IT WORLD : Facebook heads for IPO

Social networking giant Facebook has at last moved towards selling its shares to the public, seeking to raise a possible US$5 billion. The sale would propel 27-year-old co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to the top ranks of rich folk, with a $28 billion stake….

Hidden hand, clean hand in Russian politics

Over seven decades after Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge, his star is rising, particularly among younger Russians for whom the dictator is a symbol of strong and clean hands. Most Russians suspect the hands of everyone contending for political power to be …

$1 bn shale-gas deal sweetens Beijing trip by Canada’s Harper

PetroChina’s estimated US$1 billion purchase of a stake in a Canadian shale-gas project sets the tone for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s visit to Beijing next week. China’s urgent desire to exploit its own vast unconventional gas reserves dovetails ni…

From sex to shame, a guru’s legacy

Squabbling among followers of late spiritual guru Acharya Rajneesh over a US$7.1 million land deal has escalated in the Indian courts, while visitors to the « sex to super-consciousness » guru’s ashram are falling due to exorbitant pricing. The materiali…

BOOK REVIEW : LeT: Terror incorporated

The Caliphate’s Soldiers: The Lashkar-e-Tayyeba’s Long War by Wilson John
With thousands of recruitment and training centers across Pakistan, funds pouring in from the Gulf and links from Nepal to Sri Lanka, Lashkar-e-Toiba has flourished since the Mum…

Question time for North Korea

North Korea reportedly is producing middle-range missiles for export for Iran’s defense in the event of a Middle East war that would make the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan look like brush fires. Closer to home, Pyongyang has fired off a series of q…

AN ASIA TIMES ONLINE EXCLUSIVE : Taliban eat into Afghanistan’s core

Even as several tracks of peace talks with the Taliban open up, Asia Times Online has learned that senior members of the Western-trained and financed Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police plan to defect with vast numbers of their colleagues t…

THE ROVING EYE : Exposed: The Arab agenda in Syria

Washington, London and Paris are falling over themselves to assure the real international community that the « Arab-led drive to secure a peaceful end to the 10-month crackdown » in Syria at the United Nations is not seeking another mandate for bombing a…

SPEAKING FREELY : Lest we forget in Myanmar

Optimistic reports of positive change flow freely from Myanmar, as the president portrays himself as a leader who sincerely wants to improve citizens’ livelihoods, alleviate poverty and include the oppressed opposition in the political process. But the…

Rants and raves for new US pullout plan

The surprise decision to phrase out a combat role for US troops in Afghanistan by mid-2013 has drawn mixed reaction in Washington, with critics of the 11-year international occupation cheering and neo-cons and other hawks assessing that the strategy wi…

Factory owners mourn Mazar-e-Sharif clean-up

Mazar-e-Sharif residents are increasingly able to breathe fresh air and walk clean, tree-lined streets in the northern Afghan city as authorities force factories out of the center and ban old, high-emission vehicles – to the consternation of taxi drive…

Nightmare at Narita

The deportation and arrest of foreign journalists in Japan has raised suspicions Tokyo is punishing foreigners critical of its response to the Fukushima nuclear crisis, with the apparently harsh interrogation, detention and deportation procedures at Na…

Apple’s sour core

Apple’s iPad and iPhone are engineering masterpieces. They also incarnate the social relations of production, their profitable production depending on a brutally squeezed production supply chain and a country with unparalleled capacity to discipline la…

UN shenanigans on Syria

The United States and its allies in Europe and the Persian Gulf, under cover of the pretense that Syrian insurgents are gaining control, are trying to bulldoze a resolution through the United Nations Security Council that is intended to ratchet up the …

Despair in the air at Davos

The absence of heavy hitters from China at Davos this year did not prevent the West’s movers and shakers who were present clamoring for Chinese assistance in bailing out capitalism – ignoring the point that capitalism is in fact stronger, freer and mor…

Call for ‘more credible’ US military threat

Iran is « two to six months » from a nuclear bomb and the Barack Obama administration is failing to convince Tehran it will act militarily to prevent this, a task force has complained. Recommending a surgical strike and the deployment of US Special Force…

Mainland chip on Hong Kong’s shoulder

An inflammatory newspaper advert in Hong Kong depicting mainland Chinese as « locusts » exploiting the island’s social welfare system has capped a month of cross-cultural tensions. While decrying mainlanders as uneducated bumpkins eating noodles on train…

Echoes of war across the South Caucasus

As the drums of war against Iran grow ever louder, the beat echoes in the South Caucasus, where Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have compelling – albeit vastly different – reasons for fearing conflict in the Persian Gulf; a confluence of regional event…

Egypt caught in spiral of disaster

The fairy tale of a new Egyptian order is spiraling from the dizzy heights of a year ago and deeper into nightmare, with 74 senseless deaths in a clash between rival soccer fans coming in the wake of a brawl between members of the secular opposition an…

THE ROVING EYE : Fear and loathing in the American Gulf

In roughly one month, no less than three US aircraft carriers and their strike groups will be sloshing around the American Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The only good thing among all this weaponized orgy is that Tehran and Washington are …

Pakistan wins WTO go-ahead for EU deal

Pakistan, swept by floods in 2010, has at last secured World Trade Organization approval for temporary preferential trade with the European Union that was originally intended to create early help in the recovery of the devastated South Asian country. -…

TARGET IRAN : US tells Israelis it won’t join their war

In an unexpectedly low-key visit, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey has explicitly warned Israel’s leadership that the US won’t defend Israel if it unilaterally strikes Iran. However, Israel knows it can count on the US ri…

Singapore’s gains look fragile

The Singaporean economy took on a healthy glow at the end of last year, thanks in part to an unexpected surge in industrial production. The latest findings for the Purchasing Managers’ Index are far less rosy. – Robert M Cutler

Pakistan denies ‘intimate’ Taliban links

Pakistan has rejected a leaked North Atlantic Treaty Organization report that accused its intelligence agency of backing the Taliban because it believed it was well-placed to regain power in Afghanistan – adding to strained ties just as Pakistani Forei…

India frets at big-box frontier

India has put off opening its consumer market to direct investment by international retailers such as Walmart and Tesco. The pay and jobs destruction such companies can apparently cause appears to justify concern among India’s shopkeepers that they cou…

Page suivante »