The world’s largest, fastest-emerging industrial economies are posing grave questions for the coming generation: for how long will the inequalities produced by the unending pursuit of economic growth remain sustainable, for how long will our finite natural resources last if they continue to be rapidly commercialised, and can the environment stand the future demand of several billion new consumers?
On February 4, President Bush announced a baseline military budget of $515.4 billion for the next fiscal year, not including funds for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the largest one-year Pentagon request in real, uninflated dollars since World War II.
As China and India lose control of their economies, they are failing to provide reliable power to their citizens. How will they manage to curb carbon emissions?
It is time for India and China to move beyond a history of conflicts
and start cooperating politically, economically and technologically for
mutual benefits, writes Dr Aqueil Ahmad.
The Bush Administration’s fixation on security and the “war on terror” is already escalating the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa in 2008. In his last year in office, President George W. Bush will no doubt duplicitously continue to promote economic policies that exacerbate inequalities while seeking to salvage his legacy as a compassionate conservative with rhetorical support for addressing human rights challenges including conflict in Sudan and continued promotion of his unilateral HIV/AIDS initiative.
In my film Death of a Nation, there is a sequence filmed on board an Australian aircraft flying over the island of Timor. A party is in progress, and two men in suits are toasting each other in champagne. "This is an historically unique moment," says one of them, "that is truly uniquely historical." This was Gareth Evans, Australia's then foreign minister. The other man was Ali Alatas, the principal mouthpiece of the Indonesian dictator General Suharto, who died yesterday.
Former President Suharto, an army general who rose to power in Indonesia with the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people and ruled for 32 years over an era of rapid economic growth and extraordinary graft, died Sunday in Indonesia. He was 86.
Benazir Bhutto, the "life chairperson" of Pakistan's largest and most popular political party, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), is now dead. Her assassination took place while she was campaigning for national and provincial assembly elections, scheduled for January 8. After the assassination rioting ensued throughout the country, particularly in Karachi and Bhutto's native province of Sindh, which have been aflame with protests and social unrest.
