Dark skies persist over coastal Brazil, where the country’s major population centres are to be found. This year, there have been 40,341 fires in the Amazon, the highest since 2010.
Author Archive | Vijay Prashad
Hybrid wars are destroying Democracies
In Brazil recently, I gave an interview to Brasil de Fato, which was born in 2003 as the weekly magazine of the World Social Forum. It is now one of the most important windows into Brazil’s political world. The newsletter this week carries the text of most of the interview.
Why the world is watching the fate of an Iranian tanker in the Mediterranean
The British, it is clear, seized the Iranian tanker at the urging of the United States. There was no previous British warning that it might enter in such a muscular way into the U.S. attempt to suffocate Iran.
History often proceeds by jumps and zig-zags
The main conflict here – since the 1940s – has been between India and Pakistan. Disagreements are deeply rooted in the political culture of each country. The rise of the far right in India has only inflamed the conflict further.
Why Kashmir is suddenly a potential global point of conflict
Before India’s Home Minister Amit Shah introduced the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Bill in the Indian Parliament, his government sent tens of thousands of Indian troops into Kashmir. There is no official number, but it is often said that there are nearly 600,000 Indian troops in the state. That a population of 12 million people […]
There must be bones under the paved street
On 6 August 1945, the United States military dropped a bomb that contained 64kg of uranium-235 over the city of Hiroshima (Japan). The bomb took just over 44 seconds to fall from 9,400 metres and detonated 580 metres above the Shima Surgical Clinic. Over 80,000 people died instantly. This was the first use of the […]
Trump’s ‘diplomacy’ in Iran is a cynical farce
The problem for any negotiations is that the U.S. position is untenable. The U.S. wants to prevent Iran from exercising its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) to enrich uranium even to low levels. It is this impossible position by Washington that will prevent diplomacy.
![All-India Democratic Women’s Association protest, led by Subhashini Ali (Politburo Member, Communist Party of India [Marxist]), in Delhi, 30 July 2019.](https://mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/All-India-Democratic-Women’s-Association-protest-led-by-Subhashini-Ali-Politburo-Member-Communist-Party-of-India-Marxist-in-Delhi-30-July-2019.-e1565218985602-200x200.jpg "Homage to OSPAAAL, the organisation of solidarity for the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America")
Homage to OSPAAAL, the organisation of solidarity for the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America
We live world where the aspirations of the workers and peasants are arrogantly dismissed. It is a world where the violence of a B-52 bomber is seen as reasonable, whereas the cries for an end to hunger are seen as utopian.
Iran simply won’t let itself be hemmed in by the U.S. and UK
The United States is leading a process to create a naval force that would patrol the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. has said it will send “command and control” ships to coordinate the escort naval vessels from different countries. But there are cracks in the coalition.
As the ocean waters rise, so do the islands of garbage
Trump has made nasty remarks about how Asian countries are the great polluters of the planet. Trump, in his shudderingly ignorant way, said that the United States of America would use its power to prevent Asians from destroying the planet.
The U.S.-Iran standoff can only end when the U.S. accepts Iran’s right to have a nuclear energy program
The U.S. objection to Iran is not based on international law, but merely based on its political objectives. This is clearly illustrated by open U.S. support for nuclear energy and nuclear weapon development in India; and nuclear weapon stockpiling in Israel, which the U.S. has always fully backed.
Revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake
Impossible to deny the reality of poverty in our world. Studies of the data on income and wealth routinely show that billions of people on the planet live with minimal access to resources. These studies demonstrate that poverty cannot be measured merely by the financial resources that are not available; they demonstrate how billions of […]
Trump murdered the Iran Deal—and Europe isn’t too happy about it
During the July 14, 2019 meeting between France, Germany, and the UK to discuss their response to the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal, President Hassan Rouhani remarked that Iran is “always ready for negotiation.” Iran, he said, urges the U.S. to “abandon bullying.”
For the reasons that follow, that Country is currently not likely to be the United States
The largest delegation from outside Russia at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in early June came from China.
Why Trump caved to China and Huawei
Everything about the trade war between the United States and China is bewildering. Truces would come out of nowhere but then they would be set aside by U.S. President Donald Trump in a stream of tweets at odd hours. Regardless, Huawei and China are unlikely to blink. They have the upper hand.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature
On the one hand, people who spend most of their time working develop an understanding of the ‘practical transformation of the world’. This framework is implicit in the workers’ activity, since the worker–given the theft of their time–is often prevented from having a ‘clear theoretical consciousness of this practical activity’.
Burnt workers are the newest wave of climate casualty
The International Labor Organization (ILO) has just released a brief—but very important—report on the impact of heat stress on workers. What the ILO finds is that the areas of the world most threatened by heat deaths of workers are Southern Asia and Western Africa.
My friend is in a prison in Ecuador
This article was first published on June 10, 2019 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Two months ago, the police in Ecuador arrested my friend Ola Bini at Quito airport. Ola was on his way to Japan for a two-week martial arts course. He’s a software developer from Sweden who has lived in Ecuador since 2013. […]
The hybrid war against Iran
Trump might not have sent in a suite of missiles to hit Iran last week, but the United States has—of course—already opened up a certain kind of war against Iran.
Using Democratic institutions to smash Democratic aspirations (the Brazil model)
Brazil’s former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has now been in prison since April 2018. More than four hundred Brazilian lawyers have signed a statement that expresses alarm at what they see as procedural irregularities in the case against him.
