Reflections

Asian Juggernaut is a book with a massive, vast scope - aiming for covering the challenges, prospects and history of a massive continent; a continent that for most of History of the Earth was the predominant one. This is historical fact; this also means that its strategic analysis will also have to be of that level of depth. Secondly, Asia is a modern strategic playground for European / American powers, and is likely to   remain as such for the foreseeable future. It has had the status of a plaything of the West for 300+ years now. Thirdly, thanks largely to Western interference – aided in no small measure by Asian Naivete & Power Hunger, it is a continent deeply divided. We Asians Fail to realise that we need to be cohesive, unitary, one – giving the West the opportunity to use us for their means & ends. That wont change. THE MISSES None of these facts is going to change anytime soon. Neither are they going to be forgotten - in that light, this book has more misses

THE NEW NORMAL We are in the middle of a complete nationwide shutdown, now in its 26 th day… with around 16 more days to go. Shops, establishments, companies, etc – all are in minimal or shutdown mode. Economic Activity is at a complete standstill; but there will be a day when things will re-start, when life will begin crawling back to normal. With regard to that, a lot of thoughts, facts and/or factoids are being shared by all. In the same line, here is my analysis of The Coming Days for us, Indians. THE BACKDROP What will happen will essentially depend on the runup to the event itself, the disease outbreak. If you will recall, we were going through a rather challenging phase on the economic front as a nation, with a plethora of problems to deal with. Clearly, they aren’t going away; this needs to be kept in mind. The going wasn’t great to start with; and on top of that, we have this outbreak. So, prima facie, things look rather tough – but there is more to the story.

The Death Of Money – The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System  by James Rickards ABOUT THE BOOK This is a book on the International Monetary System, and specifically on the future prospects of the current system we all live under, the dollar-oil-US based Geopolitical system, which together define the world of International Finance, Trade, Geopolitics. In addition to this, or rather, as a part of this, it also serves as an excellent book on Geopolitical analysis of the current state of the world at large. It looks in depth at International finance, trade, geopolitics and the operational realities of this troika that combine to be called what is euphemistically called the International Monetary System Its emphasis is identifying the existing fault lines, tracing geopolitical developments worldwide, examining the fine line between economics and politics, tracing the threats to Dollar Dominance, the rise of Dollar Alternatives, etc etc. It examines the cu

BOOK REVIEW : THE SELFISH GENE by RICHARD DAWKINS The Selfish Gene is one of the most famous popular books on Genetics. After reading it, I can state that it is an excellent work, though not strictly on pure Genetics. I prefer to call it the realm of "applied" genetics, or rather the external effect, phenotypics of genetics. That said, even that is inadequate; it also covers seminal grounds in a variety of areas of life, and the imprint of the Gene on these areas : simple living, rearing, reproduction, and much more. KEY TAKEAWAYS But what takes the cake for me is the questions it asks in the last chapter wherein Mr Dawkins has examined the question of why should single celled organisms in the primordial soup evolve into multi-celled organisms, which is the most fundamental question in all Science; it is the proverbial last frontier of Science. As one reads it, it becomes apparent that Science is still floundering; while we have gone light-years into space