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India
India

India's Power Restored But Who Is To Blame?

IndiaGeopoliticsSourcesWORLDCRUNCHCountries

HINDUSTAN TIMES, THE TIMES OF INDIA (India), AFP (France)

Power has been fully restored Wednesday in India after a grid failure left more than 600 million people without electricity for two days.

The failure of the northern grid in India's state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) on Monday brought the country's expansive railway system to a standstill, left millions in the dark, and trapped 300 coal miners, following the subsequent failures of the eastern and north-eastern grids.

Indian power officials have blamed certain states - including UP, Punjab and Rajasthan - for overdrawing their energy quotas.

Power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde told the Hindustan Times: "I have instructed officials to impose heavy penalties, including a pruning of regular quotas, on such states."

Anger has mounted in India against Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, who was promoted to Home Minister even before power was fully restored.

Veerappa Moily has taken his place as power minister as part of a cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday, despite the power shortage.

The new minister told reporters: "It is a very difficult and challenging situation, and solutions will have to be found."

Indians are still questioning the country's infrastructure failure and the government's apparent incompetence: the Times of India's front-page ran the headline "Powerless and Clueless' Wednesday morning.

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Geopolitics
Iran

Why The Latin American Far Left Can't Stop Cozying Up To Iran's Regime

Among the Islamic Republic of Iran's very few diplomatic friends are too many from Latin America's left, who are always happy to milk their cash-rich allies for all they are worth.

Image of Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, Romina Pérez Ramos.

Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, Romina Pérez Ramos.

Bolivia's embassy in Tehran/Facebook
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Bahram Farrokhi

-OpEd-

The Latin American Left has an incurable anti-Yankee fever. It is a sickness seen in the baffling support given by the socialist regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela or Bolivia to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which to many exemplifies clerical fascism. And all for a single, crass reason: together they hate the United States.

The Islamic Republic has so many of the traits the Left used to hate and fight in the 20th century: a religious (Islamic) vocation, medieval obscurantism, misogyny... Its kleptocratic economy has turned bog-standard class divisions into chasmic inequalities reminiscent of colonial times.

This support is, of course, cynical and in line with the mandates of realpolitik. The regional master in this regard is communist Cuba, which has peddled its anti-imperialist discourse for 60 years, even as it awaits another chance at détente with its ever wealthy neighbor.

I reflected on this on the back of recent remarks by Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, the 64-year-old Romina Pérez Ramos. She must be the busiest diplomat in Tehran right now, and not a day goes by without her going, appearing or speaking somewhere, with all the publicity she can expect from the regime's media.

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