India Seeks to Engage with Africa by Distinguishing itself from China
June 3, 2011 4 min. read

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Africa received extensive attention in the Indian media. Prime Minister Singh attended the second India-Africa Forum Summit in Addis Ababa on May 24th and 25th and visited Tanzania thereafter. The visit was used not only to demonstrate India’s commitment to Africa’s development needs but also highlight the strategy […]

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If Kan stays, Ozawa goes
June 2, 2011 3 min. read

Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Ichiro Ozawa said late Wednesday that he plans to break off from the DPJ and form a new party if the no-confidence motion in DPJ Prime Minister Naoto Kan fails. One hundred members of Kan’s own party are loyal to Ozawa, and 50 of those members plan to side with […]

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Ramesh is Right
June 1, 2011 8 min. read

Jairam Ramesh, India’s maverick environment minister, has raised hackles by questioning the caliber of the country’s premier technology institutions. Yet the angry reactions to his comments are surprising, since his criticism contains nothing that other high-ranking officials in the Union government have not already said.

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Jon Huntsman for President of Chimerica!
June 1, 2011 5 min. read

In this multi-polar world we live in, cooperation among the top three world powers (U.S., China, EU – see my previous post on ‘Triangle World Order’) will be paramount in fixing global problems like the global economic recession, climate change, nuclear proliferation, and now the developments in North Africa and the Middle East.  Such efforts […]

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Election Update: Thailand
June 1, 2011 4 min. read

As the date for general elections in Thailand draws ever closer, the complexity of the situation has commonly been acknowledged by Southeast Asian commentators, especially with respect to the unknown status of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.  This reality was only augmented following recent statements and actions by some of the parties involved this past […]

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UN expert: Gov't discriminates against foreign students
June 1, 2011 2 min. read

U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Jorge Bustamante, presented a report on his findings during his visit to Japan in March last year to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday. He criticized the Japanese government’s discrimination towards foreign schools, and urged it to do more in guaranteeing the rights of foreign […]

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‘Pak army more anti-American than radical’
May 31, 2011 8 min. read

I thought you would be interested in this interview that I did last week for Dawn.com Pakistan’s respected news source. Dr. Stephen Philip Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, Washington DC, is a respected authority on the Pakistani army and the country’s politics. His book The Pakistan Army was published in 1998 and […]

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LDP, Komeito to submit no-confidence motion
May 31, 2011 2 min. read

Japan’s opposition parties, the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito party, have arranged to submit a no-confidence motion against Democratic Party of Japan Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his cabinet, possibly as early as Thursday. By presenting the motion, the two parties are protesting Kan’s handling of the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake […]

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Lessons From a Talk on Religious Education and Pluralism in Pakistan at the Wilson Center
May 31, 2011 3 min. read

I recently had the pleasure of attending an excellent talk at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. on the way religious education structures pluralism in Pakistan.  Matthew Nelson, a Lecturer at SOAS, University of London and a Fellow at the Wilson Center, offered a deeply interesting discussion on ways to think about religious “madrasa” […]

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Stress overload in evacuee shelters
May 30, 2011 2 min. read

According to a Newsweek Japan feature, stress and lack of privacy is taking its toll on victims of the March 11 quake and tsunami living in evacuee shelters in Japan’s Tohoku region. As the media and politicians are spouting slogans like, “Tohoku people are strong,” “We are all one,” “You will never walk alone,” “One […]

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UN Report and the Sri Lankan War (ii)
May 28, 2011 14 min. read

Chapter 2: Post UN Report on War, it is War on the Report in Sri Lanka The Sri Lankan reaction to the UN Report (“Advisory Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka Allegations”) on alleged war crimes committed by the two sides in Sri Lanka has been as emotionally violent as the war itself […]

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India Pulls A China
May 28, 2011 3 min. read

Recently issued rules from the country’s ominous-sounding “Ministry of Communications and Information Technology” have India’s web junta fuming in indignation.

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