Asia

TomoNews & The Telegraph | — [Taiwan Animators (TomoNews)] “I’m sure you remember this touching scene from ‘Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ where Katniss shows her resolve and will to fight after her friend was killed. She turns to the camera and puts up her hand with the first three fingers outstretched in an act of […]

Buddhism

Militant Buddhist Monks stir attacks on innocent Muslims in Myanmar

contributors

AJ+ “Buddhist monks were a symbol of hope and defiance during the dark years of Myanmar’s military dictatorship. But as the country opens up to the world, some have taken a radically sectarian turn. Since 2012, violence has uprooted more than 150,000 members of the country’s Muslim minority. And in July 2014, Buddhist mobs attacked […]

Afghanistan

Climate Change: Afghanistan on Front Line (& You Thought the Taliban were Bad)

contributors

By Joe Dyke (IRIN) MAZAR-I-SHARIF, November 2014 (IRIN) – In northern Afghanistan, the residents don’t often use the phrase – most don’t even know it. But as they describe how increasingly extreme weather patterns are making their lives harder every year, they map out many of the symptoms of climate change. As a new UN […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s Women: After 13 Years of War, the Rule of Men, Not Law

contributors

By Ann Jones via Tomdispatch.com On September 29th, power in Afghanistan changed hands for the first time in 13 years. At the Arg, the presidential palace in Kabul, Ashraf Ghani was sworn in as president, while the outgoing Hamid Karzai watched calmly from a front-row seat. Washington, congratulating itself on this “peaceful transition,” quickly collected the new […]

Afghanistan

Listening to Nobelist Malala Yousafzai instead of just Honoring Her

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole Malala Yousafzai has become the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in history, sharing it this year with India’s Kailash Satyarthi, a children’s rights activist. Ms. Yousafzai, from Pakistan’s picturesque Swat Valley, was shot in the head by a member of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Pakistani Taliban Movement) two […]

Central Asia

Does Bear + Dragon Trump Eagle? How Russia & China may block the US in Asia

contributors

By Pepe Escobar via Tomdispatch.com A specter haunts the fast-aging “New American Century”: the possibility of a future Beijing-Moscow-Berlin strategic trade and commercial alliance. Let’s call it the BMB. Its likelihood is being seriously discussed at the highest levels in Beijing and Moscow, and viewed with interest in Berlin, New Delhi, and Tehran. But don’t […]

Asia

The Yasukuni Shuffle: China and Japan duke it out via T.V. Serials on the Wrongs of WW II

contributors

By Philip J Cunningham Everyday hundreds, if not thousands of Chinese and Japanese kill one another on Chinese television. Hundreds of Anti-Japan war dramas were churned out last year and the genre dominates China’s airwaves round the clock like never before, even though eight decades have gone by since Japan’s war of invasion. What’s more, […]

Afghanistan

Syria to Afghanistan: US Military Policy hasn’t Solved the Zone of Crisis & may Enlarge it

contributors

By Amin Saikal, author of Zone of Crisis: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq The Middle East and its wider eastern environs are in the grip of multiple humanitarian and geopolitical crises. The entire region from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria to Palestine and Libya is shattered by more violence than usual and long-term […]

Afghanistan

13 Years after US started Bombing it, Afghanistan Still Unstable

contributors

News Analysis: Afghan Deal Leaves Room For National Disunity By Frud Bezhan via RFE/RL After months of wrangling and high tension, Afghanistan has finally named a president-elect. Ashraf Ghani's name was officially entered into the books as the winner of the highly contentious, fraud-marred contest, shortly after he and his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, signed a […]