The Eastern World, It Is Exploding

As messed up as the United States is these days, I believe that the most worrisome story in the headlines is the vote in the Indian parliament to change the status of the Kashmir state. Kashmir, being disputed territory between India and Pakistan, has been a perilous region of the world for over half a century. By changing the Muslim-majority state to a union, with closer ties to New Delhi, Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Modi will ratchet up the sectarian violence that has plagued Kashmir. With India and Pakistan both possessing nuclear weapons, a conflict over the Kashmir is horrifying to contemplate. Even a proxy war fought with conventional weapons will exacerbate a global refugee crisis which has already destabilized Western Powers. If you think the worldwide right-wing backlash is bad now, it can only get worse as another region becomes a war zone from which people must flee.

I really can’t think of a single region on the planet which is stable these days... Barry McGuire, from whose best known song I took the post title, is more right than he was when he wrote the song.