The Uninhabitable Village – by Geeta Anand and Vikram Singh – NYT Oct 26 2017

February 5, 2018 / Climate Change, India and Sri Lanka

Beautiful photography, heartbreaking story: Each sentence below has a photo video clip: “This is S. Periyanayaki in the rice field in southern India where her husband died. The worst drought in more than a century killed his rice crop, and he blamed himself. A farmer found Periyanayaki’s husband, K. Suresh, lying in the barren field. …

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Feature: Heat and drought drive south India’s farmers from fields to cities – April 2017 Reuters.com

February 5, 2018 / Climate Change, India and Sri Lanka

NAGAPATTINAM, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Vinod Kumar remembers a time, not so long ago, when the fields in his village in the southern state of Tamil Nadu were green all year round. His family lived comfortably from its farmland of just over 2 acres (0.8 hectares), growing vegetables, coconuts and millet irrigated by the …

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India drought: ‘330 million people affected’ – BBC News 20 April 2016

February 5, 2018 / Climate Change, India and Sri Lanka

I am looking for evidence to support the report in the NYT last month, that 100,000 Indian farmers had committed suicide because of the drought in Southeast India.  This old article in the BBC sheds some background light on the disaster. “At least 330 million people are affected by drought in India, the government has …

India drought: ‘330 million people affected’ – BBC News 20 April 2016 Read More »

What It’s Like to Live in a Surveillance State – by James Millward – NYT

February 5, 2018 / Bullies and Scoundrels, China, Climate Change Remediation

Image by Brian Stauffer, NYT “I have researched Xinjiang for three decades. Ethnic tensions have been common during all those years, and soon after 9/11, Chinese authorities started invoking the specter of “the three evil forces of separatism, extremism and terrorism” as a pretense to crack down on Uighurs. But state repression in Xinjiang has never …

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A Photo That Changed the Course of the Vietnam War – by Maggie Astor – NYT

February 1, 2018 / Vietnam-American War

“. . . Then there was the fallout for the person for whom viewers had the least sympathy: General Loan, the executioner, who would eventually move to the United States. In 1978, the government tried unsuccessfully to rescind his green card. He died 20 years later in Virginia, where he had run a restaurant. Adams himself, before his …

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The American Who Predicted Tet – by Max Boot – NYT

January 30, 2018 / David Lindsay, Vietnam-American War

Edward Landsdale is on the left. NYT   “The Tet offensive, which began 50 years ago today and is remembered as the turning point of the Vietnam War, caught Americans by surprise. One of the few who saw what was coming was Edward Lansdale, the legendary covert operative and retired Air Force general who had …

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As U.S. Trumpets ‘America First-’ Rest of the World Is Moving On – The New York Times

January 25, 2018 / Globalization and Trade, Trade and Trade Policy

WASHINGTON — President Trump is arriving at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to explain his “America First” approach at a moment when the world is moving ahead with a trade agenda that no longer revolves around the United States. The world marked a turning point in global trade on Tuesday, when 11 countries …

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The Truth Behind ‘A Bright Shining Lie’ by Neil Sheehan- The New York Times

January 18, 2018 / Vietnam-American War

More than 58,000 United States soldiers died in the Vietnam War, but in the world of letters, the death of a single American civilian came to represent the entire jungle quagmire. John Paul Vann went down in a helicopter crash on June 9, 1972. Four presidential administrations and a societal shift in recognizing Vietnam veterans …

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Olympic Détente Upends U.S. Strategy on North Korea – The New York Times

January 18, 2018 / David Lindsay, Korea - North and South Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — North and South Korea reached an agreement Wednesday for their athletes to march together under one flag at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics next month, a powerful gesture of reconciliation that further complicates President Trump’s strategy for dealing with the nuclear-armed regime of Kim Jong-un. South Korea, the host …

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Ex-C.I.A. Officer Suspected of Compromising Chinese Informants Is Arrested – The New York Times

January 17, 2018 / China, Military Affairs and Espionage

WASHINGTON — A former C.I.A. officer suspected by investigators of helping China dismantle United States spying operations and identify informants has been arrested, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. The collapse of the spy network was one of the American government’s worst intelligence failures in recent years. The arrest of the former officer, Jerry Chun …

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