Asia

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Slowing the pace of climate change and getting “tough” on China, especially over its human-rights abuses and unfair trade practices, are among the top priorities President Biden has announced for his new administration. Evidently, he believes that he can tame a rising China with harsh pressure tactics, while still gaining its […]

India

Nonviolent Noncooperation: Why Indian farmers’ protests are being called a ‘satyagraha’ – which means ’embracing the truth’

The Conversation

By Sumit Ganguly | – For the past few months, farmers protesting in India’s capital, New Delhi, have been demanding the repeal of three farm laws that were passed last year. These largely peaceful protests have been referred to as a “satyagraha” by many in the Indian media, politicians and activists. As a political scientist […]

Climate Crisis

Global heating from CO2 breaks Himalayan Glacier, floods sweep away Scores, destroy Hydroelectric Plant

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A huge chunk of the Nanda Devi glacier in the Himalayas broke off Sunday morning, melting and crashing down on villages around Joshimath in India’s Uttarakhand state, leaving nine dead and 140 unaccounted for. The turbulent grey deluge of water, ice and rocks slammed into two hydro-electric plants, destroying one […]

Authoritarianism

Trump’s Coup and Burma’s Coup: What they have in Common

Reese Erlich

The Asian country’s military overthrew its government over baseless claims of voter fraud. Sound familiar? ( 48hills.org) – This week, military officers in Myanmar (formerly Burma) overthrew that nation’s democratically elected government after the party it preferred lost the parliamentary elections. The military claimed voter fraud without presenting any proof. It tried to fill the […]

China

Biden’s Top Foreign Policy Challenge: Avoiding a Cold War with China

Conn M. Hallinan

Taiwan and the South China Sea are the likeliest points of conflict — but conflict is not an option. ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – President Joe Biden’s administration faces a host of difficult problems, but in foreign policy its thorniest will be its relations with the People’s Republic of China. How the new administration […]

India

The problem with India’s ‘love jihad’ laws

The Conversation

By Sumit Ganguly | – Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, the Bharatiya Janata Party government has put forward several anti-Muslim policies. The latest is a clampdown on what it sees as “love jihad,” the belief that Muslims are seeking to deceive Hindu women through marriage and convert them to Islam. Over the course of […]

China

That Time when America was a Superpower before Trump surrendered to China

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – After four years of Donald Trump’s fitful tenure, America is awakening from a long, troubled sleep to discover, like the fictional character Rip Van Winkle, that the world it once knew has changed beyond all recognition. In that classic American tale by Washington Irving published in 1819, an amiable but shiftless […]

China

With Trump Gone, Can the U.S. and China Cooperate on a Failing Planet?

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com) – For just a moment, let me try to look on the bright side of the storming of the Capitol last week by a mob incited and dispatched by President Trump. When George W. Bush, the president who launched the Global War on Terror and then invaded Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, referred to what […]

China

Twisting the Truth about a Beautiful Sight: Some Beijing Press is using the Capitol Insurrection to Condemn Homegrown Pro-Democracy Demonstrators

Philip J. Cunningham

Ithaca, NY (Special to Informed Comment) – Given the mutual recriminations that characterize the sorry state of US-China relations as of late, it is hardly surprising that China’s state media should pounce on the humiliating optics of US democracy under siege. Indeed, one need only retransmit US mainstream media reports about a demented US president […]