Brazil’s President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, will travel to Iran this weekend, ostensibly to attend the G-15 summit meeting that opens in Tehran on Monday. But Lula’s trip is attracting enormous international attention because the Brazilian leader will use his visit to try, in collaboration with Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to broker […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
BP: The Worst Safety and Environmental Record of All Oil Companies Operating in the United States
BP is a London-based oil company with the worst safety and environmental record of any oil company operating in America. In just the last few years, BP has pled guilty to two crimes and paid over $730 million in fines and settlements to the US government, state governments, and civil lawsuit judgments for environmental […]
Iran’s Challenge to the Nuclear Order
Excerpt: Three nations in the Middle East dominate any present-day discussion of nuclear weapons, yet only one is subjected to an unprecedented degree of international scrutiny. Two have nuclear weapons; the third does not. Yet it is the third nation that is widely considered the threat to world peace and the target of ever increasing […]
First May Day in Post-LDP Japan: Workers Say, “Nothing Has Changed”
Today, Zenroren held the first May Day rallies after the demise of the Liberal Democratic Party regime, 32,000 workers participating in the rally in Yoyogi Park. “The newly established two-party system is already bankrupt,” said Senator Ichida Tadayoshi, Secretary General of the Communist Party, at the Yoyogi rally. Over the last ten years, wages in […]
Nepal: Maoists Call General Strike
The government will fall or the people will rise. Thousands have already arrived in Kathmandu, occupying the private schools shut down by Maoist students last week. 500,000 villagers are expected to join the workers and students in the city. The Nepal Army is on alert, the People’s Liberation Army is, too. The people are coming […]
The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. New Afrikaners
Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture, Palestine Center, Washington, D.C., 29 April 2010 It is a great honor to be here at the Palestine Center to give the Sharabi Memorial Lecture. I would like to thank Yousef Munnayer, the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund, for inviting me, and all of you for coming out […]
Why Are the US and Israel Threatening Iran? And Who Really Rules the World?
Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 while at the same time sending more troops to the Afghanistan War. What has become of the promise of “change”? I am one of the few who are not disillusioned, because I had no expectations. I had written about Obama’s positions and prospects even before […]
Thailand: It’s about Democracy, Stupid!
In a democratic society, when there is a deep crisis, it is customary for the government to dissolve parliament and call elections in order for the people to decide. This happened in Britain and France after mass strikes and demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s. After mass Yellow Shirt protests against the government in Bangkok […]
Managing Liberalization and Globalization in Rural China: Trends in Rural Labour Allocation, Income and Inequality
Abstract: China’s integration into the global economy, while rapid, has been managed as part of a wider liberalization process. The structural changes in the rural economy arising from these twin processes have led to widening intra-rural inequalities. To address these, the central leadership has, in Polanyian manner, moved to counter some of the adverse […]
Bolivia’s Resource Dilemma
Jesse Freeston: Last week, the Bolivian city of Cochabamba and the country’s president Evo Morales played host to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. The conference sought to distinguish itself from the United Nations conferences for giving a greater voice to civil society and expanding the conversation beyond […]
Cochabamba Eyewitness: A Great Boost for Ecosocialism
I attended the alternative Climate Conference in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba as part of an eight-person Quebec activist delegation. I came back convinced that we witnessed a turning point in the global Climate Justice movement. Up to now it has been very difficult to link environmental demands to social justice issues. The mainstream ecological […]
Iraq Redux: “Conventional Wisdom” of Iran Analysts
The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler had an important story: “Even as Momentum for Iran Sanctions Grows, Containment Seems Only Viable Option.” Glenn states his thesis up front: After months of first attempting to engage Iran and then wooing Russia and China to support new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, the Obama Administration appears within reach […]
India: Triangular Phenomenon
Is there not an eerie resemblance between the current goings-on in West Bengal and the grisly events that took place there exactly four decades ago? The dramatis personae are the same: the Right, represented by the Congress ruling at the Centre, the Left, euphemism for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the ultra-Left, identified […]
US Community Learns about Rural Healthcare from Iran
Rosiland Jordan: In a Mississippi Delta neighborhood known as Baptist Town, the people have needed a miracle here for a long time now. Good-paying manufacturing jobs that were once here vanished long before the current economic crisis, and with them so did a lifeline. Sylvester Hoover, Greenwood Merchant and Music Historian: Those people who […]
Earth Day in Israel: Apartheid Showing through the Greenwash
On April 22, as part of the global Earth Day celebrations, homes, offices, and public buildings in 14 Israeli cities turned out the lights for one hour in an effort to “increase awareness of the vital need to reduce energy consumption.” The Earth Day celebrations included scenes of green fields, wind generators, and rainbows projected […]
Maoist Movement in India
Listen to the Interview: Bernard D’Mello: This insurgency actually goes way back to 1967. It is in the context of deepening underdevelopment, in particular in parts of India, more specifically parts of central and eastern India. The Maoist movement has evolved over time, it has learned from its mistakes, and it has regenerated itself […]
No Indian Miracle
Jayati Ghosh and Paul Jay
Paul Jay: So there’s a lot of talk about the growth and expansion in India and China, and especially India these days. We’re hearing again about the Indian miracle. Whose miracle is it, anyway? And is it such? Jayati Ghosh: No, it’s not actually a miracle. First of all, let me clarify. India and […]
Why You Should Care about the Three Americans Held in Iran
Watching the news in August 2009, you may have heard about three U.S. citizens being detained in Iran. Arrested for allegedly crossing the Iran-Iraq border on July 31, 2009, they remain in detention nine months later in Iran’s Evin prison. Dubbed “the hikers” due to the fact that they were on a hiking trip in […]
Whose Lost Cause?
Mark A. Lause. Race and Radicalism in the Union Army. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009. In the decades following the U.S. Civil War there was a rash of monument building. Plaques were sunk into ground still littered with shards of weaponry and human beings; statues appeared on the landscape like mute and […]
China, Global Imbalances and Global Restructurings
Cf. See, also, Andrew Fischer, “On China” (MRZine, 29 March 2010). Andrew Fischer is Senior Lecturer at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. This PowerPoint file was presented at the IDEAs Conference on “Reforming the Financial System: Proposals, Constraints and New Directions,” Muttukadu, Chennai, India, 25-27 January 2010; it is reproduced […]
