21 - June - 2010 | 0
Issue 20/April-June 2010
By Niruban Balachandran
The Transformed International Security Environment
“With the Soviet Union receding in memory, it is a wonder that NATO still exists,” wrote former National Security Council Director Mark Medish on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 60th anniversary celebrations last year. “After the fall of the Soviet bloc many voices called for disbanding NATO. That was not an outrageous idea.”
Founded in 1949 to counter expansionism by the Soviet Union, NATO is the world’s most powerful military alliance. Under the North Atlantic Treaty’s Article 5, the security of all current 28 European and North American NATO member states (known as “Allies”) is regarded as “indivisible”: an attack on one is an attack on all. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, pithily stated the Alliance’s purpose was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”
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18 - June - 2010 | 0
Issue 20/April-June 2010
By Guy Burton
If economic development under the Lula administration can be likened to a football match, it may be seen as a case of two distinct halves - and which may be heading for extra time. That it does so will be regardless of whoever follows him in the presidency, whether it remains in the hands of his Workers Party (PT) or the opposition.
Lula’s successor will undoubtedly use the same strategy, the primary focus of which has been inflation control and which enabled him to introduce two key state-led programs in each half of his presidency: redistribution through the ‘family grant’ (bolsa familia) system in his first term and a package of infrastructure investment through the Accelerated Growth Program (PAC) during his second.
The government’s economic and social actions are credited with not only raising Brazil’s global status alongside that of other developing BRIC economies and G20, but also in helping insulate Brazil’s economy and society from the worst effects of the 2008 financial crisis. Lula will leave office at the end of 2010 with Brazil in a strong position, but much of that achievement may also be attributable to his commitment to maintain the economic policy of his predecessor.
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15 - June - 2010 | 2
Issue 20/April -June 2010
By Javier Delgado
Thailand has been severely hit by a deeply-rooted and now overly exposed social clash. The Red-Shirt demands, the camps’ raising factionalism, and the hidden agendas across the divide could be tracked down into the divisive figure of Thaksin Shinawatra.
His rise in 2001 to the premiership polarised Thailand’s society in a way unseen since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. By launching an ambitious range of pro-poor policies, Thaksin gained the unconditional support of north Thailand’s rural and working classes. This popularity posed an outright threat to the elites’ grip on the country affairs, what triggered a succession of questionable manoeuvres engineered to kick Thaksin out.
While in office, Thaksin also used his position to boost his numerous businesses, expanding an already vast fortune in a corrupt race that was eventually picked up by the army to oust him.
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08 - June - 2010 | 0
Issue 20/April-June 2010
By Roseanna Elizabeth Cox
When you think about the ocean, you shouldn’t have images of bloated fish bobbing around on the surface, surrounded by greasy swirls of oil, tar balls washing up on shore lines or sea birds trapped in oil slicks, waiting to die.
Since late April 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught fire and exploded, the Mexican Gulf has changed, and not for the better. The corporation responsible for this, BP had estimated only 5,000 barrels of oil were pumping into the gulf a day. It was revealed, however, that the figures are significantly higher. Around 12,000-19,000 barrels a day are pumping out, according to a panel of government scientists known as the Flow Rate Technical Group. [1] If these figures are correct, then over 444,000 barrels (18.65 million gallons/70.59 million litres) have been released into the ocean, whereas the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster had only pumped out over 257,000 barrels of oil. Within the waters near the oil flow, the levels of Oxygen have already fallen by 30 percent, meaning it becomes a so-called “dead zone” as marine species simply can’t live there anymore.
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