sanghera, Malli-Buttar, and several such, are involved in arms trafficking, racketeering, extortion, narco trafficking, money laundering, and not the least, assassinations. Formed in 2004 and mandated to disrupt and suppress organised crime in B.C. the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU-BC), has warned the public of the nexus of Punjabi-Canadians to violence.
In the murders of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala and Ripudaman Singh Malik, acquitted in the tragic 1985 Air India Kanishka terror-bombing case, the conspicuous involvement of these Indo-Canadian gangs with notorious criminals Goldy Brar and Lawrence Bishnoi at the helm, manifested itself.
On June 18 Sikh Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was gunned down as he left his gurdwara in Surrey, B.C., which has the highest proportions of Punjabi Canadians. Nijjar had entered Canada in 1995 on a fake passport and claimed asylum on arrest at Toronto. In B.C. he married a local who sponsored his immigration and he was subsequently awarded Canadian citizenship. Brazenly propounding anti-India separatist sentiments, Nijjar was even placed on Canada’s no-fly list and Interpol’s red corner notice. Alongwith gangsters Arshdeep Singh Dala, Maninder Singh Bual, and Mandeep Singh Dhaliwal his outfit Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) was involved in contract killings in Punjab. Gang-related killings account for a third of all homicides in Canada’s British Columbia.
Despite this disconcerting background of Nijjar’s ties to organised crime gangs in Canada, on September 18, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged the involvement of “agents of the Indian government” in the killing of Nijjar. A claim outrightly rejected by New Delhi as “absurd” and “motivated.” If Trudeau was looking to further impair an increasingly forbidding bilateral relationship, he succeeded. Canada and India have expelled a senior diplomat each and negotiations for a free trade agreement stand suspended.
There is a palpable perversity to Canada’s position on the Khalistan issue. In 1982, Trudeau’s father and then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
had rejected Late PM Indira Gandhi’s demands for extradition of Khalistani terrorist Talwinder Singh Parmar, who went on to execute the bombing of Air India Flight Kanishka, killing 329 people in 1985.
Alarmed by the presence of Sikh secessionists among the diaspora, former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh during his 2010 trip to attend the G20 summit in Toronto, asked Canada “to stop people from using religious places to promote extremism.” Canadian MP Sukh Dhaliwal, had introduced a motion in the Canadian parliament to declare the 1984 riots a “genocide”. Fast forward to 2023, G20 under PM Modi there was no attempt at all to put even a vaguely positive spin on the India-Canada equation.
The timing of Trudeau’s accusation just days after the G20 summit in New Delhi where he says he brought Khalistani extremism and “foreign interference” “directly to PM Modi in no uncertain terms” smacks of umbrage at being at the receiving end of a very hard-hitting message that the ‘extremist elements in Canada are “promoting secessionism and inciting violence against Indian.’
The Khalistan issue has got a fresh lease of life after the advent of the Justine Trudeau government. With just 32.2 percent of the popular vote, Liberal leader Trudeau has the least electoral support in Canadian history, and was backed by Jagmeet Singh’s New Democratic Party (NDP) which openly supports the Khalistan Referendum on Canadian soil.
Canada’s Conservative opposition leader, Pierre Poilievre, has urged Trudeau to show the evidence that the government has in hand. Notwithstanding this current posture the Conservative Party (CP) too, has in the past caved in to the Sikh vote bank. In 2018 when its condemnation of ‘glorification of terrorism’ was objected to by the World Sikh Organisation, the CP dropped its ‘anti-Khalistan’ motion in the House of Commons.
There is beyond sufficient evidence, to India’s contention that Canada, and other western nations including US, UK, and Australia have allowed cadres of separatist violent Khalistani groups to thrive. The UK recently set up a £95,000 fund to enhance its understanding of the threat posed by Khalistan extremism. While the amount set aside to tackle pro-Khalistan elements is not substantial, it acknowledges that a Sikh radicalisation problem exists in the west.
Sikh temples and organisations abroad orchestrate Remembrance Days for ‘Operation Blue Star’ on June 6 and ‘Sikh Massacre’ on November 5, that serve as cultural repertoires and focal points of advocating Khalistani extremism. This year at the remembrance day parade, Khalistan supporters in Ontario exhibited a female figure in a blood-stained white saree with turbaned men pointing guns at her, to celebrate the assassination of late PM Indira Gandhi. The poster behind the scene read “Revenge for the attack on Darbar Sahib.”
Reacting to this macabre tableau, External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar said, “Frankly, we are at a loss to understand other than the requirements of vote bank politics why anybody would do this … I think there is a larger underlying issue about the space which is given to separatists, to extremists, to people who advocate violence. I think it is not good for relationships, not good for Canada.”
At multiple diplomatic and security talks, India has raised the issue of wanted terrorists and gangsters only to be defied by the Canadian government with non-committance and brazen support for extremist Sikhs. And yet Canada’s NATO allies and partners in the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence sharing agreement, the United States and Australia, have expressed “deep concerns” over the issue. Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said, “We are deeply concerned about the allegations referenced by Prime Minister Trudeau.” Foreign Secretary of the UK, James Cleverly, posted UK’s reaction on platform X “We are in regular contact with our Canadian partners about serious allegations raised in the Canadian Parliament.” One wonders if this allegation of targeted killing by India is in retaliation to New Delhi’s steady favour of Russia, and has been levelled after reports of a brokered American deal with Pakistan for weapons transfer to Ukraine in lieu of an IMF bailout emerged.
Admonishing Canada on X, former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao said, “Canada has an extremely spotty and very, very poor record on the whole issue of Khalistanis in Canada. The support these lawless elements have received under the cover of what is called freedom of expression and democratic rights of citizens…it must control such elements with a firm hand and cannot allow them to run free to foster terrorism and violence in our country.”
Amid the hectic media coverage there was speculation that ‘Trudeau’s allegations have put the White House in an especially tight spot.’ But this were swifty checked by Adrienne Watson in her X post, “reports that we rebuffed Canada in any way on this are flatly false. We are coordinating and consulting with Canada closely on this issue.”
The manner in which copious evidence on Khalistan separatists handed over to the Canadian side have gone unaddressed and yet Trudeau’s allegation invoked strong reactions from other western nations, implies that this has moved beyond our bilaterals with Ottawa. It will have ramifications on how India deals with its strong G7 allies, especially the US.
For India the existence of Khalistani extremists and their alignment with organised crime in Canada poses security exigencies. India must at this juncture refrain from a broad generalisation of Sikh diaspora as secessionist, an incrimination that was implied during the Sikh-dominated farmers’ movement.
Political parties must rise above partisan politics over separatist movements that are a threat to nation security. Voices from Punjab attest that Khalistan supporters remain ‘fringe’ and ‘on the margins.’ Even among expatriate Sikh community leaders have challenged the anti-India narrative laid out by Khalistanis and their supporters, despite the fact that they, and the community there, regularly face harassment and threats of violence from expatriate Khalistanis. Former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh states that Nijjar’s murder was the result of a factional feud within the management of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara situated at Surrey and that Trudeau had “walked into a trap owing to vote bank politics.”
New Delhi must ensure that overseas Sikh communities which have tried to counter pro-Khalistan disinformation shall not be left alone to defend themselves.
Americas
China and Venezuela Deepening Cooperation

In a significant development that underscores the changing dynamics of global politics and economics, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro recently signed several bilateral cooperation agreements in Beijing, highlighting the changing dynamics of world politics and economics. China’s determination to participate in partnerships that promote economic stability and prosperity demonstrates its unwavering commitment to global economic recovery.
The agreements signify a strengthening of their partnerships and span a variety of fields, including trade, the economy, and tourism. The cooperation has been upgraded to an “All-weather strategic partnership,” reflecting the continued dedication of both countries to the advancement and development of the other. The decision by China and Venezuela to strengthen their ties comes as the world is witnessing a transformation in international alliances and trade partnerships.
The economic collaboration between the two countries is one of the most significant aspects of this new era of partnership. The recent agreements are expected to further cement Venezuela’s ties with China, which has long been the country’s major trading partner.Investments in infrastructure development and oil and gas exploration and production are part of the cooperation in the energy industry.
During his visit to China, President Maduro expressed his optimism for the relationship’s future, stating it heralds the start of a “new era” for both nations. Venezuela, which has recently experienced economic difficulties, views China as a dependable ally that can aid in reviving its economy. China, on the other hand, sees Venezuela as a crucial friend in the region and a valuable supply of natural resources.
China and Venezuela’s energy cooperation has broad implications. As the globe grapples with concerns about energy security and climate change, this alliance might have a big impact on the global energy landscape. China’s investments in Venezuela’s oil sector can stabilize oil prices and provide a more consistent supply of crude oil to the global market.
Aside from the energy industry, both countries have pledged to deepen their collaboration in a variety of other economic areas. Venezuela can benefit from China’s expertise in agricultural technologies and infrastructural development in one area. Venezuela may enhance food production and reduce its reliance on imports by modernizing its agricultural sector with Chinese assistance, thereby increasing food security for its citizens.
Additionally, both countries have enormous potential in the tourism sector. Venezuela has incredible landscapes such as the famous Angel Falls and virgin Caribbean beaches, which may appeal to Chinese tourists looking for new travel experiences. Similarly, China’s rich history and culture have always captured the interest of visitors from all over the world, including Venezuelans. The tourist accords aim to make travel between the two countries easier, to foster cultural interaction, and to develop tourism-related enterprises.
Furthermore, the strengthened relationship extends beyond economic interests to include political and strategic considerations. Both countries have reaffirmed their commitment to mutual support in international forums and to no interference in the other’s internal affairs. This strategic partnership is consistent with China’s aim of establishing a multipolar world and strengthening cooperation across developing nations.
The collaboration between China and Venezuela should be seen in the larger Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) initiative. The BRI seeks to establish a network of economic and infrastructure partnerships across Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. A deeper integration of Venezuela into China’s global economic vision through its participation in the BRI could create new trade and investment opportunities.
The potential for economic development in Venezuela is one of the most notable benefits of the China-Venezuela cooperation. In recent years, the South American country has suffered severe economic issues, including high inflation, financial sanctions, and political unrest. China’s investments and assistance can help stabilize Venezuela’s economy, generate jobs, and raise inhabitants’ living standards.
The China-Venezuela connection is a key milestone in the shifting global political and economic landscape. In a changing world order, this partnership has the potential to provide Venezuela with economic prosperity, stability, as well as greater autonomy.
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