“I’m just a soccer mom. Well, a swimming mom, if you want to be exact.” This is how the middle-aged women holding up the “Worked 1973-2003” sign at Saturday’s Occupy Wall Street rally at Times Square described herself to me. She stood next to a young boy leaning against his dad, the son holding up […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
Understanding the Capitalist Economic Crisis
John Bellamy Foster: Economic crises are functional to the system in that a crisis helps capital readjust its imbalances, disproportions, as Marxian theories often say, and it sets the basis for a renewed period of expansion. So, regular business-cycle crises . . . help the system. . . . But, in addition to cycles . […]
Syria: BRICS Have Good Reasons to Oppose U.S. and Europe at UN Security Council
There has been a lot of hand-wringing and moralizing about the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) blocking a resolution in the UN against the government of Syria last week. China and Russia used a rare double veto as permanent members of the Security Council, and the other three abstained. “During this […]
U.S. Charge against Iran: Who Could Make That Up?
Dear friends, As you probably know, the Obama administration has just publicly charged that Iranian government agents have been plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Washington is now using this outrageous claim to try and rally support for new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, isolate it in the international arena, and […]
The Dragon’s Shadow: China’s Banking System
On October 10, the Chinese government announced that it will increase its stakes in the four largest commercial banks, which are already largely public-owned. The move is designed to “support the healthy operations and development of key state-owned financial institutions and stabilise the share prices of state-owned commercial banks”. But why was this move considered […]
Protest 10 Years of War on Afghanistan
Oct. 15 is a day of nationally coordinated antiwar actions in cities across the U.S., the 10th anniversary of the massively destructive and criminal U.S. war on Afghanistan. When the U.S. government began its attack on Afghanistan 10 years ago, President Bush called it a “war on terror.” It was followed by 8 years of […]
Before October: The Unbearable Romanticism of Western Marxism
Most Western Marxists suffer from a deep resentment: they have never experienced a successful communist revolution. For some unaccountable reason, all of those successful revolutions have happened in the ‘East’: Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, China, Vietnam and so on. And none of the few revolutions in the ‘West’, from Finland to Germany, […]
Libya: NATO Provides the Bombs; The French “Left” Provides the Ideology
Last April, former Le Monde diplomatique director Ignacio Ramonet published (in Mémoire des Luttes) a text entitled “Libya, the Just and the Unjust.” The war had been started a few weeks earlier, inaugurated by French aircraft which had the honor of dropping the first bombs on Tripoli. On March 19, “a wave of pride […]
Remembering and Representing: Vietnam, East Germany, and Daphne Berdahl
Daphne Berdahl. On the Social Life of Postsocialism: Memory, Consumption, Germany. Edited by Matti Bunzl. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. xx + 166 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-35434-1; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-22170-4. On the Social Life of Postsocialism; Memory, Consumption, Germany is a posthumous collection of Daphne Berdahl’s essays, written over the course of […]
WFTU: ‘Support People, Oppose Imperialist Interference in Arab Countries’
The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) organised on September 13-14 a two-day international trade union meet in the European Parliament complex in Strasbourg, France, to express solidarity with the fighting people of Arab countries and voice strong protest against the hegemonic interference of US imperialism and its European allies in the internal affairs […]
What’s Wrong with Single Payer?
With all the advocacy efforts expended over the last 20 years, it might be reasonable to expect some results by now for the Single Payer (SP) movement. Of course, SP would be a great way to provide health insurance in America. Instead of thousands of private insurance companies (payers for healthcare services) competing with each […]
Hugo Chávez: Let Us Raise Our Voices against War, for Peace and Life
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called on peoples of the world last Wednesday to speak out for peace and against the imperial madness of the countries attacking sovereign nations. “May the peoples of the United States, of Europe, speak out against war. Let us raise our voices, our chants, against war, for peace and life,” President […]
Sayonara Nukes Rally in Tokyo, Ustreamed
さようなら原発５万人集会 Meiji Park, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 19 September 2011 Update: “さようなら原発 / Sayonara #Nukes Rally in #Tokyo: 60,000 in Meiji Park alone. Aerial shot: bit.ly/mTbY08 #Nuclear #Japan” — MRZine For more information about the Sayonara Nukes rally, visit <sayonara-nukes.org>. Cf. 大江健三郎さんら、新政権に脱原発迫る〜19日には５万人集会, <youtube.com/watch?v=HuYEHSl2kzk>. var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print
UN Troops in Haiti Accused of Sexual Assault
The video is profoundly disturbing. It shows four men, identified as Uruguayan troops from the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), apparently raping an 18-year old Haitian youth. Two of them have the victim pinned down on a mattress, with his hands twisted high up his back so that he cannot move. Perhaps the most unnerving […]
George Monbiot and the Guardian on “Genocide Denial” and “Revisionism”
On Tuesday, June 14, the Guardian of London published “Left and Libertarian Right Cohabit in the Weird World of the Genocide Belittlers.”1 In this nearly 1,100-word commentary, the British writer George Monbiot attacked the two of us (among others) as “genocide deniers” and “revisionists” for our writings on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Monbiot also […]
Lessons from the Indian Experience
India’s economic experience since the beginning of economic liberalisation constitutes a resounding refutation of “mainstream” (bourgeois) development theory. On the basis of official data during this period there has been a remarkable acceleration of the growth rate of GDP, together with a striking increase in the incidence of absolutepoverty, a combination which no strand of […]
Two Decades of Neo-Liberal Reforms in India: The Worsening Employment Situation
Two decades after neo-liberal economic reforms started in India as part of the agenda of imperialist globalisation, the condition of the masses of the labouring poor is worse in every part of the country except where some positive intervention has taken place to stabilise livelihoods. The richest minority at the top of the income pyramid […]
Abdulhakim Bashar of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria: “The Kurdish Parties of Syria Don’t Want Blood Spilled between Us and the Syrian Regime”
Rudaw: The situation in Syria is turning increasingly violent and the western world has called on President Bashar al-Assad to step down. Where do you think things will go from here? Abdulhakim Bashar: The Syrian regime will not fall merely based on the words and pleas of the west. The regime has made up its […]
What Does S&P’s Downgrade of Japan’s Debt Mean?
The New York Times reported on S&P’s downgrade of Japanese government debt to the 4th highest level. It explained the downgrade by noting Japan’s continued weak growth, political problems, and concerns about deflation. These are factors that might concern the Japanese public when they vote for their leaders, but it is difficult to see what […]
Fred Magdoff on What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism
What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism is a short, accessible introduction to the ecological crisis that is intended for a wide audience — why did you decide to write a book like this, and why now? In the fall of 2008 I attended a conference where discussion of the environment was prominent, although […]
