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India and Pakistan by Barbara Crossette

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode a wave of Hindu nationalism to a historic reelection in 2019. His first order of business was to revoke the special status granted to the Kashmir region, inflaming the rivalry between India and Pakistan. How will the Kashmir situation affect the region, both economically and politically?

 

January 21, 2020

 

Presenter: Karen Berson

 

India–Pakistan Relations - Relations between India and Pakistan

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No respite for Kashmir, even as tensions between India and Pakistan decrease

 

India’s Internet shutdown in Kashmir is the longest ever in a democracy

 

India and Kashmir, Now One

 

India and Pakistan: Living on Borrowed Time

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Kashmire: Escalation of Tensions between India and Pakistan

 

Pakistan vows to respond to any Indian aggression in Kashmir

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January 21, 2020

 

Presenter: Karen Berson

 

 

India and Pakistan by Barbara Crossette

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode a wave of Hindu nationalism to a historic reelection in 2019. His first order of business was to revoke the special status granted to the Kashmir region, inflaming the rivalry between India and Pakistan. How will the Kashmir situation affect the region, both economically and politically?

 

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India–Pakistan relations

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Relations between India and Pakistan have been complex and largely hostile due to a number of historical and political events. Relations between the two states have been defined by the violent partition of British India in 1947, the Kashmir conflict, and the numerous military conflicts fought between the two nations. Consequently, their relationship has been plagued by hostility and suspicion. Currently after Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill, Pakistan cut off bilateral and trade relations with India, recalled the Pakistani ambassador to India, and expelled the High Commissioner of India to Pakistan.[1][2] Northern India and Pakistan somewhat overlap in areas of certain demographics and shared lingua francas (mainly Punjabi and Hindustani).

After the dissolution of the British Raj in 1947, two new sovereign nations were formed… MORE >>

 

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No respite for Kashmir, even as tensions between India and Pakistan decrease

 

March 3

NEW DELHI — When tensions spiked last week between India and Pakistan, mortar shells started falling in Aijaz Ahmad’s village. For hours, he lay awake listening as the two countries shelled each other across the line that divides the disputed region of Kashmir. Some of the rounds damaged nearby houses, while another fell in a market.

“Anyone can pay with his life,” said Ahmad, 35.

For villagers living near Kashmir’s dividing line, the fact that Pakistan and India have taken steps back from the brink is a temporary relief.… MORE >>

 

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India’s Internet shutdown in Kashmir is the longest ever in a democracy

 

India imposed the shutdown on Aug. 5, when authorities revoked Kashmir’s autonomy and statehood, snapped all communications and detained the region’s mainstream politicians. Landlines and calls on some mobile phones were subsequently restored, but the Internet remains blocked — a move Indian authorities say is necessary to maintain security in the restive territory claimed by both India and Pakistan.

NEW DELHI — Each morning at 8:15 a.m., a train pulls out of the station in the Kashmiri capital of Srinagar. Hundreds of passengers cram the cars for the 70-mile journey, packed so tightly they can barely move. Nearly all will return the same day.

Kashmiris call the train the Internet Express. It shuttles people out of the Kashmir Valley — where India has shut down access to the Internet for more than four months — to the nearest town where they can get online.

On a recent foggy morning, it was full of people hoping to renew driver’s licenses, apply for passports, fill out admissions forms and check email. They included 16-year-old Khushboo Yaqoob, who was rushing to register for a medical school exam. “If I had any other option, I wouldn’t be here,” she said.

The shutdown, which entered its 134th day Monday, is now the longest ever imposed in a democracy, according to Access Now, an international advocacy group that tracks Internet suspensions. Only authoritarian regimes such as China and Myanmar have cut off the Internet for longer. … MORE >>

 

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India and Kashmir, Now One

 

(United Press International)

August 13, 2019

Kashmir is walk past Indian security personnel during restrictions after the scrapping of the special constitutional status for Kashmir, in Srinagar, August 11, 2019

Photo by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

by Rafiq Dossani

In a legally risky move already having consequences on the ground, India's government on Aug. 5 scrapped Article 370, the part of the 1956 Constitution that gave the state of Jammu and Kashmir special autonomous status after independence. How consequential is this for India, and how should the international community react?

Largely seen as an incentive to accede to India rather than Pakistan at the time of independence, Article 370 said that the federal laws of India, which apply to all typical states, would only apply to Jammu and Kashmir with the consent of the state legislature. It was intended to be temporary and subject to further revision, but Article 370 became a “deemed” permanent feature when the state's constituent assembly was dissolved in 1956 without renegotiating it. As a result, changing Article 370 had been interpreted to be impossible in law.… MORE >>

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India and Pakistan: Living on Borrowed Time

 

On February 26, for the first time this century, Indian fighter jets struck deep inside Pakistani territory, targeting camps operated by notorious terrorists.

 

The Narendra Modi-led government is more confident and more nationalist in character, but so is the Indian public at large.

Pakistan’s security establishment must be convinced the cost for using terrorism as an instrument of state policy outweighs the benefits.

If there’s one conclusion to draw from the recent crisis in India-Pakistan relations it’s this: We’ve been living on borrowed time. The latest episode in their longstanding dispute over Kashmir confirms that we have entered a new, more volatile chapter in bilateral relations, one in which the world can no longer expect India to respond with unquestioned restraint to future provocations from its neighbor. To avoid a disastrous escalation in the future, the world will have to redouble its efforts to end the scourge of state-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan.

On February 14, Indian forces suffered the deadliest-ever single attack in Kashmir,… MORE >>

 

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Kashmire: Escalation of Tensions between India and Pakistan

 

Very tension escalated rapidly between India and Pakistan when on February 27, this year, in response to the Indian so-called pre-emptive air strike near the town of Balakot, close to the border with Pakistan’s sector of Kashmir, Pakistan Air Force (PAF) shot down two Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jets and launched aerial strikes at six targets in the Indian Occupied (IOK).

In this respect, the aftermath of the false flag terror attack at Pulwama and the so-called surgical strikes were manipulated by New Delhi against Islamabad as the election-stunt. But, truth about India’s surgical strikes unmasked, when Indian top civil and military leaders failed in providing any evidence.

The myth of Indian surgical strikes was further exposed,… MORE >>

 

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Pakistan vows to respond to any Indian aggression in Kashmir

 

Muzaffarabad (Pakistan) (AFP) - Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan vowed Wednesday the time had come to teach Delhi a lesson and promised to "fight until the end" against any Indian aggression in the disputed region of Kashmir.

The warning represented a dramatic escalation in rhetoric after Islamabad said last week that they had ruled out a "military option" over the Kashmir dispute.

The remarks come as tensions skyrocketed between the nuclear-armed rivals following India's surprising move to revoke the autonomy of its portion of the disputed Himalayan territory last week.

"The Pakistani army has solid information that they (India) are planning to do something in Pakistani Kashmir, … MORE >>

 

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January 14, 2020

 

Climate change has become one of the defining issues of our time. As much of the world bands together to come up with a plan, the U.S. remains the notable holdout. What is the rest of the world doing to combat climate change? What impact will the effects of climate change have on global geopolitics?

 

Presenter: Pamela Betheil

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Is the Man-Made Climate Change Debate Really Over?
 

What makes Delhi's air so deadly
 

Climate change and the world’s oceans

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Building an ambitious US climate policy from the bottom up

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What counts for our climate: Carbon budgets untangled

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Is the Man-Made Climate Change Debate Really Over?

 

Climate change enthusiasts are convinced that man-made global warming poses a near-term environmental disaster. Yet gloom-and-doom forecasts about the fate of the Earth are hardly new, and few have proven accurate.

In 1798 the Rev. Thomas Malthus predicted that mass starvation would strike England in the 19th century because population growth would inevitably overwhelm food production. It didn’t happen.

Or recall the dire predictions by experts in the 1970s that the world was running out of oil and that prices would skyrocket and stay high for decades.

These views were supported by analyses from the CIA and a boatload of geologists who believed in the so-called “peak oil” theory.

But the experts were wrong. Adjusted for inflation, a barrel of crude oil today is cheaper than it was in 1980, which is arguably one of the most pro-consumer developments in recent economic history.

And now we are told that the world is on the brink of environmental disaster due to man-made global warming.

The conventional wisdom, repeated endlessly in the popular press, is that the Earth is heating dangerously because we burn fossil fuels and that this will generate devastating droughts, fires, floods, and rising ocean levels. (The oceans are currently rising by about one-eighth of an inch per year).… MORE >>

 

 

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What makes Delhi's air so deadly

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“... every two minutes one person dies due to air pollution in this country”

This is a 5 minute You Tube video

… MORE >>

 

 

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Climate change and the world’s oceans

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The oceans, which cover three quarters of the Earth’s surface, play a vital role in the global climate system, generating oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Changes to the climate, brought about by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, will thus lead to changes in the oceans, including sea-level rise and ocean acidification, which will put marine ecosystems and coastal communities at risk. 

SDG 14 is the only universally agreed road map for conserving and sustainably managing marine resources - Peter Thomson, President of the UN General Assembly

World leaders acknowledged the importance of the oceans when they adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the universal blueprint for ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. SDG 14 sets out specific targets to be met in order to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development....MORE >>

 

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Building an ambitious US climate policy from the bottom up

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The science of climate change is clear that global emissions of greenhouse gases need to fall rapidly to keep the world on a path that limits warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius—a level that already risks significant disruption to ecosystem and human livelihoods. Yet the world collectively is not even close to a trajectory that would achieve this ambitious goal. Adding to the challenge, actions by the U.S. Administration have slowed progress toward reducing emissions in the world’s biggest economy and second-largest emitter. As world leaders are now gathered in Madrid for the annual U.N. conference of parties (COP25), raising global ambition over the next 12 months is the existentially important task for the world community, and it is daunting.

Indeed, across the United States today there is a groundswell of significant and increasingly ambitious climate actions being taken by states, cities, businesses, and others. And a major new study from the America’s Pledge initiative demonstrates not only the magnitude of this coalition but also the impact that current and potential commitments from bottom-up action across the U.S. could have.… MORE >>

 

 

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What counts for our climate: Carbon budgets untangled

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A new study published in Nature identifies relevant factors that affect estimates of remaining carbon budgets, and thereby untangles the differences to make estimates more easily comparable, which will help decision-makers in using them. From a climate policy perspective, the bottom line remains the same: Even if the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C increases by one-half, there will be only 10 years more time before emissions have to be reduced to net zero.… MORE >>

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