Global Geopolitics & Political Economy B.RAMAN It is 23 years today since Jammu & Kashmir saw the beginning of the ethnic-cleansing of the Kashmiri Pandits, the original inhabitants of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), from their homeland at the instigation of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) by a group of Kashmiri jihadi elements trained, armed and motivated [...]
INDIA: Advancing Economy Reveals a Hungry Underbelly
January 21, 2012 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By K.S. Harikrishnan THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India, Jan 21, 2012 (IPS) – Even a year after Rani, a three-year-old tribal girl in the backward Wayanad district of southern Kerala state, was treated in a government hospital for gastroenteritis she remains grossly underweight and suffers from frequent bouts of diarrhoea. Rani [...]
CHINA: Dragon Drags the World In
January 21, 2012 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Antoaneta Becker LONDON, Jan 20, 2012 (IPS) – Chinese fengshui masters have been busy advising edgy followers how to optimise their luck in the auspicious but volatile Year of the Dragon, which according to the lunar calendar begins on Jan.23. In the West though, Chinese superstitions about [...]
Pakistan to Produce Gas – by Burning Underground Coal
January 18, 2012 By
Republished on Global Geopolitics & Political Economy By. John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com As we start a new year, consider the miserable plight of the average Pakistani electricity consumer. With about 50 per cent less electricity generation capability than the actual demand, Pakistan’s National Grid is facing more than a 5,000-megawatt shortfall in power generation, [...]
THAILAND: Malay-Muslim Insurgency – Lessons Learnt
January 18, 2012 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Marwaan Macan-Markar BANGKOK, Jan 17 , 2012 (IPS) – Teachers’ Day on Jan. 16 was a sombre affair in Thailand’s troubled southern provinces where memories are strong of 155 educators killed over the past eight years in an insurgency led by Malay-Muslim separatists. Yet, this grim fact [...]
SPECULATION REGARDING ZARDARI
December 7, 2011 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy B.RAMAN The “Dawn News” of Karachi has reported as follows: “President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday (December 6,2011) arrived in Dubai for a medical check-up. According to presidential spokesperson Farhatullah Babar, the President has traveled to Dubai along with his team of doctors for an extensive medical examination. He added [...]
INDIA: Industrial Pollution Brings Crocodile Tears
December 7, 2011 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Malini Shankar DANDELI, India, Dec 7, 2011 (IPS) – Industrial pollution from a paper manufacturing factory in one of India’s most precious biodiversity hotspots is wreaking havoc on the local ecology, driving up the population of wild crocodiles in the area while simultaneously destroying the creatures’ habitat [...]
OPENING-UP OF MYANMAR
December 6, 2011 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy B.RAMAN The three-day (Nov.30—Dec 2,2011) visit of Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, to Myanmar— the first by a US Secretary of State since the visit of Johan Foster Dulles in 1955— indicated the growing self-confidence of President Thein Sein that the cautious policy of domestic reforms and external opening-up [...]
Australia Going Solar – Gonna Cost Ya, Mate
December 6, 2011 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy By. John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com Green activists, take note – for Australia fully to embrace solar power, Canberra would have to spend $100 billion, with photovoltaic cells to generate the electricity covering an area twice the size of Sydney in order to replace Australia’s indigenous inexpensive coal-fired power plants [...]
AFGHANISTAN: Land Triggers New Conflicts
December 5, 2011 By
Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Rebecca Murray NANGARHAR, Afghanistan , Dec 4, 2011 (IPS) – A small plot of urban land has pitted Assadullah, 55, against an unwelcome neighbour in a bitter personal property dispute that has stretched on for almost a decade. Assadullah’s story is a common one. A working-class barber [...]
