India Post Temporarily Suspends Postal Services to USA from 25 August!

India Post has announced today that postal services to the United States of America will be temporarily suspended with effect from 25 August, 2025 with a few exceptions. The press release issued says that it has taken note of the Executive Order No. 14324 issued by the US Administration on 30th July, 2025, under which the duty-free de minimis exemption for goods valued up to $800 will be withdrawn with effect from 29th August, 2025. Consequently, all international postal items destined for the USA, regardless of their value, shall be subject to customs duties per the country-specific International Emergency Economic Power Act (IEEPA) tariff framework. However, gift items up to the value of $100 shall continue to remain exempt from duties.

Per the Executive Order, transport carriers delivering shipments through the international postal network, or other “qualified parties” approved by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are required to collect and remit duties on postal shipments. While CBP issued certain guidelines on 15th August, 2025, several critical processes relating to the designation of “qualified parties” and mechanisms for duty collection and remittance remain undefined. Consequently, US bound air carriers have expressed their inability to accept postal consignments after 25th August, 2025, citing lack of operational and technical readiness.

In view of the above, the Department of Posts has decided to temporarily suspend booking of all types of postal articles, destined for USA with effect from 25th August, 2025 except letters/documents and gift items up to $100 in value. These exempt items will continue to be accepted and delivered to USA, subject to further clarifications from CBP and USPS.

India Post is closely monitoring the evolving situation in coordination with all stakeholders, and every effort is being made to normalize services at the earliest possible opportunity. Customers who have already booked articles that cannot be dispatched to the USA due to these circumstances may seek a refund of postage. 

The Department of Posts deeply regrets the inconvenience caused to customers and assures that all possible measures are being undertaken to resume full services to USA at the earliest.

Courtesy: ADPSR, Maharashtra Postal Circle, Mumbai.

Russia Ousted From UNHRC Even As India Abstain Again!

In a very significant development on Thursday, April 7, 2022, the 193-member United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has suspended the membership of Russia from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), a UN body formed in 2006 to replace the erstwhile United Nations Human Rights Commission, with 47 elected members and a mission to promote and protect human rights around the world. In an urgently called session of the UNGA 93 nations voted for the suspension of Russia, 24 including China voted against the move and 58 nations including India abstained whose votes did not count in the final tally, and therefore, the UNGA got its two-thirds majority to pass the move. Although the move is not legally binding Russia would be effectively prevented from raising its voice in the UNHRC.  Thus, Russia becomes the first permanent member-nation of the UN Security Council to be ousted from a UN body. The other Security Council members are the US, the UK, France and China.

 

The UNGA move follows in the wake of reports of civilian killings in the Russia-Ukraine war that has been raging for the last 44 days, particularly the recent Bucha massacre near Kyiv. The UNGA resolution expressed grave concern at the violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Russian Federation in Ukraine. While Ukrainian government has welcomed the move the Kremlin authorities have expressed regrets over the decision while denying that Russian soldiers were responsible for the civilian casualties.

 

According to a news agency Russia had called upon some countries prior to the session to vote ‘no’ to the motion instead of just abstaining which might seriously affect its bilateral relations with the abstaining countries. If such reports are true this would impact India both ways: affecting its bilateral relations with Russia adversely and antagonizing the US one more time as India has been abstaining in all the previous sessions of the UNGA on Ukraine invasion.

 

While abstaining from voting against Russia the Indian representative has reiterated India’s resolve for peace and immediate cessation of the conflict. Earlier in regard to the Bucha massacre India had asked for an independent probe into the human rights violations.

 

The UNGA move was expected in light of the fact that the US and its Western allies had had to watch helplessly, apart from imposing more and more sanctions, as the war raged on; their military presence in Ukraine and the involvement of the NATO were avoided to prevent the outbreak of a world war, possibly nuclear; and that recently the US President Joe Biden had downgraded Russia President Putin from a ‘war criminal’ to a ‘butcher’.

 

We feel intensive international diplomacy would be more effective than imposing more and more punitive actions in bringing the war to an end as soon as possible. It’s just unimaginable that destructions and massacre are taking place in a modern world with the digitally connected global citizens made to witness the atrocities in an apparent paralysis.

Ukraine Crisis: World Rulers Are Still Driven By Primitive Instincts!

According to Sigmund Freud’s theory of ‘Id, Ego and Superego’ the Id trait of a personality was present in the first primitive humans, but not as a part of the brain; in fact, the Freudian tripartite components had nothing to do with the grey cells. The Id trait includes the basic survival, sexual and aggressive instincts/impulses, and it acts unconsciously. Over the centuries the primitive humans started living in communities and societies, and at that time the Ego trait became important as a conscious part of a personality able to distinguish between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ acts in terms of good or harm such acts could cause to the others. With more maturity the Superego trait had emerged as the ethical ‘conscience’ of human beings, always sending correcting messages to Ego whenever the Id trait overpowered it. Freud indicated that any imbalances in these three traits are bound to lead to personality disorders, like if the Id impulses totally dominate the personality that human being turns overtly aggressive, greedy and even into a criminal. The ideal condition, according him, is when Ego effectively mediates between Id and Superego.

 

It’s the ‘imbalances’ part that we are interested in. The inherent greed and aggression components contained in the Id drove human beings progressing from local lordship to regional lords/fiefdoms or small kings or bigger kings and to the emperors. This progression had been based essentially on human’s craze or greed for power manifested in plain greed for land, forests, water sources, livestock and even women of the conquered lands. There is no dearth of expansionist invaders from the times of Alexander the Great to the murderous invaders of the Turks, Muslims, Persians and others. Along this trail of history planet earth has seen thousands of bloody skirmishes, battles and wars, all of which were naturally driven by the overpowering Id component.

 

From Ego there developed monsters like egoist or egotists and super egoists who had demonstrated no ‘guilt’ complexes as explained by Freud in any immoral or inhuman eventuality. Feelings of supremacy also grew in some communities or races who considered theirs as the best, and therefore, wanted to dominate the lesser humans. The planet earth had witnessed devastating ‘supremacy nationalism’ of the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarians, the Italians and the Germans which led to World War-1 and World War-2 during which millions of soldiers and civilians perished and which in a way led to the murderous Spanish Flu during the first world war that also took a toll in millions.

 

It was hoped that with the tremendous growth and progress of human civilization in terms of technology, scientific exploration, socio-economic, the intelligentsia and benevolent leaders in mostly the emerging of democracies, the world had learned enough lessons from the horrific world wars. But no, the ‘greed for power’ factor as basic imbalances in the personality theory continued unabated. The wars between the two clear superpowers only became secret or undercover that is to say, cold. One of the superpowers, USSR, dissolved itself in 1991 and the other superpower, the US with its western allies, became all powerful which was not at all welcome for the other ‘powers’ like Russian, China and others. Cold war ended, but ‘operations’ continued. Aggressive nationalism again grew for strategic alliances and presence, military bases or deployment of forces and military operations as was thought to be very necessary.  

 

The strength of having nuclear weapons seemed to increase the craze for power more. It was like some diseased persons looking greedily at the stocks of mouth-watering food or piles of money, but not able to devour or use them. The temptations remained permanently. The super imbalances in the Superego kept up the threats of a nuclear war anytime anywhere. The hapless but peace-loving global citizens continued to live in morbid fear, not knowing when and what their monstrously ‘imbalanced’ rulers would do next. Trade and business flourished in manufacturing a wide range of weaponry and the consequent export or import of those to like-minded allied countries or ‘friends’.

 

Apparently, the age-defining spread of higher education and digital literacy had no positive impact on the rulers who continued to suffer from the imbalances, totally neutralizing the Freudian Superego personality trait from generating some ‘conscience’ in them. They still greed for more and more power; want more arsenals of weaponry, preferably nuclear and want to damage that of others; they try to activate a fear psychosis among their subjects saying that their national security is threatened; they want to destroy any indication of a possible growth of patriotism or nationalism in some countries they don’t prefer; they eagerly wait for a demonstration of their supremacy, even not caring if it could involve use of nuclear weapons; and the supposedly benevolent rulers of the democracies or milder dictatorships land up with no choices depending on who happen to be their ‘friends’ or ‘allies’.

 

The COVID-19 Pandemic did indeed make the world a much more closely-knit entity with a common objective of its eradication. However, even before the pandemic officially ended the same old habits started anew. No hope then for humankind? Well, we don’t know. We, the global citizens, have changed ourselves for friendship and everlasting peace; but still, it’s the toughest ask to try change the mindset of our rulers. Hope, in some miraculous way, the Ukraine invasion gets stopped and all kinds of wars/battles/rivalries in future get stopped too, to save our little world.

(Images Source: simplypsychology.org )

The Ukraine Crisis: A Perceptive Look At The Issues And The War Mania!

As the title suggests this piece on the raging Ukraine crisis can only be at a perceptive level, because the issue is too complicated with debatable cum controversial angles, and this writer is not much used to write on international politics and cannot authenticate fully the information available on the public domain. Why I have still chosen to write on this is that as a writer with a journalistic bent of mind I cannot escape from this crisis that knocks the doors of my country too. And those ‘perceptions’ I’ve developed are based on the media reports, an international media that is not united objectively, but visibly divided and biased over the crisis. There are primarily two points of view (POV): one is obviously the pro-US mainstream Western Media that has been blaming Russia squarely as the imperialist invader and spreading the idea of an imminent war across the globe; the second is the neutral or the alternative media that is trying to present the real scenario (as per their views) despite getting drowned in the growing war mania. Both the POVs have some elements of truth that can be deciphered by all perceptive readers or analysts or simple writers.

 

The first POV seems to be justified in the fact that Russia had already had a war with Ukraine in 2014 when it annexed the Crimea region, and it had created international tensions again in March-April, 2021 by deploying forces across the Ukraine border and then withdrawing in July due to growing pressure. And during October-November of the same year again, it has started deploying military personnel, reportedly growing to over 100,000 in early 2022 which has led the US and their allied countries issuing warnings to Russia. Besides, Russia has been preventing Ukraine to have full sovereignty and to fulfill its aspirations to have an open border with Russia, to join the European Union (EU) and possibly the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NTO), an organization of 30 countries for collective security. Also, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comment recently about Russians and Ukrainians being ‘one people’ adds more fuel to their charges. However, the first POV misses, deliberately or unknowingly, a few vital cogs in the mechanisms of this jigsaw, including the historical fact that USA had been involved in much more invasions or strategic build-ups across the globe in the past few decades than Russia did.

 

Russia defends its decisions by saying that Ukraine joining the EU and the NATO would compromise its national security thus opening the way for a complete American domination; that it has no imperialist expansion plans; that while Ukraine still exists as an independent nation since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 certain parts of it still want accession to Russia; and that it has no intention of starting a full-fledged war (they, in fact, reportedly withdrew some of the troops in the last two days.).

 

The second POV of the ‘other’ media puts the focus entirely on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project which has been completed and once in operation it’ll supply natural gas and petroleum directly to Germany underwater through the Baltic Sea, doubling the supplies along with the existing Nord Stream 1 pipeline and reducing the transport costs by about half. Therefore, the basic factor here is Germany.

 

The US is deeply disturbed by this, because it’d make their friendly relations with Germany dicey apart from divisions among other EU nations, and more importantly, the operation of the Nord Stream 2 would open the way for the complete dependence of the European nations on Russian supplies thus tremendously increasing Russia’s leverage in the region. Accordingly, the US Government has warned Russia of stringent economic sanctions if it chooses to invade Ukraine. Besides, several environmental threats have also been raised against implementation of the project. It is abundantly clear that the sanctions would surely include neutralizing the Nord Stream 2 operation. So then, in a way, a war would actually help the US to have its ways.

 

Interestingly, the Nord Stream 2 project is set to cost several East European countries dearly including Ukraine in terms of lost revenues. A report shows that Ukraine will lose revenues worth at least $2 billion by way of losing transit fees received from Russia for surface transportation of the natural gas and petroleum products. Therefore, this whole issue of a possible invasion of Ukraine would act as a deterrent for some including Russia and Germany prominently while it can be an incentive for some including USA prominently. However, no sane global citizen would want a war in this peaceful digital age irrespective of the equations or sheer politics involved.

 

The crisis also suffers from the legacy of the Cold War that raged for nearly half a century following the World War-II, between the two clear post-war superpowers at that time, the US and the USSR. It formally ended in 1991 after the USSR ceased to exist. But America, naturally wants to continue its unipolar domination as a superpower which is hardly welcome for Russia or its growing ally China. Naturally again, the US has slammed China for its support to Russia on the Ukraine issue.

 

Meanwhile, India is having the proverbial tight-rope walk. It can neither oppose its strategic ally Russia nor antagonize the growing friendly relations with America and the EU nations. Amid the war mania spread sensationally by the mainstream media the Government of India has safely issued advisories for the Indians in Ukraine to come back home and not to travel to or within Ukraine to others. The country has already been suffering from the unprovoked Chinese aggression along its borders.

 

One important question remains though. What do the Ukrainian citizens want? We perceive divisions or differences between eastern and western regions of Ukraine in terms of loyalty to Russia or in terms of languages spoken or their loyalty to the Government in Kyiv. As per a report by Craig Charney in 2014 the majority of Ukrainians does not support accession to Russia as they consider themselves purely Ukrainian with nothing to do with Russians, despite the apparent differences. They also do not question annexation of Crimea seriously, because almost 100% Crimean people are Russians in both religion and language. All they want is full sovereignty as an independent nation with open borders with Russia and Ukraine’s integration with the EU and the NATO too. The powers that be, super or otherwise, must take into account the citizens’ views before taking any decision.

Global Terror: The Frightening Reality!

Till that unbelievable 9/11 attack terror did not seem to be a global phenomenon. But since then terror became an industry with the formation of many groups having their bases in countries like India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Internal factors of these countries made themselves prime targets of the attacks. India has been bearing the brunt of it in a major way since 1993 with many of its cities continuing to be soft targets. The US interests—financial, military or strategic—in these countries and the growing conflicts thereof finally brought terror to the US in a most inhuman way in terms of the 9/11 attack in 2001. Al-Qaeda emerged as the global force of terrorism. However, even then it could be said that terror did not assume a global role thanks to efforts on counter-terrorism by USA and to some extent India. After more than a decade terror returned to America in April, 2013 in terms of the Boston Attack and last Monday’s (September 16) attack on the US Naval Base where shooter (s) killed 12 people is still shrouded in mystery regarding any possible angle to terrorism. Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan continued to bleed all the while and India got hit again after a gap of 2/3 years. The scenario is fast changing and the frightening reality of a Global Jihadism is just about unfolding.

Now, Kenya, Pakistan and Iraq in the space of just one day—all mindless, barbaric and demonic attacks. On Saturday a series of bomb blasts killed at least 96 innocents. Night the same day terrorists mounted a cowardly on a crowded up-market mall in Nairobi. Around 10/15 gunmen mowed down the innocents with gunfire and even grenades that continued to Sunday today. At least 60 people including 2 Indians were killed and about 200 injured. The attack bearing a sinister similarity to 26/11 Mumbai terror attack is still not over as several terrorists are still suspected to be inside the mall holding hostages. Shebab, a terrorist group belonging to Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack citing revenge for Kenya’s military action in Somalia. And on Sunday today, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in front of a historic church in Pakistan killing more than 60 (rose to 78 later) innocents. This is seen as the biggest terror attack on Christian minority in Pakistan. What follows next and in which town or cities of which country it is hazardous even to guess. 

High time India evolve an global counter-terrorism policy in close association and cooperation of other countries like America. For India stakes are not only at home, but considering large chunks of Indian population in many other countries India must take the responsibility of protecting its citizens. The US is becoming increasingly unwilling to take up counter-terrorism operations single-handedly and therefore a global effort is need of the hour. Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh while reacting to a day of unprecedented terror violence emphasized just this fact. For this India need strong and committed leaders. High time political leaders come out of politics in national interest. It hardly helps matters that on Friday the 20^thSeptember a terror suspect of the Indian Mujaheddin just ran away from a court in Mumbai and Mumbai police did not have a clue for two hours. An intensive manhunt is still on to track the terrorist. Get ready now for any eventuality anywhere in the world. Time is running out. 

Gory and Grisly!

 The small screens of our homes come alive with horrific visuals time and again thanks to the strikes or attacks by the US and the allied forces. When celebrations follow such acts of raw violence a question appears in some corner of our mind—is something wrong?

Be it Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden or Muammar Gaddafi--their violent ends disturb that part of our mind. But at the same moment we tend to identify with the oppressed and terrorized people and celebrate with them.

Such terrorists or dictators are confirmed offenders of mankind. They fully deserve the horrendous ends they finally get. Throughout their destructive careers they leave a trail of unprecedented violence, brutalities and sufferings. 

Okay, they are demons. But we are still humans, no?

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