Sometimes headlines really do convey powerful messages. That was certainly the case with an AFP story, which appeared late last week under the headline, “Saudis Deny Discussing Pressure on China over Iran with US.” The story was prompted by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ visits to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last week. […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
The Iran Threat in the Age of Real-Axis-of-Evil Expansion1
It is intriguing to see how whoever the United States and Israel find interfering with their imperial or dispossession plans is quickly demonized and becomes a threat and target for that Real-Axis-of-Evil (RAE), and hence their NATO allies and, with less intensity, much of the rest of the “international community” (IC, meaning ruling elites, not […]
Obama and Cuba: The End of an Illusion
“The times we live in reflect that in Latin America and the Caribbean the confrontation between historic forces is getting worse.” — Raul Castro On February 23, 2010, incarcerated Cuban Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after a prolonged hunger strike, despite the efforts of Cuban medical personnel to treat him and prevent the ending of […]
Biden’s Israel Debacle Puts Obama’s Flawed Middle East Strategy in the Spotlight
Vice President Joseph Biden set out to massage U.S.-Israeli relations this week, but instead ran up against the reality of Israeli politics, manifested in the Netanyahu government’s announcement of the construction of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem. The result, as described by the normally rhetorically sober Financial Times, has been to expose “an emasculated […]
The Travails of a Client State: An Okinawan Angle on the 50th Anniversary of the US-Japan Security Treaty
“It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty […]
The Impact of Grey Literature on Climate Projections
Johannesburg, 11 March 2010 (IRIN) — Most food crop cultivation in Africa is rain-fed, but climate change is affecting vital rainfall patterns and pushing up temperatures, diminishing yields that could halve in some countries by 2020. This warning has been widely quoted since it first appeared in a synthesis report for policy-makers in 2007 by […]
“Conspiracy” Science: Mass Media and the Conservative Backlash on Global Warming
On March 2, the New York Times ran a story informing readers of recent “controversies” related to global warming. The story chronicled the efforts of scientists affiliated with the United Nations Climate Panel and other major research institutions to answer the claims of conservatives who suggest there is a conspiracy to hide the “debate” over […]
Poverty Reduction in China and India: Policy Implications of Recent Trends
China and India are generally regarded as the two large countries in the developing world that are the “success stories” of globalisation. This success has been defined by the high and sustained rates of growth of aggregate and per capita national income; and the substantial reduction in income poverty. Further, both China and India are […]
Spring Thunder Anew
The white man called you Bhagat Singh that day, The black man calls you Naxalite today. But everyone will call you the morning star tomorrow. — Excerpt from the Telugu poem ‘Final Journey: First Victory’ by Sri Sri 1 It has been a long and tortuous route. Forty-three years ago, a group of Maoist […]
Is the Obama Administration Supporting Violent “Regime Change” in Iran?
We were in Tehran on February 24 — the day when Iranian authorities announced the capture of Abdol Malik Rigi, the head of Jundallah. Jundallah (the name in Arabic for “soldiers of God”; the group is also known as the People’s Resistance Movement of Iran) is a Sunni Islamist group that claims to be fighting […]
March 6, 1970/2010 . . . A Day to Remember
A front page headline in the New York Times on March 7, 1970 announced: “Townhouse Razed by Blast and Fire; Man’s Body Found.” The story described an elegant four-story brick building in Greenwich Village destroyed by three large explosions and a raging fire “probably caused by leaking gas” at about noon on Friday, March 6. […]
Clinton Strikes Out in Brazil: A Security Council Divided on Iran Sanctions
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Brasilia to mount a full court press on the Brazilian government to support a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities. (Brazil is presently one of the Council’s ten non-permanent members.) And, as accumulating media reports indicate, she was politely but […]
An AfPak Star over Central Asia
United States AfPak special representative Richard Holbrooke enjoys a fabulous reputation, no matter the current prospects of the Afghan war. The Eurasian space knew him as a potential Nobel winner who evicted Russia from the Balkans. The world at large expects him to take over if and when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton steps down […]
Will Capitalism Absorb the WSF?
From 21 January to 2 February 2010, Eric Toussaint and Olivier Bonfond — both involved in alterglobalization activism and members of the International Council of the World Social Forum, of the world coordination of social movements, and of the Committee for the Abolition of the Third World Debt 1 — participated in various events and […]
Mau Mau, Marx, & Coca Cola: 18th Annual Pan African Film & Arts Festival
The 18th annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival, which takes place yearly during Black History Month, is one of Los Angeles’ cultural jewels. Arguably America’s top Black movie venue, PAFF is a leading U.S. showcase for independent, studio, student, foreign (especially African) political and progressive pictures. Many movies have their U.S. debuts at this […]
POSCO: Tribal Dispossession, Environmental Destruction and Imperialism
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its February 2010 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. Orissa is the poorest State with an official estimate of 39.9 per cent of people living below the poverty line, yet in regard to proposed investment it stood […]
Marx’s Ecology and The Ecological Revolution
Interview by Aleix Bombila, for En Lucha (Spain), of John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, and author of Marx’s Ecology and The Ecological Revolution En Lucha: In your book Marx’s Ecology you argue that Marxism has a lot to offer to the ecologist movement. What kind of united work can be established between […]
Why Iran?
Iran continues to be the privileged member of the “Axis of Evil,” a notion formally but not really abandoned by the United States. It is accompanied by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, in addition to North Korea, among others. Why Iran? The criteria mentioned by Hillary Clinton make no sense. Risk of possessing conditions to manufacture […]
The Greek External Debt and Imperialist Rivalries: “One Thief Stealing from Another”
The current Greek economic crisis has an aspect of ancient tragedy (for the Greek people) mixed with a bad theatrical farce (staged on behalf of the European and the Greek bourgeoisie). The farce comes first. Till very recently the two establishment parties (the center-left PASOK and the center-right ND) preached that their economic policies […]
Socialism: The Goal, the Paths, and the Compass
On the occasion of the presentation of El socialismo no cae del cielo: un nuevo comienzo at the 2010 Havana Book Fair, 18 February 2010 There’s an old saying that if you don’t know where you want to go, any road will take you there. As I’ve said on many occasions, this saying is […]
