Ravi S. Iyer: Worldly

Around a minute video. Captures this astonishing positive turn-around in relations between North and South Korea. I am so glad to see this. As some readers may know I spent a couple of months in Seoul, South Korea in early 1990s. https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/videos/2014116688805843/ 10 seconds video! Who would have thought this would happen, just six months ago! Fantastic!  https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10158284989501509/

Printed in the Indian express (a reprint from German DW media orgn) How Donald Trump is making America poorer again, http://indianexpress.com/article/world/how-donald-trump-is-making-america-poorer-again/ , 7th April 2018 ------ To provide a balance, here is President Trump's tweet having positive view about USA business and the need to fix USA's big trade deficit with China: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/982292963492413442 , 6th April 2018. The tweet text is as follows: "AMERICA IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS!" and has an around one minute video message of President Trump.

23-year-old woman in Maharashtra fights tiger with a stick to save her goat, http://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/maharashtra-woman-fights-tiger-with-a-stick-to-save-her-goat-rupali-meshram/214013 , 5th April 2018 Not an action I would recommend :-) Nonetheless, the courage of the young woman to try to scare the tiger with a stick, to protect her goat, is awesome! Of course, the tiger did not get scared that easy and attacked the young woman, who took shelter in her house (assisted by her mother). The goat, unfortunately, did not survive! This is where, I have to say, that a handgun in the hands of the rural Indian woman, would have made all the difference, tilting the battle in favour of the woman and against the tiger. Maharashtra is the land of the brave Marathas who have shown the guts and valour to fight when needed. So the young woman was following proud fighting traditions of Maharashtra. Small extract from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratha : The Maratha (...

The Debt MLK Owed to India's Anti-Colonial Fight, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/mlk-postcolonial-struggles/557150/ , by Kanishk Tharoor, 4th April 2018 Very interesting article. A small extract from it: "The 20th century may be defined in the West by the World Wars and the Cold War, but for much of the rest of the planet it was the age of decolonization, when old structures of (often racial) domination and power gave way to new states, new nations, and new politics. Developments in one corner of the Global South reverberated continents away, forging bonds of sympathy and engagement. When India won independence from the British in 1947, it inspired people across Asia, Africa, and the Americas." Ravi: Actually, it was only in the past few years as I was doing a lot of reading up, that I got a better understanding of how India's independence using Gandhi led non-violence, inspired Civil Rights movement in the USA to take up non-viol...

The king of cricket in my avid cricket fan days - Vivian Richards! Here's Richards showing his king like arrogance against one of the greatest fast bowlers of those days - Richard Hadlee of New Zealand, (Link seems broken now)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwesE8_rCis , around 2 mins. He seems to be chewing gum as usual! Instead of wearing a helmet or a mouth guard, his protection (mental) against fiery fast bowlers of those days, was 'chewing gum'!!! No wonder, we all thought that this guy was the king of cricket. I mean, you need to have a regal demeanor including unflappable and sometimes flippant courage towards danger from the opposition, to be viewed as a king. What a message to give to the opposition fiery fast bowlers about how he is not afraid of their fast deliveries, by chewing gum instead of wearing a helmet or a mouth guard! More about that here: My companion chewing gum helped me to bat without helmet: Vivian Richards, https://www.mykhel.com/cricket/my...