Geopolitical
-
Photo: Greenpeace India/Flickr
Greenpeace, Foreign Funding & An Indian NGO Crackdown
The Indian government has, in the past month of May 2015, taken action against NGOs (non-governmental organisations working for non-commercial purpose) who have failed, according to the government, to account for their foreign funding. Nearly 9,000 NGOs have had their registrations cancelled by the government, i.e., they can no longer operate legally as NGOs. Before this massive issue of...
Read More -
Photo: DonkeyHotey/Flickr
America’s Midterm Election: The Republican Win?!
On 4th November, the United States of America voted: removing Barrack Obama’s Democratic party from its majority position and instead bringing the opposition Republican party closer to power. This surprise result in the Midterm elections has been a wake-up call to American politicians; because what came out most in the analysis and study of voting patterns was not so...
Read More -
Photo:
Islamic State, Iraq & Syria: A War That Won’t Leave Us
Brutal beheadings, America’s return to war in the Levant, coalition bombings and invincible seeming extremists: it would almost be impossible for any news source to not cover the Islamic State. That is the name, of the militant Sunni Islamist organization that wants to create a nation (an Islamic State) from which to launch “jihad”, or religious war, against the West;...
Read More -
Photo: Citobun/Wikimedia Commons
Hong Kong: Two Systems, One Country?
That was the promise Chinese President Deng Xiapong flaunted 30 years ago when he made a deal with the British government for the return of Hong Kong to China. He declared that the citizens of Hong Kong would enjoy free elections and universal suffrage (everybody can vote), even as mainland Chinese lived under communist dictatorship. 30 years on, Hong...
Read More -
Photo: thepoliticalwarzone.blogspot.com
The Arab Spring: 3 Years On
Issue 25The Arab Spring. It’s now been 3 years since those grand words first rocked the world – what’s happened? This year was a particularly bad one for the whole Middle East; or rather, a bad year for the Arab Spring. The few revolutions that had been “successful” collapsed into chaos – and the failures descended further into the abyss....
Read More -
Photo: Holly Dagres/democrati.net
The Iranian Reonciliation
Issue 25This article, in a sentence: Obama shook hands with Rouhani. That was historic: after 34 years of mutual hatred and diplomatic silence, and an even longer period of distrust and hostility, this mere gesture of shaking hands between Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani and Mr. Obama is very, very significant. Leave symbolism aside: it preceeded a historic nuclear deal...
Read More -
Photo: Jackopoid/Wikimedia Commons
East Asian Tensions: Japan, China, North Korea
Issue 25The geopolitical hotspot this year was not the Middle East though, it was in East Asia – in that oceanic region which contains superpowers like Japan, China, South Korea, North Korea (see Map) – and the tensions were palpable in that region this year. With the (widely regarded to be) eccentric Kim Jong-Un, Supreme Leader of North Korea, kicking...
Read More -
Photo: Nanking2012/Wikimedia Commons
Iran: They’ve Signed the Deal, But is it Any Good?
Issue 23On Sunday, something very significant happened. Very, very significant. In a line, ‘they did a deal’. Who? Iran and the rest of the world, of course. It was a historic moment – in the words of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu “Not a historic agreement but a historic mistake”. However, that’s a very pessimistic view of what might well be...
Read More -
Photo: University of Texas/ Bellum.standfordreview.org
Sri Lanka’s Commonwealth Humiliation
Issue 22Last week, the little island nation that lies at the footstep of India received massive embarrassment on a global stage, as various nations, including India, refused to attend the Annual Commonwealth Summit Sri Lanka was holding. Worse still, leaders of all these countries clearly stated why they refused to go – citing the country’s poor human rights record, and...
Read More -
Photo: Eyevine/The Economist
Tunisia: Not Another Egypt
Issue 20Remember Tunisia, that little country in North Africa, where Mohammed Bouazizi, a common shopkeeper, burnt himself and started the ‘Arab Spring’. It was the model that laid the foundation for the rest of the Arab revolutions – as we said in our report on the Arab Spring (issue 9), the one successful revolution. But we were wrong, and so...
Read More
