Free Republic

Bangalore's hi-tech enclaves are an oasis of excellence With its economy growing at more than triple the speed of Britain's, India has become a global leader in information technology and other hi-tech products. But how has this been possible in a country where poverty is so widespread and where more than a third of people are still illiterate? In the words of Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, "the danger of India moving in the direction of being half California and half sub-Saharan Africa is a real one." The contrast between hi-tech, silicon enclaves such as Bangalore and the primitive...

BOSTON - IBM Corp.'s expansion in developing countries shows no sign of relenting. The technology company revealed Friday that it now has 73,000 employees in India, almost a 40 percent leap from last year. IBM did not provide updated figures for its work force in the U.S., which has held steady around 125,000 people in recent years. Nor did IBM project its total head count. It had 355,766 employees worldwide at the end of 2006. If the total has risen by the same rate as in 2006, almost one in five IBM workers now is in India, its second-largest center....

(Fortune Magazine) -- Just how red-hot is the current worldwide expansion? "This is far and away the strongest global economy I've seen in my business lifetime," U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson declared on a recent visit to Fortune's offices. That may come as news to many Americans, whose boom-time memories are stuck in the 1990s, when Silicon Valley was the epicenter of our growth fantasies. But the fellow now occupying Paulson's old office at 85 Broad Street in downtown Manhattan shares that upbeat view. Just returned from a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the Middle East, Goldman Sachs (Charts, Fortune 500) CEO...

The foreign ministers of India, Russia and China were meeting Wednesday in the Indian capital in a bid to strengthen relations and to explore cooperation on issues such as counterterrorism and energy security, Indian officials said. The meeting between India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and their Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing is part of efforts by the three countries to forge a trilateral forum to work more closely on regional security issues, the officials said. "This will be the second stand-alone meeting of its kind," said Navtej Sarna, external affairs ministry spokesman. The foreign ministers...

The Bear’s Lair: Dumb as a BRIC? October 9, 2006 Martin Hutchinson is the author of "Great Conservatives" (Academica Press, 2005) -- details can be found on the Web site www.greatconservatives.com It has become fashionable in the last few years to express enthusiasm for emerging market investment by focusing on the “BRIC” economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China), a term first coined in a 2003 paper by Goldman Sachs, which looked for the potential economic superpowers of 2050. This is a dumb idea for two reasons: there are other emerging markets that are at least as attractive as these four, and...

Jets to be sold to Mexico, Brazil, pilots trained in Venezuela 11:46 | 28/ 09/ 2006 BUENOS-AIRES, September 28 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's state-owned arms exporter said Thursday it will soon sign deals to export Sukhoi warplanes to Mexico and Brazil, and will open helicopter maintenance and pilot training centers in Venezuela. Rosoboronexport's regional department head, Sergei Ladygin, said: "We hope that Sukhoi planes will soon appear in Latin American countries." Speaking on the sidelines of a military exhibition in Argentina, SINPRODE-2006, Ladygin said Rosoboronexport will also offer a modernized version of the Mig-29 Fulcrum fighter to Mexico and Brazil....

the People’s Republic of China won’t help the U.S. rein in the rogue regime of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il -- which this week conducted a failed test of a missile designed to reach American cities -- then the U.S. should stop helping China with its own economic and technological development. China must support the U.S. position on North Korea in the U.N. Security Council or pay a price for not doing so. In response to North Korea’s missile tests, Japan has sponsored a resolution in the Security Council that would bar nations from giving North Korea money, material...

Some see it as a NATO counterweight. Others call it a Club for Dictators or at least neardictators. Some consider it an antiAmerican stalking horse for Chinese and or Russian hegemony, with the potential to become "OPEC with nukes." Whatever: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) a so-called "anti-terrorism, anti-separatism, anti-extremism" grouping, including China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which holds its fifth annual meeting this week - definitely reeks of trouble for Uncle Sam. Start with this: The "anti-terrorism" SCO has given observer status to Iran, the world's top state sponsor of terrorism including an annual convention of just...

IRAN'S controversial President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is flying to Shanghai tomorrow to take part in a summit that will seal China's plans to lead an Asian rival to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation - whose meeting has forced the shutdown of much of the city this week - is celebrating its fifth anniversary, and is preparing to expand its membership well beyond the present China, Russia and four strategic central Asian states: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Li Hui refused at a briefing yesterday to disclose the countries that wished to become observers...

MOSCOW—After a decade as a largely unknown body bringing together Russia, China and a number of Central Asian states, the Shanghai Co-operation Organization is evolving into a security and political bloc that could become a key global player with the clout to challenge NATO, experts say. Russian and Chinese leaders praised the organization this week as parliamentary leaders from its six member states met in Moscow ahead of a major SCO summit on June 15 in Shanghai. Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan founded the group as the "Shanghai Five" in 1996 and it was expanded to include Uzbekistan, renamed...

Monday, January 09, 2006 Final Phase Backgrounder: Moscow and Beijing's "One Clenched Fist" (PT = Blogger's Initials) During the days of overt communism in Eastern Europe, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China feigned enmity, publicizing their hostility with manufactured border skirmishes and other diversions. On December 25, 1991 the Leninist strategists in Moscow offered the world a Christmas present: the USSR was going to implode and communism would be outlawed. Somewhere in the Kremlin there was chuckling and the tinkling of glasses of vodka. Following the much-ballyhooed demise of communism in Russia, the "ex"-communist...

The decision by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to refer Iran's nuclear programme to the UN Security Council has thrown into sharp focus relations between Iran and Russia. Moscow may soon have to choose whether to back Iran or align itself with the US and the European Union (EU) in reining in Iran's nuclear intentions. Russia appears ready to co-operate with both the USA and Iran in order to boost its trade relations with the two countries. Although Russia is also a leading oil exporter and therefore unlikely to be intimidated by Iranian threats to reduce oil sales, the...

Russia needs to be strong against 'fortress' US: Putin MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia faces a growing arms race against a "fortress" United States which cares more about its own interests than democracy or human rights, President Vladimir Putin said in his annual state of the nation speech. In a wide-ranging, nationally televised address to both houses of parliament on Wednesday, Putin spent most time on domestic issues, particularly the rapid decline of the country's population, which the Russian leader said is losing 700,000 people a year. But his most biting comments targeted the United States, which has become increasingly critical...

The geopolitical history of the last century, in the course of which totalitarianism emerged, developed, and evolved to become the ineluctable lot of mankind that it is today, may be encapsulated in three short sentences. One: Stalin created Hitler. Two: Stalin sicked Hitler on the West. Three: Stalin got the West to become his ally in order to defeat Hitler. The bitter fruit of Stalin’s strategy was half of Europe falling into his lap. Bitter for no other reason but that all of Europe had been meant to fall to the prospective scourge of Nazi evil, as surely it would...

Americans were rightly outraged over the possibility of an Arab nation with ties to terrorists taking control of six major American ports. Protests from across the nation helped to squelch the deal. However, the job’s not finished. The Communist Chinese still control ports at Long Beach. Congressman Charlie Norwood, (R-GA) made a strong case for getting the Chinese out of the port of Long Beach when he noted that while Dubai has been a reliable partner for America in the War on Terror, Red Chinese officials have threatened invasion of America’s ally on Taiwan and nuclear war against the United...

Asia Rising Donald Rumsfeld infamously made a distinction between Old Europe and New Europe. He has been scored ever since for his sweeping and impolitic language, but he wasn't sweeping enough: In geopolitical terms, all of Europe is old, the world's most tourist-friendly museum piece. For the future of high-stakes U.S. diplomacy and of great-power politics, look no further than Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S. It is Asia that should occupy an outsized place in our strategic thinking, and it is Europe that should be the relative afterthought, not the other way around. The media and foreign-policy...

Iran is forging closer ties with countries and groups in the Middle East that share its hostility toward the US and Israel. By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor BEIRUT, LEBANON – Rising tension between the West and Iran is coinciding with the emergence of a loose anti-Western alliance - Israel now dubs it an "axis of terror" - spanning the Middle East, presenting a new challenge to the US's regional ambitions. Centered on Iran, this alignment has hardened in recent months, analysts say, with Tehran shoring up old alliances and strengthening ties with countries (Syria and...

Russian news agency Interfax: The Russian state arms trading agency Rosoboronexport has denied reports by a number of US media alleging that Russia will sell outdated Kalashnikov assault rifles to Venezuela instead of modern ones, as it promised to do earlier. "We would like to express our surprise and even outrage at an April 10 article published in the Washington Times. The allegations it makes are untrue and absolutely absurd," Rosoboronexport spokesman Valery Kartavtsev said at a press conference, Saturday. According to a contract signed in May 2005, Russia will sell 100,000 AK-103 rifles to the Venezuelan army and security...

BEIJING. April 13 (Interfax-China) - The Shanghai Cooperation Organization's summit, due to be held on June 15 2006, will discuss the issue of renaming and reforming the organization's secretariat, said the SCO's Executive Secretary Zhang Deguang. "The Secretariat was set up at the organization's onset. The SCO has gone through significant change and development, which requires that the Secretariat be reorganized and renamed," Zhang said. The upcoming summit will also address the issue of granting the status of permanent members to individual observer states, at their request, he said. Regarding talks between the SCO defense ministers, set for the...

A blossoming Sino-Russian romance is undercutting U.S. global interests on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, Russia and China seem to have their eyes on restraining European and Japanese power, too.Start with the United Nations, where Russia and China are hampering U.S.- and European Union-led efforts to address Iran's nuclear program. It's been weeks since the Security Council got official notice that Iran had violated its nonproliferation promises - yet the U.N. body has yet to manage to even condemn Tehran's actions, much less impose economic sanctions.No surprise: Both Moscow and Beijing have way too much at stake to bully their buddy,...