Shale Gas a Bridge to More Global Warming

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Stephen Leahy UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 24, 2012 (IPS) – Hundreds of thousands of shale gas wells are being "fracked" in the United States and Canada, allowing large amounts of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, to escape into the atmosphere, new studies have shown. Shale gas production [...]

Using Ocean Temperature Differences to Create Renewable Energy

Republished on Global Geopolitics & Political Economy By. James Burgess of Oilprice.com Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is an idea for creating renewable energy by exploiting the difference in ocean temperatures between the surface and the seabed. The OTEC permit office first opened in 1981 as part of NOAA, America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, [...]

BELARUS: Political Prisoners Facing Oppression

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Robert Stefanicki WARSAW, Jan 24, 2012 (IPS) – "I had to fight to be treated like a human, not animal," dissident Nikolai Avtukhovich wrote from prison. Last month Avtukhovich, Belarusian political activist and entrepreneur, convicted to five years in the penal colony for illegal storage of five [...]

SOUTH SUDAN: Still Counting the Dead in Inter-Ethnic Conflict

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Jared Ferrie PIBOR, South Sudan , Jan 24, 2012 (IPS) – In the ward of a partially destroyed clinic, Mangiro (who did not give his last name) sat on a bed next to his wounded nine-year-old daughter, Ngathin. The little girl is fortunate, she survived the recent [...]

MIDEAST: Into an Unsettled New Year

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Mya Guarnieri HEBRON, Jan 22, 2012 (IPS) – An elderly Palestinian woman spent last week on hunger strike to protest violent attacks by Israeli settlers. Hana Abu Heikel went on the hunger strike on behalf of her family after settlers burned the family car during the previous [...]

U.S.: A Credit Union to Bail Out People, Not Big Banks

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Judith Scherr SAN FRANCISCO, California, Jan 21, 2012 (IPS) – Occupy activists from Wall Street to San Francisco’s financial district have dramatised their anger with big financial institutions by blocking JP Morgan Chase Bank doorways, dancing atop Wells Fargo counters, pitching a tent in a Bank of [...]

U.S.: "Money Isn’t Speech, Corporations Aren’t People"

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Kanya D’Almeida NEW YORK, Jan 21, 2012 (IPS) – In most mainstream media the words "corruption" and "election fraud" accompany images of makeshift polling stations manned by armed guards in Burma or burning tires beside tattered ballot boxes in South Sudan – the insidiousness of stolen elections [...]

FUTURE OF KASHMIRI PANDITS

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 [...]

GERMANY: While Some Waste, Others Feast

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS By Julio Godoy HAMBURG, Jan 20, 2012 (IPS) – Shortly before midnight last Saturday, Alexander, a 24-year-old law student, stepped out of his small apartment in Hamburg and set off for a jaunt around the local supermarkets to pilfer their garbage containers. Alex, who did not want his [...]

INDIA: Advancing Economy Reveals a Hungry Underbelly

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 [...]