Geography Archives: Malaysia

  A Historical Perspective We all know that when a glass of tea is three quarters full, it is also one quarter empty.  I would like to dismiss the empty part of this dialectic first, the history that pertains to the self, to me, and then to talk a bit more of the history concerning […]

  Human societies have created the bases of our survival, sustenance and advancement through the use of our natural resources in production with rudimentary tools and rising levels of science and technology.  Yet in no time in history has environmental destruction been systematically brought about in most parts of the world. The people of the […]

The mass slaughter of 57 civilians in Maguindanao, the Philippines, on November 23 by a local warlord may seem a minor incident compared with the much more heinous destruction of whole villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan by US drones.  In the Philippines, however, it acquires symbolic density by the resonance of contextual historic factors linked […]

In defense of civilian supremacy over the military and the democratic “New Nepal” process, the revolutionary movement of Nepal, led by the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists), has initiated a nationwide “People’s Movement” to topple the government and anti-people forces. This comes after a Maoist-led government resigned in May due to what was essentially […]

Paper delivered at the plenary session of the 2009 National Conference of the Philippine Sociological Society held at the PSSC Building on 16 October 2009 Why does the ideology of neoliberalism still exercise such influence in the Philippines despite the challenges it has faced from both the Asian and now global financial crisis? This paper […]

Chandra Muzaffar is Malaysia’s best-known public intellectual.  He has written widely on questions related to Islam, inter-faith relations and liberation theology, issues that he discusses in this interview with Yoginder Sikand. Q: Much of your writing focuses on a critique of capitalism and consumerism, or what you very aptly term as ‘moneytheism’, which you contrast […]

Rajendra Pachauri heads TERI, The Energy and Resources Institute, based in New Delhi.  An engineer of the railways in his early career, Pachauri went to the United States to earn a PhD in industrial engineering and another in economics, after which he returned to India in 1981 to work with TERI.  In 1995, he joined […]

Can Iran beat gasoline sanctions?  The answer seems to be yes. On the front page of the Financial Times on 23 September 2009 (Javier Blas and Carola Hoyos, “Chinese Begin Petrol Supplies to Iran”): Chinese state companies this month began supplying petrol to Iran and now provide up to one-third of its imports in a […]

I am writing to you from your far-off country. Far even from us who live here. Where you no longer are. Everyone carries his address in his pocket so that at least his body will reach home.

Rumors break on their way to us in the city. But word still reaches us from border towns: Men are forced to stand barefoot in snow waters all night. The women are alone inside. Soldiers smash radios and televisions. With bare hands they tear our houses to pieces.

  Shahram Akbarzadeh, Benjamin MacQueen, eds.  Islam and Human Rights in Practice: Perspectives across the Ummah.  London: Routledge, 2008.  x + 176 pp.  $140.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-44959-5. Islam and Human Rights in Practice: Perspectives across the Ummah addresses a vexing theoretical issue: can contemporary human rights practically inform normative and political structures in the Muslim […]

Address to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, the United Nations, New York,  23 July 2009 The discussions about Responsibility to Protect (R2P), or its cousin “humanitarian intervention,” are regularly disturbed by the rattling of a skeleton in the closet: history, to the present moment. Throughout history, there have […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its June 2009 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. The dire consequences of human induced climate change are now most often presented as facing us in the near future.  We suggest that the future, as far as […]

JAKARTA, 14 May 2009 (IRIN) — For Risti Ariyani, the dream of working abroad and helping her family is over. Her contract with a computer components factory in Malaysia was abruptly cancelled because of the global financial crisis, leaving her no choice but to return home to Central Jaffa Province. “My family was counting on […]

Zainah Anwar, ed., Wanted — Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family, Kuala Lumpur: Musawah/Sisters in Islam (www.musawah.org/info@musawah.org), 2009, pp. 261, ISBN: 978-983-2622-26-0, 28 Malaysian Ringgit. Muslim family laws have for long been — and continue to be — a hugely controversial subject.  Critics contend that these laws seriously militate against basic human rights, especially […]

Abstract Following the 2000-01 crisis, Turkey implemented an orthodox strategy of raising interest rates and maintaining an overvalued exchange rate.  But, contrary to the traditional stabilization packages that aim to increase interest rates to constrain domestic demand, the new orthodoxy aimed at maintaining high interest rates to attract speculative foreign capital.  The end result was […]

I think that what we’re going through now — which is really just starting, we’re nowhere in the middle of it yet either, I think — is much bigger and more extensive than the Great Depression.  There are particular difficulties of fixing it because of the fact that it is bigger, it is more global, […]

See, also, Hajir Palaschi, “Interview with Shahla Lahiji on Women’s Presence in the Labor Market: No Vocation Must Be Prohibited for Women,” Trans. Yoshie Furuhashi, MRZine, 18 February 2008. The Iranian Revolution and its aftermath have generated many debates, one of which pertains to the effects on women’s labor force participation and employment patterns.  For […]

Academics, Intellectuals and Members of Parliament from around the World Call for Charges against Giles Ji Ungpakorn to be Dropped Academics from U.K, Canada, France, South Africa, Ireland, Australia, South Korea, Greece and the U.S.A., including those from Oxford University and SOAS London University, have signed an open letter calling for charges of lèse majesté, […]

. . . and unseen on American TV More Than 100,000 Protest in Paris, France, 11.01.09 USA, 11.01.09 Algeria, 11.01.09 Kenitra, Morocco, 11.01.09 Los Angeles, USA, 11.01.09 Journalists Protest the Israeli Army’s Targeting of Journalists, 10.01.09 Chicago and D.C., USA, 10.01.09 Tokyo, Japan, 10.01.09 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 10.01.09 Rabat, Morocco, 10.01.09 Manama, Bahrain, 10.01.09 Algiers, […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]