Geography Archives: Asia

In modern times, China has been the ultimate challenge for imperialists: it’s independence being an enigma to Europeans and Americans. From Marco Polo to Mike Pompeo, China has been a mystery to Christian crusaders.

Donald Trump’s attacks on Venezuela, Syria and Iran are criminal, but Joe Biden vows to be even worse.

Taiwan’s claim that it provided early warning to the WHO about COVID and “human-to human-transmission” has been exploited by the Trump administration to attack the multi-lateral body and turn up the heat on China. There’s just one problem: it’s totally false.

O’Brien should really read up on Marxist-Leninist works. The people’s position is the fundamental political position of Marxist parties. People are the creators of history and the true driving force behind historical progress.

The health of the 79-year-old poet has deteriorated alarmingly over the past few weeks. He has been in prison since late 2018 in the Elgar Parishad case which critics say is aimed at silencing dissent in India.

On June 11, Laos (Lao People’s Democratic Republic)—a country of 7 million in Southeast Asia—said it had temporarily prevailed over COVID-19.

It is time Canadians debate whether they want to be part of an intelligence group driving hostile relations with China.

DD Kosambi uses a telling example to illustrate the crisis of Indian feudalism: at the third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the troops on oneside had not had enough to eat, while the troops on the other side just managed to assuage hunger by looting villages in the neighbourhood; neither side in short had arranged provisions for its troops.

Cities across the world are facing a double-barreled existential problem: how to adapt to climate change and how to pay for it.

At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics a young man born on the day of Hiroshima nuclear bombing was selected to be the last torch bearer on the relay, to signify that Japan had stood up from nuclear ruin. In an attempt to replicate the 1964 Olympic theme, the Abe government has constructed the idea of a Fukushima “revival,” a returned to normal. Exposing this illusion is an important cultural war.

More concerns raised over bleak outlook for China-U.S. ties: observer

The Trump administration suspended funding to WHO in April—the UN’s primary infectious disease–fighting body—accusing it of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” and of taking China’s allegedly deceptive claims about its handling of COVID-19 at “face value.” But corporate media had already been boosting these same talking points.

There are immense casualties from this Great Lockdown. Incomes have collapsed for half the world’s population, while hunger rates are on the rise. But there are other casualties, other victims, often less remarked upon.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to Noam Chomsky about the state of the world. At one point, Noam smiled and said that he is not aware of any German doctors in Italy, even though both countries are in the European Union; instead, Cuban and Chinese doctors went to Italy to help the Italians fight the global pandemic.

The problem before metropolitan capitalism therefore is: how to acquire control over the use of this tropical land-mass in order to obtain the products it needs?

Twitter’s decision came after close collaboration with a deeply controversial U.S. and Australian government-funded think tank that has been denounced by Australia’s former ambassador in Beijing as “the architect of the China threat theory in Australia.”

China has announced the suspension of debt repayment for 77 developing countries and regions as the nation is working with other G20 members to carry out the G20 debt relief initiative for low-income countries, Chinese officials said at a press briefing at the State Council Information Office on Sunday.

Indian activist and journalist Gautam Navlakha is in prison as part of what many observers have termed a crackdown on dissent in India. The 68-year-old has been fighting a years-long legal battle against the Indian state.

Radical reforms in reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investment rather than as liabilities and look for ways to make the labour market less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda… Policies until recently considered eccentric such as basic income and wealth taxes will have to be in the mix.

The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has slammed into the global system with almost the same impact we might expect from an asteroid strike. All aspects of economic, cultural and political activity on the planet have been devastated and disrupted in ways that seemed unimaginable just a few months ago.