Geography Archives: Asia

Before India’s Home Minister Amit Shah introduced the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Bill in the Indian Parliament, his government sent tens of thousands of Indian troops into Kashmir. There is no official number, but it is often said that there are nearly 600,000 Indian troops in the state. That a population of 12 million people needs this kind of armed action suggests that they are an occupied people.

Why is war, or the threat of it, a permanent feature of our society? The most common answers point to contingencies–the psychology of particular world leaders, for example, or the specific gains to a company to be made from a conflict. Alternatively, they rely on universal claims that religion causes eternal strife or that conflict is part of our human nature.

We cannot win a currency war by competitive currency devaluations that trigger a “race to the bottom,” and we cannot win a trade war by competitive trade barriers that simply cut us off from the benefits of cooperative trade. More favorable to our interests and values than warring with our trading partners would be to cooperate in sharing solutions, including banking and credit solutions.

Just in case you had forgotten that China is a major part of the global economy, here is a chart from the Bank of England’s Financial Stability Report.

Property rights of people are protected under neo-fascism, except those racially, communally, sexually, or politically targeted whose properties are often confiscated.

Not just that, a dozen more incidents of mob violence have also been reported in which people were attacked, thrashed, injured, abused and humiliated by mobs for alleged crimes or no crimes in some cases.

Aijaz Ahmad argues that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its fronts, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), display distinct fascistic characteristics, but the Indian state continues to live by the liberal playbook, no matter how hollow the Indian liberal institutions may have become. He anchors this proposition in a distinctive theoretical position.

n March–on the eighth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster–Time magazine published an article with the headline: “Want to Stop Climate Change? Then It’s Time to Fall Back in Love with Nuclear Energy”.

The largest delegation from outside Russia at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in early June came from China.

Everything about the trade war between the United States and China is bewildering. Truces would come out of nowhere but then they would be set aside by U.S. President Donald Trump in a stream of tweets at odd hours. Regardless, Huawei and China are unlikely to blink. They have the upper hand.

The debate over inequality has become hotter world-wide. While Trump had introduced substantial tax cuts for the rich in 2017, and Britain’s Boris Johnson, the front-runner to succeed Teresa May, has promised to do the same if he becomes Prime Minister, there are strong proposals for taxing the rich which have also been mooted. Bernie Sanders had such a proposal for the U.S. during the time that he was seeking the Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.

On the one hand, people who spend most of their time working develop an understanding of the ‘practical transformation of the world’. This framework is implicit in the workers’ activity, since the worker–given the theft of their time–is often prevented from having a ‘clear theoretical consciousness of this practical activity’.

That raises a whole range of very familiar and long-standing issues that have afflicted the Left, leading to debates in India (and no doubt in other places as well) between the organised Left and what has come to be called the “ultra-Left” and the insurgent Left.

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research launches its eighteenth dossier, “The Only Answer Is to Mobilize the Workers.” The challenges facing Indian workers and their strategies to fight back are explained through the insights and expertise of K. Hemalata, president of the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU).

In the final part of Capital, Volume I on “the so-called original accumulation”, Marx gives a dazzling overview of the often violent historical phenomena that contributed to the birth of the capitalist system, “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.”

What is noteworthy is that the deceleration in import volume growth has been particularly marked in the emerging economies of Asia and Latin America, pointing to a loss of momentum in the countries that were expected to be new growth poles in the immediate aftermath of the 2007 crisis.

The Russia-China strategic partnership, consolidated last week in Russia, has thrown U.S. elites into Supreme Paranoia mode, which is holding the whole world hostage.

In this long interview with Jipson John and Jitheesh P.M., Akeel Bilgrami speaks at length on the concepts of populism, liberalism, fascism, postmodernism and post-truth.

China has increased its oil purchases from Saudi Arabia by 43 percent in April. There is every indication that China will continue to increase its buys from the kingdom during the course of this year—to substitute for Iranian oil and, perhaps, for U.S. oil.

Liberals of all stripes ought to, in the years to come, pay careful attention to the way language is deployed in public discourse, to recognize shibboleths and call them out. Neoliberal reforms were smuggled in via this route, and if the exit-polls are to be believed, fascism will be next.