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| THIS
OUR NORTH AMERICA |
| Canada’s housing
market loosing ground |
Khushwant Toor writes from Toronto
LAST quarter of year 2008 has dragged the housing
market in Canada to its lowest transaction levels.
Due to the low sales and longer than average selling
periods the Canadian Housing Market has been termed
as a buyers market form being a sellers market
a year ago. According to latest sale purchase
figures form the Canadian Real Estate Association,
since the mid of year 2008 the average house prices
across Canada have dropped by 11 percent.More
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| End of traditional
capitalism in sight |
Sawraj
Singh writes from Washington
THE year 2008
has clearly shown us that the traditional consumerist
capitalism is facing the worst crisis since its
inception. It has become obvious that mere reforms
cannot save the system but a fundamental change
is needed. America had become the undeclared leader
of the traditional consumerist capitalism since
Europe, the birthplace of capitalism, abandoned
the traditional consumerist capitalism a long
time ago.More
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| ANALYSIS |
| Through
the peephole: Development planning in India
|
Vinod
Anand
IN Part 3 of this Paper we had looked at
the distributional effects of the economic growth
in India since the inception of the First Five Year
Plan. We continue with the same in this Part too.More |
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| Afghanistan:
America’s last stand
|
Sawraj Singh writes from Washington
IT is becoming increasingly clear that the days
of America’s reign as the only superpower of the
world are numbered. Will America’s fate be similar
to the other superpower, the Soviet Union and
will it receive the last fatal blow in Afghanistan
as did the Soviet Union? The answer to both these
questions seems yes. It almost looks like a classic
Greek tragedy that fate is taking America to Afghanistan
in a big way.More
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| Contemporary
global capitalism: Multi-pronged crises-1
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| Pritam
Singh
THE grand failure of many a financial institution
in the US is one of three such crises that have
affected the world today; the others related to
oil prices and food shortages. These in sum have
broken the back of neoliberal triumphalism, and
have resulted in a spatial shift in global capitalism.
No wonder, it is time to address alternatives
to this greed driven, unregulated and excess-motivated
system.More
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| LAW & JUSTICE |
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| Have alien criminals
any legal rights? |
Joginder
Singh Toor
 CERTAIN
unwanted persons, from foreign land , unauthorized
enter your country, laced with weapons deadly, arsenal
devastating, and plans ugly and heinous, to destroy
and destabilize your country. They resort to mass
killing, arson and destruction, killing many and
get killed except one or a few who are captured.
Do the ones who are captured or wounded at the verge
of death, entitled to any medical treatment to be
saved and survive.More |
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| ART & LITERATURE |
| Sardar Swaran Singh
(August 19, 1907 - October 30, 1994) |
| Gobind
Thukral
 IT
was summer of 1982, Punjab was on the boil.
There was daily run of killings, kidnappings and
sleazy politics was to the fore. At the same time
there were all sorts of attempts to diffuse the
situating from getting worse. Mrs. Indira Gandhi
was under tremendous pressure to initiate talks
with the agitating Akalis and the band led by
Sant Jarnail Singh Bhinderanwale.More
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If Kashmir is solved, will
LeT men drive taxis?: Brit MP | Outrage over Pak
artist's removal by MNS | Young boy pushed down
in well by his friend in Punjab | Russia, Ukraine
plan gas crisis talks | Sainz plunges out of Dakar
Rally
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| If Kashmir is solved, will
LeT men drive taxis?: Brit MP |
| Lakshar-e-Toiba
(LeT), the Pakistan-based terror group blamed for the
Mumbai attacks, will not give up terrorism if the Kashmir
problem were to be solved tomorrow, a senior British
MP said Friday. "Will Laskhar-e-Toiba then go back
to driving taxis? Of course they won't. They have tasted
violence," said Stephen Pound of the ruling Labour
Party.More
Updated on January
16, 2009 at 01:00 p.m.
|
- Outrage over Pak artist's
removal by MNSMore
- Young boy pushed down in
well by his friend in PunjabMore
- Russia, Ukraine plan gas
crisis talksMore
- Sainz plunges out of Dakar
RallyMore
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South Asia Post wishes
a peaceful tension free world for all. Cheerful New
Year 2009
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| E D I T O R I
A L |
| Lessons from Kashmir elections |
| DESPITE
India’s willful Election Commission, the
citizens of the distraught state of Jammu and
Kashmir defied guns and freezing cold for over
a month to exercise their right to elect a new
government. The seven phase election that began
on November 17 was a tedious affair from the beginning.
It was jagged as much for the administration to
provide security and other logistic support as
was for the people who faced guns and ridicule
besides icy winds to participate in the elections
that proved to be the least violent in recent
times.More |
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| FOCUS |
| Axis of terror
|
Gobind
Thukral
 AMERICA
may have escaped another terror attack after 9/11
2001, but the world has become much more perilous.
The war on terror has caused the American economy
a neat three trillion dollars according to Noble
laureate economist Joseph Stilgitz. We in
the poor countries can not even guess how much that
money is. There can not be any price tag on over
eight lakh innocent lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan
following American attacks. And the brutal terror
attacks have claimed many lives world over.More |
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| Time to look within |
Dr. Amrik
Singh writes from Sacramento
AMID the din of Mumbai attack
on November 26, 2008, the Manmohan Singh Government
succeeded in getting bipartisan support for National
Investigation Agency Bill and Unlawful Activities (prevention
amendment) Bill. The way two bills have been passed
without much debate and safeguards for minorities speaks
a lot about militancy of the majority rule.More |
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Covering terrorism: Media as a spectacle
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| Gobind
Thukral
 FOR
most television channels and some major newspapers too,
the news is increasingly becoming a commodity. It has
to be packaged and sold and money earned on it. Ethics,
context and its impact on democracy is not the concern
of these television or newspaper organisations. Their
business is the business of news, selling to larger
and larger audiences and increasing their ratio of audiences
or readers and thereby attracting more advertisements
and this making more money.More
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| FEATURES |
| Dilemma of inflation and
recession
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| Vinod
Anand
 APPLYING
economic prescriptions to rectify instability
both at the micro and macro level is not an easy
task. Apart from many other hurdles like exogenous
variables over which the control of the role player
is negligible, quite often there occurs a paradoxical
situation which requires a proper balancing and
trade-off amongst the given options. This is akin
to balancing the two sides of a weighing balance.More
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| Last speech: Gandhi says his
peace |
|  ON,
July 1, 2008, Shankar Vedantam, a columnist with the
Washington Post has helped our collective understanding
of Mahatma Gandhi by revealing his historic speech which
has been largely lost to the world. Here is this second
speech in English which Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi delivered
on April 2, 1947, before his assassination by a Hindu
fanatic on January 30, 1948.More
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| COMMENT |
| Benazir's murder mystery
deepens
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|  IMAGINE
a situation where the husband whose wife has murdered
knows the killers, yet he would not reveal their identity.
He would also not trust the country’s police and
justice system despite being head of that country and
seek international investigation. The case relates to
late twice prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto
who was shot dead in full public view last year in Rawalpindi.More
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| Tamil
civilians caught in cross fire |
| THE Sri Lankan government
should stop arbitrarily detaining civilians fleeing
fighting in the northern Vanni region and urgently allow
humanitarian agencies to return to provide desperately
needed aid, Human Rights Watch demanded. The 49-page
report, "Besieged, Displaced, and Detained: The
Plight of Civilians in Sri Lanka's Vanni Region,"
documents the Sri Lankan government's responsibility
for the plight of the 230,000 to 300,000 displaced persons
trapped in the Vanni conflict zone.More
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| Democracy
reestablished in Bangladesh |
 IN
a landslide victory reminiscent of the historic 1970 election
that led to the birth of Bangladesh, the Awami League
led by Sheikh Hasina daughter of the founder of Bangladesh
Sheikh Mujbar Rehman has secured a remarkable majority
in the Parliamentary elections held on December 29.More |
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