Geography Archives: Asia

Can we ever get equal care for all?  We can’t — at least, not by going down dead-end roads. A year ago hope was alive for equal health care for all.  Bush was defeated, and the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress.  Throughout 2009, though, every week brought a slap across the face […]

In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country.  Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian […]

Vali Nasr.  Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World.  New York: Free Press, 2009.  320 pp. This empirically informative yet analytically defective book labors to dissect the complexities of political and economic development in the Muslim world, strongly focusing on Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, […]

  This study compared The New York Times‘ and The Moscow Times‘ coverage of the political movements in three former Soviet republics.  Data analysis revealed a clear pro-movement pattern in The New York Times’ reporting.  The U.S. newspaper used more pro-movement sources than pro-incumbent sources.  Overall, The New York Times depicted the protesters favorably and […]

An important and perhaps growing feature of official and strong-interest-group propaganda is the resort to personal attacks and flak to keep dissidents at bay and inconvenient thoughts out of sight and mind.  This has been notable over many years in the case of pro-Israel propaganda, where we can observe a positive correlation between upward spikes […]

Republican Scott Brown’s defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts’ Senate race proves it’s time for real progressives, activists, and independents to dump and jump the Democratic Party’s sinking ship of state.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, expecting a different result.  Every electoral cycle people who consider […]

Following on from our recent post, “Iran, the Competition over Eurasian Natural Gas, and the Revival of Classical Diplomacy in the 21st Century,” we want to draw readers’ attention, first of all, to a very thoughtful comment on that post from Ed Chow, our friend and colleague at CSIS.  Ed generously notes his agreement with […]

The news reported from Haiti describes a great chaos that was to be expected, given the exceptional situation created in the aftermath of the catastrophe. At first, a feeling of surprise, astonishment, and commotion set in.  A desire to offer immediate assistance came up in the farthest corners of the Earth.  What assistance should be […]

The signs of recession are more noticeable to those who live here — restaurants and coffee shops have lost most of their customers, and construction has practically ground to a halt.  Emigration has soared. Latvia has set a world-historical record by losing more than 24 percent of its economy in just two years.  The International […]

  In yet another demonstration of the (in)effectiveness of the Obama Administration’s quixotic quest to get China on board for what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used to call “crippling sanctions,” the Chinese foreign ministry announced that Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, who has been representing Beijing at meetings of the P5+1 political directors regarding […]

Considering that climate change represents a real threat to the existence of humanity, of living beings and our Mother Earth as we know it today; Noting the serious danger that exists to islands, coastal areas, glaciers in the Himalayas, the Andes and mountains of the world, the poles of the Earth, warm regions like Africa, […]

What’s that deafening whirling sound?  Elementary, my dear reader: it’s author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spinning in his grave, as his character Sherlock Holmes gets the Hollywood treatment.  There’s a crude expression — “No s**t, Sherlock” — but that’s precisely what director Guy Ritchie has wrought, complete with anti-Semitism.  Of the 222-ish Holmes productions since […]

More than 50 years now it is.  The propaganda and hypocrisy of the American mainstream media seems endless and unwavering.  They can not accept the fact that Cuban leaders are humane or rational.  Here’s the Washington Post of December 13 writing about an American arrested in Cuba: “The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen […]

  Monday, January 18th, 2010 6 to 7 pm, across from the Metropolitan Correctional Complex (MCC) 150 Park Row and Pearl Street, NYC On January 18th, as our nation commemorates Martin Luther King Day, for the slain civil rights leader who peacefully spoke out against war, racism, and injustice, members of THAW (Theater Artists Against […]

Sunday, December 27 — The Egyptian security forces detained a group of 30 internationals in their hotel in el-Arish and another group of 8 at the bus station.  They also broke up a memorial action commemorating the Cast Lead massacre at the Kasr al Nil Bridge. At noon on 27 December, Egyptian security forces detained […]

The United States has had four presidents who received the Nobel Peace Prize.  I haven’t checked, but I presume that’s a record for heads of state.  All four have left their imprint on Latin America, “our little region over here that has never bothered anybody.”  That’s how Secretary of War Henry Stimson described the hemisphere […]

  Detailed accounts from participants in the recent Copenhagen climate summit are still coming in, but a few things are already quite clear, even as countries step up the blame game in response to the summit’s disappointing conclusion. First, the 2 1/2 pages of diplomatic blather that the participating countries ultimately consented to “take note” […]

The nature of the current wars in the wider western Asian area reveals a disturbing trend: next to sources of conflict between states there are an increasing number of conflicts within them.  In Yemen, the civil war has had a ripple effect throughout the Persian Gulf region provoking the military intervention of Saudi Arabia and […]

A fascinating social history of swimming pools in northern United States that was published in 2007 deserves attention from Iran researchers.  Contested Waters showed how, between the World Wars, middle class expansion/empowerment in general and eroticization/gender de-segregation at public pools popularized swim facilities that excluded African Americans.  Earlier in the century, women, not Blacks, had […]

The following is an open discussion of a Pinochet-style solution for Nepal, which would not just be a military coup but also (inevitably) the creation of a death squad regime aimed at the decade-old revolutionary upsurge among the peoples of Nepal.  Such a coup would require Indian and U.S. support, and this article is an […]