Geography Archives: Asia

  As’ad AbuKhalil, or Angry Arab as he is more commonly known after his blog The Angry Arab News Service, is in real life a most friendly and forthcoming man.  A Lebanese-born author of four books on the Middle East, he is professor of political science at California State University and is visiting professor at […]

Paper prepared for the American Sociological Association Meetings in Atlanta, August 16th, 2010. There are many explanations for the crisis of capital that began in 2007.  But the one thing missing is an understanding of “systemic risks.”  I was alerted to this when Her Majesty the Queen visited the London School of Economics and asked […]

  Steve Nettleton: Now, emboldened by new labor laws and a strong economy, more workers are taking a stand to demand higher salaries and better benefits. . . .  The unrest comes as a new wave of workers in their twenties take their turn to fill the factory payrolls.  They are the first generation born […]

Jean Bricmont is professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, Belgium, and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal.  He is the author of Humanitarian Imperialism and co-author, with Alan Sokal, of Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science.  He has written critically about ‘humanitarian interventionism’ since the Kosovo war in 1999.  In […]

The mass media remains, in the 21st century, one of the most powerful forces blocking social and economic progress.  It is because of the mass media that tens of millions of Americans are convinced that budget deficits are more important than the lives ruined by unemployment, or that Social Security won’t be there for them […]

Margot Badran is one of the most widely known scholars of Islamic feminism.  A historian by training, she has authored many books including: Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences(Oneworld Press, Oxford, 2009); Feminism beyond East and West: New Gender Talk and Practice in Global Islam (New Delhi: Global Media Publications, 2007);as co-editor, Opening the […]

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused of leaking military secrets to the public.  This week, his supporters are holding rallies in 21 cities, seeking Manning’s release from military custody.  Manning is in the brig for allegedly disclosing a classified video depicting U.S. troops shooting civilians from an Apache helicopter in Iraq in July 2007.  The […]

As he has every year since becoming President of the Islamic Republic, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is coming to New York this week to attend the United Nations General Assembly.  Several important U.S. media outlets have either already conducted (MSNBC, ABC) or will conduct (PBS’ Charlie Rose and CNN’s Larry King) interviews with Ahmadinejad in connection with […]

The new regulations on banks’ capital requirements known as Basel 3, made known to the public in mid-September, are a major institutional boost to the monopolistic position of the largest banks.1  In the new framework the capital that banks must hold against lending activities has been raised from a ratio of 2%, established by Basel […]

I.  Prologue Pakistan is in a state of crisis.  The history of Pakistan, looked at from a human perspective, has been a perpetual crisis since its birth.  The ruling elite have operated — from the very beginning — on cronyism, nepotism, and legal and illegal corruption.  They have always been inefficient and indifferent to the […]

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based neoconservative “think tank” that has consistently promoted hard-line policies against the Islamic Republic, came out with what it describes as “a comprehensive report . . . identifying 10 major Chinese energy companies that continue to do business with Iran in spite of international sanctions.”  According […]

For several centuries — between the 15th and the early 19th centuries — mercantilist theories dominated the attitude to trade in Europe.  This was the belief that an economy that had positive net exports (through exports being greater than imports) would be wealthier because it would lead to an inflow of bullion, or assets, and […]

We are being told that Germany is successfully recovering from the crisis.  However, despite the recovery, the German economy is below most other countries’ in relation to the pre-crisis levels of output.  When the crisis began the German economy’s dependence on exports caused a sharp fall in industrial production.  The initial liquidation and the subsequent […]

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) was established at Bretton Woods in July 1944, at the initiative of forty-five countries that had come together for the first monetary and financial conference of the United Nations.  In 2010, it had 186 member countries, with Kosovo its latest addition (it joined in June 2009). The […]

(PU) After two thousand years of looking forward to the return of Jesus Christ, Christians were extremely disappointed today to learn that their born-again Lord and Savior had died again, this time at the hands of author, talk-show host, and entrepreneur Glenn Beck.  News of the “Messiah-cide” leaked out this morning when Mr. Beck was […]

  Elaine Carey.  Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 Mexico.  Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.  240 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8263-3545-6. The 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre has been a topic of scholarly inquiry ever since the fateful day when hundreds of Mexican students lost their lives at the hands of […]

We noticed a small news item, reported from Tehran, which we think deserves more media attention and reflection in the West than it received.  According to the story, Chinese Transport Minister Liu Zhijun is expected to visit Iran Sunday to sign a $2 billion contract to build a 360-mile-long railway linking key Iranian destinations that […]

Discussions on foreign direct investment (FDI) as a means of financing development often suffer from two different shortcomings.  The first, a very basic one, confuses real with financial resources.  The second does not distinguish between different forms of foreign direct investment.  The question of financing development is concerned with finding the real resources for increasing […]

  In your view, does the combat troop withdrawal mean that the mission has been completed successfully? Viewed from all conceivable angles the war must be considered a strategic failure and a humanitarian disaster.  True, the US government, together with its allies primarily the United Kingdom, managed to oust Saddam Hussein who was, by all […]

India’s IT industry does protest too much.  Its latest peeve is that the US has decided to steeply hike, from $2300 to about $4300, the cost of a H-1B visa required for entry into the US of temporary skilled workers from abroad.  The new Border Security Bill passed by the US Senate and signed into […]