THERE is more than meets the eye, whether it is the current US-Israel war on Iran now or the way we got our eyes. In both, it is not the creation of someone. However, an underlying dialectic is at work that needs to be understood. But this article is not about the ongoing imperialist war.

The US-Israeli war on Iran is now in well into its third week and, despite deployment of the overwhelming military superiority of the US and Israel, there seems to be no end in sight. Israel is continuing its bloodthirsty “decapitation” campaign against the top political, civilian and military leadership. It has murdered the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the internationally respected security chief and regime interlocutor Ali Larijani and numerous leaders of the regular army, the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Internal Security Basij force.

IT is a tragic sign of the times that, given the flagrant military assaults and leadership decapitation campaigns by the US on Iran and earlier on Venezuela, and hyper-aggressive assertion of US hegemony all around the world, the Trump administration’s repeal of the earlier “endangerment finding” in the US regarding the adverse effect of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on human health, has not received the attention it deserves, especially outside the US.

MANUFACTURING in the aviation sector is going through quite a boom in India, in both military and civil aircraft. In military aircraft, there has of late been a pronounced emphasis on manufacturing indigenously designed and developed platforms. After decades of sharp preference for foreign equipment and doubts about domestic public sector manufacturers, the armed forces appear to have finally decided to put their weight behind self-reliance out of a practical need to reduce external dependence, especially during times of conflict.

THE Budget presented by the Finance Minister has made a number of claims. But true to the Modi Government’s vision of the economy, it believes that once finances are made available, the Indian business community will do the rest. In other words, the animal spirits of capital are enough to propel our dream of a Viksit Bharat. The reality is very different.