Geography Archives: Asia

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its May 2008 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. Today, but few can recall memories of the Bengal famine of 1943 and 1944.  Most disturbingly, after almost two decades of “reform” and a full decade or more […]

  The risks of a militant struggle for an alternative path of development that is radically different from the one followed by India’s ruling classes seem to most dissidents far too dangerous.  Yet there are some who stand firm in their conviction: what should be, can be.  An outline of a few of Mumbai’s rebels […]

As a red Toyota pickup made its daily delivery, masses of people gathered outside the brand-new blue and white subsidized bread kiosk near my building.  A rusty and dented Fiat also delivered unsubsidized bread to the small grocery store across the street at the same time.  Last Thursday, Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and […]

In the face of a deteriorating economic climate and concerns about the ‘investment competitiveness’ of Canadian plants, the CAW leadership made a startling move this spring.  It had an air of panic about it: it quietly asked the Big Three — GM, Ford and Chrysler — to open their collective agreements early, offering a new […]

This time the message was delivered by the Pentagon’s own premier educational institute.  The opening line of a report released April 17 by the National Institute for Strategic Studies read: “Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle.” The document goes on […]

“What I find a bit reprehensible is the tendency of certain Western voices to . . . raising concerns about China’s attempt to get into the African market because it is a bit hypocritical for Western states to be concerned about how China is approaching Africa when they have had centuries of relations with Africa, […]

For some time now the rising cost of food all over the world has taken households, governments and the media by storm.  The price of wheat has gone up by 130% over the last year.1 Rice has doubled in price in Asia in the first three months of 2008 alone,2 and just last week it […]

  The following statement was started by the participants in the Climate Change|Social Change conference.  Anyone who agrees with it is welcome to add their signature, and an updated list of signatories will be issued on a regular basis (contact: <climateconf@greenleft.org.au>.). It is being distributed to environmental, trade union, Indigenous, migrant, religious and community organisations […]

See, also, Dave Regan, “Why We Demonstrated in Dearborn,” MRZine, 2 May 2008; and Stephanie Luce, “Rebuilding Labor’s Power: There Are No Shortcuts,” MRZine, 2 May 2008. I had a fantastic time at the Labor Notes conference last weekend, and am eager to build on the new connections I made and campaigns I learned about. […]

The elections in Nepal on Thursday, April 10th, resulted in a victory for the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), stunning the mainstream international press. Mulyankan monthly magazine is almost 18 years old.  It is the largest leftist monthly magazine of Nepal, with a circulation of 30 000 copies per month.  Shyam Shrestha has been actively […]

Surprising even the Nepalis themselves, the Constituent Assembly elections went quite smoothly, considering the great tension in the country.  According to The Himalayan, only 33 of the total of 20,889 polling stations had to postpone polling to a later date, due to various forms of irregularities. The turnout was much higher than expected, more than […]

As Abe Osheroff’s body slowly began to betray him in his 80s and 90s, one of his favorite lines was, “I have one foot in the grave but the other keeps dancing.” That dance ended on Sunday, April 6, when the 92-year-old Osheroff died of a heart attack at his Seattle home. Osheroff is remembered […]

  Pledge of Commitment: People of Faith with Palestine in Struggle Our world is in crisis.  We face a growing, more aggressive empire with an insatiable appetite for consuming the resources of our world, subverting justice and humanity by its desire to strengthen its global hegemony; destroying the environment; feeding racist ideologies and practices of […]

When I was growing up in the 1950s, a photo of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932-1945) still hung in the homes of some family members and friends.  Our only four-term president was remembered by them as the leader — and even the savior — of the country.  Those like my parents, who experienced the Great […]

The Student Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to take time out of his rebellion for studies.  The increasingly popular Iraqi nationalist and Shi’i religious leader, it was reported late last year, is seeking the title of Ayatollah (“Sign of God”).  Muqtada’s Iraqi supporters presently confer on him the title of Hujjat al-Islam (“Proof of Islam”), although […]

When World War I broke out in 1914, China joined the allies. As recompense, China was promised that the German concessions in the province of Shandong would be returned to them at the end of the war. After the Treaty of Versailles, which President Woodrow Wilson imposed on friends and foes alike, the German colonies were transferred to Japan, a more powerful ally than China.

It is now thirty years since the People’s Republic of China announced its market reform policy at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in December 1978, under the then new leadership of Deng Xiaoping.  The policy followed the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the purging […]

Without some basic historical knowledge, the subject I am dealing with could not be understood.

In Europe, people had heard about China. In the autumn of 1298, Marco Polo told marvelous tales about an amazing country he called Cathay. Columbus, an intelligent and intrepid sailor, was aware of the Greeks’ knowledge about the roundness of the Earth. His own observations led him to agree with those theories. He came up with the plan of reaching the Far East sailing westward from Europe. But…

Cos’è successo al movimento contro la guerra che esplose nel 2003 mobilitando milioni di persone in tutto il mondo occidentale, al punto da esser definito una volta dal New York Times come «la seconda superpotenza»?Il fatto è che esso non è mai stato un movimento vero e proprio ma solo lo spasmo di un giorno, […]

  Washington DC — A March 13 event on Capitol Hill intended to expose Iran’s human rights violations was overcome with political rivalry and infighting.  The event, a one-hour briefing on Iran’s human rights record, was eventually broken up by Capitol Hill police officers. The briefing piggybacked on a recent rise in concern over Iran’s […]