Counterview

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  Diwali is over, but our cities have been left toxic and unbreathable. How exactly is bursting firecrackers a form of celebration? There is nothing wrong with lighting diyas, exchanging gifts, celebrating in the spirit of togetherness, or sharing meals with those who cannot afford them. Cooking delicious food at home and enjoying the festivities is beautiful. But what we are witnessing today is not celebration; it is the destruction of our lonely planet. This toxic smog makes life miserable for those who are noise-sensitive and those suffering from respiratory issues.

By Mansee Bal Bhargava, Priya Sharma*  The images from Har ki Pauri in Haridwar were damning. To clean the Ganga before Diwali, authorities stopped the river’s flow for 18 days. What surfaced was not a sacred river but a landfill: tons of waste, discarded clothes, puja material, plastic, flowers and debris exposed on the riverbed. Equally ironic, some people still took a holy dip in the remaining trickles—and left behind more clothes and puja material. This should not surprise a civilisation that thrives on cultural  practices that instigate pollution. The question, then, is not merely why the Ganga is dying. It is why a morally dying civilisation continues to be fuelled by a culture of polluting.

Counterview News   Cyberattackers grew faster and harder to detect in 2025, increasingly slipping through trusted systems rather than breaking in with obvious malware, claims U.S.-based  cybersecurity technology company CrowdStrike's 2026 Global Threat Report . The report says adversaries "grew more evasive than ever before," exploiting trust in supply chain partners, legitimate software, internal systems and employees. CrowdStrike now tracks 281 adversaries after naming 24 new ones in 2025, plus 150 activity clusters and emerging threat groups.

By Mohd Ziyaullah Khan  The artificial intelligence revolution was promised as the ultimate economic engine of the 21st century, poised to redefine productivity, create unprecedented wealth, and transform global workforces. Wall Street bought into that vision without hesitation, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into semiconductor manufacturers, cloud providers, and data-center infrastructure. However, on November 5, 2026, that unbridled optimism collided with harsh financial reality. The Nasdaq Composite plunged 5.5% in its sharpest single-day drop in 19 months. Semiconductor leader Nvidia plummeted 9.3%, AMD sank nearly 17%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped over 12%. In total, approximately $3 trillion in market value vanished from S&P 500 companies as the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell nearly 12% from its October peak into correction territory.

By Thania Saucedo  Paraguay is undergoing one of the most significant political and financial crises in its recent history. The Central Bank of Paraguay’s intervention in Ueno Bank—following the detection of serious irregularities in its operations and solvency issues—triggered a crisis that quickly expanded beyond the banking sector. Today, it has direct consequences for the government of Santiago Peña and has triggered an impeachment process that calls into question the very future of the president himself.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  Artificial intelligence is reshaping how people live, work, and make decisions. It offers genuine opportunities to improve productivity, expand access to services, and support scientific and social progress. But those benefits are not automatic. The central question is whether AI will be developed and deployed primarily to maximize commercial returns, or whether it will be governed to serve public welfare under meaningful human oversight.

By Harsh Thakor*  Timothy Manion’s "Why Barbarossa Failed" is a groundbreaking book examining historical truths about the largest military campaign in history, one that has remained vaguely understood for more than eight decades. The excuses offered by Adolf Hitler and his generals for the German army’s debacle continue to come to the fore even in the most recent accounts of Operation Barbarossa. Manion, a Harvard Law School graduate and Wall Street lawyer, shatters the historical myth in this new work. The book was published in early 2026.

By M.A. Baby   That oft-quoted line from the German poet and playwright Heinrich Heine’s play "Almansor" is engraved on the Bibliothek memorial at Bebelplatz in central Berlin. It commemorates the Nazi book burning of May 10, 1933, when members of the German Student Union, backed by university professors, burnt and destroyed more than 25,000 books they deemed “un-German”. Marxist and communist literature was among the prime targets of that state-supported campaign of censorship and cultural destruction. Heine’s own works went into the flames, along with copies of more than 4,000 other titles, including those of Karl Marx.

By Vivek Sakpal*  "Pappu," as he was called for nearly a decade, has now been replaced by "ji" in the ruling camp's speeches. It is a massive shift in how they address the Hon. Leader of the Opposition, Mr Rahul Rajiv Gandhi. Many of my "bhakt" friends used to argue about how unfit he is to sit in the Prime Minister's chair. I always countered that even if Congress won a majority, I wondered whether he would take the oath of that office at all.