Geography Archives: Asia

One of the most hotly debated aspects of #OccupyGezi has been the nature and degree of Kurdish participation.  Although from the beginning Kurdish activists have participated intensively in most of the #OccupyGezi protests in metropolitan cities in Turkey, and some MPs of the pro-Kurdish BDP have been closely involved in the movement, the participation of […]

To you at whose side we struggle, June 30th will mark a new stage of rebellion for us, building on what started January 25th and 28th, 2011.  This time we rebel against the reign of the Muslim Brotherhood that has brought only more of the same forms of economic exploitation, police violence, torture, and killings. […]

Diyarbakir (Amed) After nearly three decades of war, Turkey’s Kurdistan region, home for an estimated 25 million stateless Kurds, warily awaits a long-lasting peace. For the last 29 years this region has been ravaged by a ferocious conflict between the Turkish army, the NATO’s second largest, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a guerilla movement […]

One of the greatest horrors of the US security and policy establishment is the prospect of terrorists sabotaging critical infrastructure and key resources — the only horror greatest than that is the prospect of turning the infrastructure itself into a weapon of mass destruction.  Imagine a vast network of pipelines and storage units containing highly […]

  When Wisconsin state workers were courageously occupying the state capitol to protest Governor Scott Walker’s attack on their unions’ right to bargain, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka trumpeted a call for solidarity actions throughout the labor movement on April 4, 2011, the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, killed during the Memphis sanitation […]

The ambush on May 25 by Maoist guerrillas in the Darba Ghati valley (in the Sukma area of the Bastar region in southern Chhattisgarh), 345 kms south of the state capital of Raipur, of a convoy of provincial Congress Party leaders has shocked the Indian state apparatus.  The Z-plus and other categories of armed security […]

The KCK (Union of Communities in Kurdistan) Executive Council said that the Gezi Park protests, which began as social resistance, have sent a message calling for a new, democratic Turkey.  The KCK called on the Kurdish people to take initiative, saying that the Kurds should fulfill responsibility by working with the democratic forces in Turkey so that the Democratic Solution Process will develop on the right track.

The KCK Executive Council stated that the social resistance around Gezi Park has an important message.  Noting that the current situation poses significant consequences for Turkey’s transition into a democratic country, the council also warned against “opportunist” approaches.  The KCK called on the democratic and working-class sections of civil society to stand against potential barriers to the Democratic Solution Process.

  John Bellamy Foster is best-known as author of Marx’s Ecology (2000; in which he corrects the popular misapprehension that Marx did not ‘get’ environmental limits), and as editor of Monthly Review (monthlyreview.org), the journal founded by Marxist economist Paul Sweezy in the late 1940s.  In his latest book, The Endless Crisis (2012; written with […]

Russia, as travelers have noted over the centuries, is immense.  Most of it is far from large bodies of water.  And yet, in a first visit after many years, I came upon some unusual islands right in the heart of the country.  But they were not islands in the geographic sense.  Some were children’s islands. […]

The International Crisis Group (ICG) sells itself as “working to prevent conflict worldwide” but there is one country where their mission looks more like promoting rather than preventing conflict.  Exhibit A is their report on Venezuela, released on Friday. There is a lot wrong with this report — most of it reads like a statement […]

The official death toll from the April collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which housed clothing factories, has now passed 1,100.  How exactly will the staggering costs of that overwhelming tragedy be figured?  Will they count as part of capitalism’s contribution to economic development across Asia, Africa, and Latin America? In capitalism’s […]

  Red Ant Dream / Maati Ke Laal (2013) 120 minutes; English version, with subtitles Direction: Sanjay Kak Photography: Ranjan Palit, Sanjay Kak and Setu Sound Design: Madhu Apsara Writers: Sanjay Kak and Tarun Bharatiya Editing: Tarun Bharatiya www.redantdream.com You are far away from the sterile atmosphere of much of academia with its politically correct […]

“These people who are commonly known as leaders view politics and religion as that crippled, lame and injured man, displaying whom our beggars normally beg for money.  These so-called leaders go about carrying the carcasses of politics and religion on their shoulders, and to simple-minded people who are in the habit of accepting every word […]

The battle of the Hong Kong dockers, as Union of Hong Kong Dock Workers (UHKDW) Secretary Wong Yu Loy reveals, was important not only because of the rarity of strikes in Hong Kong, or because it was a pitched battle with Hong Kong’s wealthiest corporate magnate, but also because of the way corporate globalization set […]

Laal is a revolutionary band from Pakistan.  Lyrics by Habib Jalib.  Directed by Taimur Rahman. | Print

Since Marx, we know that what characterizes and differentiates societies is the way in which they organize the production, distribution and use of the material and symbolic resources
they possess. In other words, the mode of production¹ is what defines the material content of the social life of the distinct human territorial collectivities (nations, peoples, communities), within which there can be differentiated the historically specific form in which each of their components develop, and the manner in which various existing modes of production interrelate within the same society.

  On 22nd April, Roza Tuletaeva, one of the activists from the Zhanaozen oil workers’ strike, started a hunger strike.  She has taken this extreme step because she has been refused essential medical aid at the women’s prison colony in Atyrau, where she is currently serving a lengthy jail sentence.  She was arrested after the […]

  Bangladesh stands petrified as an unprecedented horror unfolds in Savar, near the capital city of Dhaka.  In the morning of the 24th of April, a nine-story building crashed down in Savar Bazaar.  Thousands of garments workers were in the building.  The death toll, as of this writing, was more than 175, with over 1,000 […]

In the final weeks of a six-month prison sentence for protesting remote-control murder by drones, specifically from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, I can only reflect on my time of captivity in light of the crimes that brought me here.  In these ominous times, it is America’s officials and judges and not the anarchists […]

  Aijaz Ahmad: Ever since this young man [Kim Jong-un] became the president, the head of state, of North Korea . . . the West has been testing his will, to see whether he can be stared down. . . .  Every year these very provocative war games take place, involving South Korea and the […]