Until recently, the discussion on global imbalances focused on the current account deficit of the US and the current account surplus of China, making this a bilateral rather than a multilateral problem. As a result, the process of rebalancing was seen as involving adjustments in either or both of these countries, and not so much […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
India: Responses to the Maoist Attack on a Bus in Dantewada
People’s Union for Civil Liberties, 17 May 2010 PUCL strongly condemns the brutal killing of the innocent civilians traveling in a bus at Chingavaram on the Dantewada-Sukhma road in Chhattisgarh on 17 May 2010. Killing of innocent civilians is the most heinous crime against the humanity and has no justification whatsoever. PUCL feels that […]
On Indian Muslim Leadership
Shabnam Hashmi is one of India’s leading social activists. She heads the New Delhi-based human rights group ANHAD. In this interview, she discusses various aspects of Muslim leadership in contemporary India. Q: Indian Muslims often complain that they lack effective and sincere leaders. Why is this so? A: When India gained independence, the Indian […]
South Africa: An Unfinished Revolution?
The Fourth Strini Moodley Annual Memorial Lecture, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 13 May 2010 I In her historical novel, A Place of Greater Safety, which is played out against the backdrop of the Great French Revolution through an illuminating character analysis and synthesis of three of that revolution’s most prominent personalities, viz., Maximilien Robespierre, Georges […]
Reading Bourdieu in Algeria
Jane E. Goodman and Paul A. Silverstein, eds., Bourdieu in Algeria: Colonial Politics, Ethnographic Practices, Theoretical Developments. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. 282 pp. $35.00 U.S. (pb). ISBN 978-0-8032-1362-3. Pierre Bourdieu is unequivocally one of the most important social scientists of the twentieth century, having influenced a strikingly wide range of […]
Indonesia: An Unfinished Nation
Max Lane, Unfinished Nation: Indonesia before and after Suharto, Verso, 2008. There was a time when everyone seemed to be talking about Indonesia. Well, they were talking about it on Joe Duffy and Pat Kenny at least, and that’s as near as makes no difference in this country. As East Timor voted to extricate […]
India Needs Course Correction on Iran
The agreement between Iran, Turkey and Brazil for a swap deal on the stockpile of Tehran’s nuclear fuel sets the stage for a diplomatic pirouette of high significance for regional security. The paradigm shift affects Indian interests. The Barack Obama administration has hastily debunked the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal, which was announced in Tehran on Monday, and […]
Indigenous and American Indian Studies Scholars Speak Out against SB1070, Call for an Economic Boycott of Arizona
May 19, 2010, TUCSON — Indigenous and American Indian studies scholars are condemning Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and related legislation. “Clearly, and bluntly, the state law is racist and discriminatory against so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ crossing the borders from the South, namely from Mexico,” said Simon Ortiz, a Native American studies professor at Arizona State University, […]
The US-Russia START Treaty: Just What Does “Arms Control” Really Mean?
There’s a funny if intimidating gun-nut bumper sticker you may have seen on the road: “gun control means using both hands.” It’s clever, invoking and mocking gun control at the same time. This last week the United States government, by its actions, formally adopted this bumper sticker as its de-facto nuclear weapons and arms control […]
Mr. Lula Goes to Tehran — Brazil’s Neocons React
Brazil’s Ascent under Lula’s Leadership Under the leadership of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil has become a regional leader in Latin America with vibrant international foreign policy. A look at the internal political dynamics of Brazil would be useful also. During President Lula’s presidency, Brazil has had tremendous economic growth. But in the coming […]
Reading Railroad Noir
Linda Grant Niemann. Railroad Noir: The American West at the End of the Twentieth Century. Photographs by Joel Jensen. Indiana University Press, 2010. Pp. 168. ISBN-13: 978-0-253-35446-4. Linda Niemann worked for twenty years as a railroad brakeman in the western US. I have worked for twenty years in a railroad diesel shop in the eastern […]
Minnesota’s Great Anishinaabe Fish-Off
On May 14, the day before the Minnesota walleye fishing opener, activists from two northern Minnesota Ojibwe bands exercised what they regard as their right to fish off reservation and outside of the state’s prescribed season. They dubbed their action the “Great Anishinaabe Fish-Off” and held a Stop Treaty Abuse Rally on the shores of […]
India: Stop Police Attacks on Peaceful Protesters in Orissa
15 May 2010 New Delhi We, the undersigned, strongly condemn the unprovoked firing and arson carried out by the Orissa state police against a dharna of farmers and fisher folk opposed to the proposed POSCO steel project in Jagatsingpur district. As per latest reports, today over 100 people have been injured and many shops and […]
How to Make Peace with Iran
There seems to be a growing international consensus that the search for a “cold peace” with Iran is a desirable, even essential approach on the part of the international community. Indeed, successive “war games” at specialised institutions in the United States have shown that bombing Iran’s nuclear installations is militarily unviable. Even some Israeli and […]
Hunger, Dispossession and the Quest for Justice
Address at the Convocation of the Class of 2010, Asian College of Journalism In 1876, Lord Lytton, who was then Viceroy of India, decided to arrange a massive celebration in Delhi to mark the accession of Queen Victoria as the Kaiser-i-Hind, Empress of India. The feasting, with all rajas and maharajas in attendance, went on […]
Interview with Gopalji, Spokesperson of the Special Area Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in a Forest in Jharkhand, Eastern India
Communism in the rest of the world seems to have collapsed. What hope do you have of achieving a socialist state in India? The claim that there is no hope for socialism and communism, that they are dead, is mere propaganda unleashed by the imperialists and the apologists of capitalism. The 20th century saw the […]
An Account of the General Strike in Nepal
While the world media was focused on a boring battle between the Tories and their New Labour cousins in Britain, a historic struggle was underway in Nepal. Nine months after the victory of the Maoists in the 2008 constituent assembly (CA) elections, bourgeois forces, with support from the Indian government, succeeded in forcing them out […]
GM Crops: The Societal Context of Technologies
The Bt brinjal debate has featured technological worries relating to genetically modified crops which appear relatively minor in comparison to the critical issue of who controls Indian agriculture and therefore food security in India. While there cannot be a mere technological fix to the problems of Indian agriculture, technology — and therefore GM — will […]
Restructuring the Bretton Woods Twins
Prabir Purkayastha: The BRIC and IBSA Summits seem to have been indicating that G20 is the solution to the problems of the world, and they are happy that they have come out of the grip of G7 as it were. Do you really think that this is something that is going to happen? Jayati […]
The Mural Speaks
The Rachel Corrie Foundation andBreak the Silence Mural Project co‐presentThe Mural Speaks Come celebrate the completion of this dynamic, interactive mural at a free event at 6:00 p.m., Saturday, May 8 at the Labor Temple building, corner of State and Capitol, downtown Olympia. The Mural Speaks event is more than a mural commemoration; it’s a […]
