TWO news items about India have figured prominently, one a nearly 24 per cent drop in India’s GDP  the previous quarter and the other that India has taken over as the new epicentre of the global pandemic with its figures for new cases crossing even the US numbers. The 24 per cent drop in GDP for the second quarter is the biggest drop of any major economy in the world for a quarter. The comparable US figures are 9.5 per cent and Japan’s 7.6 per cent drop in the same quarter.

THE Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article – Facebook’s Hate-Speech Rules Collide With Indian Politics – on August 14, has blown the lid off Facebook’s unholy alliance with the BJP. In this article, WSJ details how Ankhi Das, Facebook’s public policy director for India, South and Central Asia, opposed action against BJP leaders spreading hate on Facebook that were tagged internally as ‘hate speech’ and ‘dangerous’ with the potential of causing real world violence. The reason: such action would harm Facebook’s business in India, its largest user base in the world.

THIS August 6, 80 years after the first use of the atom bomb against a section of humanity, reminds us all of the inhumanity of nuclear weapons and the threat to all human lives. But this year, we have to address two new questions. Does the dominant section of the US strategic establishment under President Trump believe that the nuclear weapons are usable and a nuclear war can be won?

THE US tech war on China continues, banning Chinese equipment from its network, and asking its 5-Eyes partners and NATO allies to follow suit. It is a market and a technology denial regime that seeks to win back the market that the US and European countries have lost to China.International trade assumed that goods and equipment could be sourced from any part of the world. The first breach in this scheme was the earlier round of US sanctions on Huawei last year, that any company that used 25 per cent or more of US content has to obey the US sanctions rules.

TRUMP’s decision to withdraw from WHO is a continuation of his wielding a wrecking ball to the international framework of treaties and organisations. Whether it is arms control treaties, climate change, trade and now WHO, the US sees these agreements and institutions as fetters on its hegemonic powers to shape the world. Trump may express this pathology in its most ugly form, but the disease runs far deeper.Trump’s excuse for withdrawing from WHO is that it did not do its job well on the Covid-19 epidemic and was soft on China.