Imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if Iranian intelligence was almost universally believed to have assassinated a leader of one of the organisations fighting the Tehran government in a western-friendly state. Then consider how Britain, let alone the US, might respond if the killers had carried out the operation using forged or […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
In the Tropical Forests of Sumatra: Notes from Climate Change “Ground Zero”
Introduction by Geoffrey Gunn It is probably a cliché to observe that tropical rain forests host the greatest known concentrations of bio-diversity on the planet. Together, the three great global equatorial biozones are central Africa, the Amazon basin, and the Indonesian archipelago, including southern Sumatra Island, and the even more remote tin-rich offshore island of […]
The Crisis and Employment in Asia
Ever since the global financial and economic crisis broke, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has been regularly tracking its impact on the level and quality of employment. In January 2009, the ILO (International Labour Office 2009) indicated that, under alternate scenarios, global unemployment could increase by between 18 million and 51 million people worldwide from […]
The Global Organic Crisis: Paradoxes, Dangers, and Opportunities
The capitalist world has experienced its deepest economic meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Paradoxically, whereas the earlier period saw the breakdown of liberal capitalism, the rise of fascism and Nazism, and the Soviet alternative to liberal capitalism, today neo-liberalism and capitalist globalization still remain powerful, and apparently supreme, on the stage of […]
Howard Zinn, 1922-2010
Filming our documentary The People Speak in Boston, one afternoon, Howard said that the camaraderie between our cast members, the sense of collective purpose and joy, was a feeling he hadn’t experienced with such intensity since his active participation in the civil rights movement. Since Howard’s passing, I have thought often of that moment, which […]
China, Europe, and Natural Gas in Iran
Yesterday, President Obama declared that the international community is “moving along fairly quickly” toward imposing new multilateral sanctions on Iran. Today, the Obama Administration followed that up by announcing new unilateral financial sanctions against individuals and corporate entities associated with the Revolutionary Guards. The Administration proclaims that its “engagement” policy has been successful, after all, […]
Understanding Islamic Feminism: Interview with Ziba Mir-Hosseini
Born in Iran and now based in London, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, an anthropologist by training, is one of the most well-known scholars of Islamic Feminism. She is the author of numerous books on the subject, including Marriage on Trial: A Study of Family Law in Iran and Morocco (l.B.Tauris, 1993) and Islam and Gender, the Religious […]
Iran, China, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
The new secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Muratbek Sansyzbayevich Imanaliev, said at a news conference in Beijing earlier this week that the conflict in Afghanistan and expanding the SCO’s members to include Iran and Pakistan were the top issues on the SCO’s agenda in 2010. Certainly, these issues are likely to dominate […]
Famine, War, and Genocide in India
Binayak Sen: . . . [A body mass index] below 18.5 is regarded as chronic subnutrition. 33% of our adult population, one third of the country, have a body mass index below 18.5. For me this is a shocking figure. . . . We find that, in the scheduled tribes, more than 50% of the […]
US Intelligence Report Classifies Venezuela as “Anti-US Leader”
3 February 2010 — As is custom at the beginning of each year, the different US agencies publish their famous annual reports on topics ranging from human rights, trafficking in persons, terrorism, threats, drug-trafficking, and other issues that indicate who will be this year’s target of US aggression. Yesterday, it was the intelligence community’s turn. […]
A Busy Few Weeks on Board the Bomb Iran Bandwagon
Is Iran capitulating to pressure or was the uranium transfer deal never the issue in the first place? It’s been a busy few weeks on board the bomb-Iran bandwagon. It wasn’t quite gunboat diplomacy, but President Obama sent missile “defence” equipment to the Persian Gulf, a move Iran dismissed as a “puppet show.” The Pentagon […]
Vietnamese Daughters in Transition: Factory Work and Family Relations
This paper assesses the social implications of employment opportunities in manufacturing for rural young unmarried Vietnamese women. Interested in the ways in which intimate relations, identities and structures of exchange within the family are reconfigured through the migration and work experience, we interview young, single daughters who had obtained employment as garment factory workers […]
Just Which Major Power Faces “Diplomatic Isolation”?
Back in May 2009 — before the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election — we took a lot criticism for our view in a New York Times Op Ed that “President Obama’s Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed.” In particular, we argued that Obama “has made several policy and personnel decisions that have […]
Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima? The New Face of China-Japan Relations
With the world economy’s center of gravity shifting from the West to the East, led by China’s rising economic and corresponding political power, the year 2010 may witness a series of epoch-making events in Asia. 日中首脳会談、「友愛」で外交デビュー Hatoyama (left) and Hu, 22 September 2009 A grand rapprochement between Japan and China could be one such […]
Iran and Obama’s State of the Union Address: Back to the Future?
In a State of the Union address that devoted less time or attention to foreign policy than any recent counterpart, President Obama provided disturbing evidence as to the ongoing strategic regression of his administration’s Iran policy. Obama has moved, during just one year in office, from relatively forward-leaning expressions of interest in engaging Iran on […]
After the Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession, What Next?
John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and author of The Great Financial Crisis (2009, with Fred Magdoff) and The Ecological Revolution (2009) — both from Monthly Review Press. This interview was conducted from Dhaka by Farooque Chowdhury (editor of Micro Credit: Myth Manufactured, 2007) for MRzine and Bangla Monthly Review. It is part […]
From the “Iraq Liberation Act” to an “Iran Liberation Act”?
As we noted yesterday, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass has attracted considerable attention with an opinion piece in Newsweek entitled “Enough is Enough: Why We Can No Longer Remain on the Sidelines in the Struggle for Regime Change in Iran.” As we reflected on Richard’s arguments, we recalled another high-profile piece of policy […]
The Making of Japan’s New Working Class: “Freeters” and the Progression from Middle School to the Labor Market
This article is a modified and developed version of a chapter from Social Class in Contemporary Japan: Structures, Socialization and Strategies, edited by Ishida Hiroshi and David H. Slater, Routledge, 2009. For a brief outline of the book’s arguments, please see <japanfocus.org/data/Social_Class_5.htm>. Introduction: The “New Working Class” of Urban Japan Tomo was a first-year […]
Can We Ever Get Equal Care for All?
Can we ever get equal care for all? We can’t — at least, not by going down dead-end roads. A year ago hope was alive for equal health care for all. Bush was defeated, and the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress. Throughout 2009, though, every week brought a slap across the face […]
We Send Doctors, Not Soldiers
In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian […]
