Geography Archives: Asia

The system under which offshore drilling rigs, and now oil tankers, operate was set up at the end of the second world war to ensure that the US was supplied with the cheapest possible oil without having to consider, or pay for, the consequences. The offshore drilling company Transocean celebrated the explosion on the Deepwater […]

  What is Samandal?  Samandal is about comics, a trilingual publication dedicated to comics from the region and abroad that comes out quarterly in Arabic, English, and French.  All the comics in Samandal are published under a Creative Commons license.  And how does Creative Commons change commons?  To answer that, we need to look at […]

  The global crisis has led some to question the dollar’s place as the dominant currency.  This column discusses three camps in the literature: those advocating a new synthetic global currency, those arguing that a new reserve currency will emerge, and those suggesting a return to sharing the role.  It concludes that talk of the […]

  Slavoj Žižek.  Living in the End Times.  Verso, 2010. Reading Žižek has always been as challenging as it is enjoyable, an experience of pleasure and pain that seems at times an intellectual correlate to the operation of objet petit a (little object a).  The concept of objet petit a has been a constant in […]

A poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides relates how Pericles, in the fifth century BC, imposed economic sanctions against the city of Megara, which had allied itself with Sparta.  Athens prohibited trade with this city state and sent a message: if Megara did not break its alliance with Sparta, it would be punished.  Megara […]

If I could think of any tactfully discreet and diplomatically clear way to describe the outcome of the 15th Extraordinary Session of the IGAD Assembly of Heads of State and Government on Somalia without compromising the essence of my message, I would simply choose that approach.  Therefore, going crude is the appropriate way: As a […]

As news of the G20’s Toronto Summit recedes from the headlines, which memories shall prevail?  The answer to this question will not only shape official decisions, such as whether allegations of police brutality are seriously investigated, but may also have a profound impact on the political sensibilities of a generation of Canadians.  Given the constant […]

  Justin Pemberton, dir.  The Nuclear Comeback.  DVD. New York: Icarus Films, 2007.  53 minutes. Are we on the brink of a nuclear revival?  Should we be?  The Nuclear Comeback, an absorbing documentary video, is titled declaratively but sprinkles question marks.  The Nuclear Comeback embarks on a tour of some of the high and low […]

  Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution.  Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007.  x + 415 pp.  Notes, bibliography, and index.  $39.95 U.S.  ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12499-5 (hb). The subtitle of Michael Sonenscher’s book calls to mind at least two different, and separate, historical problems.  First, […]

  Nelida Fuccaro.  Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama since 1800.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.  xvi + 257 pp.  $99.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-51435-4. In many ways, the city of Manama (now the capital of Bahrain) shares affinities with other Gulf city-states.  Like Dubai, Kuwait, and Muscat, the port city drew […]

There is only one message that comes out of Toronto, where the G20 summit has come to an end.  The formation, ostensibly created to reflect changing power equations in the world economy, serves no purpose.  It has turned out to be one more talking shop in which agreement to disagree is presented as a consensus. […]

Earlier this month, after the United Nations Security Council authorized new multilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic by adopting Resolution 1929, the member states of the European Union (EU) approved guidelines for expanding European sanctions against Iran.  Any new sanctions that the EU might apply against Iran on the basis of the new guidelines must […]

Under the Gold Standard the values of different currencies were fixed in terms of gold, which meant that the exchange rates between those currencies were fixed.  Exchange rate movements therefore could not be used to enlarge net exports and hence domestic employment.  At the same time governments were committed to the principle of “sound finance”, […]

What on earth are they thinking?  In the midst of an almost unprecedented and continuous increase in the price of necessities, which is increasingly translating into generalised inflation, the UPA government has chosen to “free” the price of petroleum products, to bring them in line with international prices.  What this translates into is a significant […]

BP, the company responsible for what is already the worst single-source environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, is the largest corporation in Britain, fourth largest in the world, and the world’s third largest energy company.  Over the course of its 100-year history, this company has caused a number of environmental and workplace disasters. But the harm […]

  Martin Wolf described it as “a bloodbath.”  The Financial Times editorial called it a “chilling read.”  Britain’s budget is one of austerity, the likes of which has not been seen in generations.  A 25 per cent cut in public spending; a quarter of a million or more public sector jobs to be slashed.  It […]

That seems to be the main point of Robert Samuelson’s column today.  It might be a bit easier with a bit more careful thought. For example, Samuelson tells readers that the debt burdens of major countries are rapidly approaching “financial and psychological limits” that prevent further fiscal stimulus.  He then cites the 92 percent debt […]

  This month, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed a resolution to tighten sanctions on Iran, imposing a ban on arms sales and expanding a freeze on assets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in response to the country’s uranium-enrichment activities, which Tehran says are for peaceful purposes but other countries contend are driven […]

Maziar Behrooz.  Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran.  I.B. Tauris, 2000. The role of the left in the Iranian Revolution is complicated, what Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek would call the ‘vanishing mediator’ of the event.  The fact that at their peak Iranian Marxists commanded the loyalty of millions, and […]