Regions

Iraqi lawmakers are demanding the return of $17 billion they say was stolen during the second Iraq war.

The premise of the whole Greek bailout exercise has rested on its economy improving. So far, it has not: Since the country’s first bailout last spring, unemployment has risen sharply and GDP ground to a halt. So after a year of  bailout roulette, the head of Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund, said Sunday what […]

As it stands today, Israel’s government is a system of extreme proportional representation.  There is hardly an ethnic minority or political group lacking representation.  While at face value this may seem to be the fairest system, it is in fact a deeply flawed way of governance.  The way it works is the public votes for […]

More than 52.6 million* domestic workers across the world, including South Asians employed in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, are set to get more protection through a landmark treaty. Adopted on June 16, 2011 by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers would ensure domestic workers enjoyed […]

Reports are swirling that nearly $ 7 billion of Iraq’s oil money, siphoned into the country to rebuild critical infrastructure, may have simply been lifted by some enterprising crooks

I recently watched the famous Russian director Alexei Balabanov’s 2007 movie Cargo 200 (or Gruz 200 in Russian). This blog entry is an attempt to explore and uncover the director’s message behind his artistic choice of making a visually, morally and emotionally poignant – if not shockingly grotesque – movie about the mid-80s in the […]

The U.S. voiced discontent with the Japanese government through official channels last month over Japan’s postponement on a decision to join a U.S.-led Pacific free trade accord. Tokyo was to arrive at a decision by June, but postponed it in the wake of the March 11 earthquake. Washington is understandably frustrated with Tokyo’s delaying a […]

At The Mail & Guardian Percy Zvomuya has a piece recalling last year’s World Cup, which, as he aptly says, “A year later, the Fifa World Cup seems like it was hosted decades ago.” And yet many of his best memories are akin to mine: We witnessed a spontaneous outburst of passion: cars draped in […]

From the days of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics to the boycotts of 1980 Moscow and 1984 Los Angeles Olympics by the ‘NATO aligned’ and the ‘Warsaw Pact nations’ respectively, whenever sport has got affected, it has more or less indicated of a conflict larger than that confined to the […]

Well, Cecil John Rhodes’ vision is about to come to fruition! Sort of. Rhodes, the quintessential settler imperialist long dreamed of a railway that would connect Africa from the Cape to Cairo. Doing so would serve his purposes of extracting resources and of connecting the various markets (and the various resources within those markets) across […]

Israelis often pride themselves as being the only democracy in the Middle East. Israelis compare their actions to those of their neighbors, often using the clause, “Well, Hamas did worse” as rationale for an Israeli action. For Israel to take the high ground, the Jewish state must act like it by actually being more democratic, […]

One of the key resolutions of 16th SAARC Summit held in Thimpu, Bhutan, in April 2010 was about the establishment of a South Asia Forum (SAF) consisting of diverse stakeholders from all member-countries, to generate ideas to further links. Pioneered by India, which emphasized the need to develop a ‘Vision Statement’, the member states of […]