Geography Archives: Asia

  • The Globalising Wall

    Walls have a longstanding relation both with freedom from fear and subjugation to another’s will.  After 1945, walls acquired an unprecedented determination to divide.  They spread like a bushfire from Berlin to Palestine, from the tablelands of Kashmir to the villages of Cyprus, from the Korean peninsula to the streets of Belfast.  When the Cold […]

  • Speaking of Islam: An Orwellian Story

    A few metres from my office at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the heart of London’s Bloomsbury area is the Senate House of the University of London, a remarkable neo-classical colossus of a building which functioned as the headquarters of Britain’s ministry of information, where George Orwell worked occasionally during the second […]

  • The Contrarian

    Over the years Gore Vidal has spilled a lot of ink telling readers how the mass media murdered serious book culture in the United States, but he is the only living US novelist to have his own coffee table book.  Snapshots in History’s Glare is a photo album of fine design and no small expense […]

  • The IMF and Economic Recovery: Is Fund Policy Contributing to Downside Risks?

    Introduction The IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook (WEO) projects world economic growth will slow, from 4.8 percent in 2010 to 4.2 percent next year.  Throughout the report, there are numerous concerns expressed about the “fragility” of the global economic recovery.  The Acting Chair of the Executive Board states that “[t]he recovery is losing momentum […]

  • Pity the Nation

    Kashmir, Oct. 26 — I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir.  This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir.  I said what millions of people here say every day.  I said what I, as well as other commentators, have written […]

  • Economics, Ideology, and Imperialism

      Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, eminent Marxist economist, taught in CESP-JNU (Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University) over the last four decades.  He has been one of the most outstanding economists in India and a great teacher.  He has retired from JNU recently.  On the occasion of his farewell, the students of CESP […]

  • Iran and Honduras in the Propaganda System: Part 2, The 2009 Iranian and Honduran Elections

    As we stated at the outset of Part 1,1 there is no better test of the independence and integrity of the establishment U.S. media than in their comparative treatment of Iran and Honduras in 2009 and 2010. Iran held its most recent presidential election on June 12, 2009.  This followed a typically short three-week campaign […]

  • G20: The United States and Neo-mercantilism

    Here comes the travail of crisis.  The more they talk about coordination, the more it becomes necessary to concentrate on the conflicts revealed by the very talk of coordination.  The G20 finance ministers’ meeting, held in South Korea on Friday, has already been mortgaged by the case opened by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner regarding […]

  • The Paradox of Capitalism

    John Maynard Keynes, though bourgeois in his outlook, was a remarkably insightful economist, whose book Economic Consequences of the Peace was copiously quoted by Lenin at the Second Congress of the Communist International to argue that conditions had ripened for the world revolution.  But even Keynes’ insights could not fully comprehend the paradox that is […]

  • Rally to End Two-Tier Wages: Auto Workers Protest UAW

    “Two hundred auto workers picketed October 16 outside the locked gates of their union’s headquarters in Detroit, protesting an agreement to let General Motors pay half wages at a suburban assembly plant.  The ‘Tier 2’ workers, who make up 40 percent of employees at the plant, will make roughly $14.50.  They’ll be working alongside Tier […]

  • Playing the Currency Blame Game

    The slanging match over currency and monetary policies at the annual Fund-Bank meetings, held over the second weekend of October, points to the disarray in global economic governance.  While the US sought to mobilise IMF support for an effort to realign exchange rates and ensure an appreciation of the renminbi in the wake of China’s […]

  • The Myth of Expansionary Fiscal Austerity

    Introduction Recently governments, economists, and international financial institutions have been debating the merits of further fiscal stimulus to combat the Great Recession versus fiscal austerity or “adjustment” — that is, higher taxes and/or lower government spending — to combat budget deficits.  Some supporters of austerity have gone as far as arguing that fiscal adjustment could […]

  • For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly

      For colored boys I will crucify myself like Christ let my blood purify and sanctify these words create a doctrine and go knocking door to door letting the people know that messiahs are here that we are messengers even though we embody the word queer that we are a reminder of how colonization has […]

  • Continued Threat of Deflation

    The Consumer Price Index rose 0.1 percent in September as consumer energy price inflation slowed to 0.7 percent after gains of 2.6 and 2.3 percent in July and August.  Overall prices have grown at a 2.7 percent annualized rate over the last three months.  The core CPI remained unchanged over the month and has now […]

  • Brazil Should Lead on Access to Essential Medicines

    By the greater use of compulsory licenses, Brazil could lower drug costs not only in Brazil, but in developing countries overall.  At a time when the New York Times is reporting that “the global battle against AIDS is falling apart for lack of money,” it is absolutely essential that the price of lifesaving medicines in […]

  • Iran’s “Soft Power” Increasingly Checks U.S. Power

    October 13, 2010 Twenty years ago, Harvard’s Joseph Nye famously coined the term “soft power” to describe what he saw as an increasingly important factor in international politics — the capacity of “getting others to want what you want,” which he contrasted with the ability to coerce others through the exercise of “hard” military and/or […]

  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

    Who was on the aircraft firing the missile?  Nobody. Who got killed?  A nobody. Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 11 October 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi […]

  • What Does Wage-led Growth Mean in Developing Countries with Large Informal Employment?

    The past decade has been one in which export-led economic strategies have come to be seen as the most successful, driven by the apparent success of two countries in particular — China and Germany.  In fact, the export-driven model of growth has much wider prevalence as it was adopted by almost all developing countries. This […]

  • Fareeda

    Laal dedicates this song to the diversity, plurality, and all the colours of Islam. “When the Taliban attacked the shrines of Rahman Baba, Data Sahib, and Abdullah Ghazi Shah, slaughtering hundreds who had gathered for alms or to pray, Laal felt obligated to not only defend the progressive aspects of sufi thought but to discover […]

  • Riding Capitalism to the Bottom: Why Republicans Gain as the Economy Falters

      Overlooked in the recent rise of the Tea Party and the Republican Right is the way these groups have learned how to grow and thrive on the failures of capitalism.  The Democrats, in contrast, remain tied to its successes.  With capitalism performing particularly poorly at present, it is no wonder that the Right is […]