The Great Recession is allowing some widely held beliefs about the U.S. economy — which were the source of much evangelism over the last few decades — to run up against a reality check. This is to be expected, since the United States has been the epicenter of the storm of policy blunders that caused […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
Spinning the Honduras Coup
In the Summer of 1984, under the oversight of U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, I was deported from Honduras with five other Americans for meeting with union representatives who wanted to tell us about the murders and disappearances of their leaders. At the time, the poor nation was known as “the aircraft carrier USS Honduras” […]
Higher Education Today: Theory and Practice
In the Beginning I am a child of the cold war. I was born in 1940, was an adolescent in the 1950s, and devoid of political consciousness when President Eisenhower warned of the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” in 1960. I was modestly inspired by the young President Kennedy’s […]
Petroleum and Energy Policy in Iran
Iran, a major oil producing and exporting country, also imports gasoline because of inadequate refining capacity and rising petrol consumption. This article examines the problems faced by an economy dependent on the export of crude oil and gas that are compounded by the dilemmas of rising domestic consumption, a significant decline in productive capacity, […]
Anti-Venezuela Spokespeople Misrepresent Reality of Press Freedom in Venezuela
Denis MacShane attacks the British left for defending Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez against an onslaught from the media, “New Cold Warriors,” and right-wing demagogues throughout the world. His rhetorical trick is to tar the left with a new media law currently being debated in the Venezuelan Congress, which he says “would impose prison sentences of […]
The End of Chimerica?
Like the star gazers who last week watched the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, diplomatic observers had a field day watching the penumbra of big power politics involving the United States, Russia and China, which constitutes one of the crucial phenomena of 21st-century world politics. It all began with United States Vice […]
Responsibility to Protect?
On July 23, a debate concerning the Responsibility to Protect took place in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The responsibility to protect (R2P) is a notion agreed to by world leaders in 2005 that holds States responsible for shielding their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes […]
“Come Over and Help Us”: A History of R2P
Address to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, the United Nations, New York, 23 July 2009 The discussions about Responsibility to Protect (R2P), or its cousin “humanitarian intervention,” are regularly disturbed by the rattling of a skeleton in the closet: history, to the present moment. Throughout history, there have […]
Iran’s “Leftist” Don Quixotes
In the 1970s, when Iran’s Fedayeen and Mojahedin1 groups were engaged in an urban guerrilla struggle against the former Shah’s dictatorial regime, a faction of the Iranian Student Association (ISA) in the United States called Ehyaa2 had managed to convince some in the US Left, in particular America’s Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), that a […]
How Many Leftists Are “United for Iran”?
So, how many leftists are United for Iran? “8,000 people at the event in Paris, 4,000 in Stockholm, 3,000 in Amsterdam, more than 2,500 in Washington DC, 2,500 in New York, 2,000 in London. . . ,” says United4Iran.org, the sponsor of the global day of action on 25 July 2009. The low numbers1 (in […]
The Decline of Manufacturing and Machine Tools, and the Future of American Industry and the Working Class
The U.S. economy continued in a deep recession and hopes for a rapid recovery faded as new national unemployment figures of 9.5 percent were announced early this month. If one includes discouraged workers and the underemployed (those with part-time jobs who would like full-time work) in the calculations, then the figure soars to 16.5 percent. […]
Riding the “Green Wave” at the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and Beyond
There are many problems with the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s “Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis,” issued by the CPD on July 7, and widely circulated since then.1 The CPD adopted this format, it tells us, because “some on the left, and others as well, have questioned the legitimacy of and the need […]
A Perspective on the Growth Process in India and China
I It is possible to argue that the growth rate figures for both India and China are exaggerated. But, we shall proceed by accepting them as correct. The inequalities in both economies however have increased dramatically during this very phase of extraordinarily high growth, to a point where substantial segments of the population, particularly, but […]
Iran’s Green Protesters: “Death to China! Death to Russia!”
Mousavi, Rafsanjani, and their supporters get an F in foreign policy: “‘Death to China!’ and ‘Death to Russia!’ chanted supporters of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi during a sermon by influential former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, according to news reports” (Kristen Chick, Christian Science Monitor, 17 July 2009). “Death to China! Death to Russia!” […]
Who Needs an Islamic State?
Abdelwahab El-Affendi is a well-known Islamic scholar and political philosopher from Sudan, presently based in London. Author of numerous works, his latest book, provocatively titled Who Needs an Islamic State? discusses what he regards as the serious lacunae in contemporary Islamist political thought, which, in his view, have caused Islamist movements to reach a virtual […]
Interview with Argentine Economist Claudio Katz: “The Solution to the Crisis of Capitalism Has to Be Political”
The exit from the systemic crisis of capitalism needs to be political, and “a socialist project can mature in this turbulence.” So says the Argentine economist, philosopher, and sociologist Claudio Katz, who also warns that the “global economic situation is very serious and is going to have to hit bottom, and now we are […]
An Open Letter to the Anti-War Movement: How Should We React to the Events in Iran?
The “Iranian people” have not spoken. What’s happening in Iran today is a developing conflict between two forces that each represent millions of people. There are good people on both sides and the issues are complicated. So before U.S. progressives decide to weigh in, supporting one side and condemning the other, let’s take a little […]
War, Islamists, and the Left
The US war machine continues to inflict untold miseries on the people of the world and particularly those of the Muslim faith. Barack Obama, the first black president in the history of the United States, has repeatedly promised to repair some of the damage wreaked by his predecessor on the international stage. But the […]
Honduras: The Moment of Truth for the Obama Administration
The military coup currently underway in Honduras is a hard coup accompanied by various vain attempts to make it appear soft and “constitutionalist.” Behind the coup are diverse social, economic, and political forces, of which the most important is the administration of President Barack Obama. No important change can happen in Honduras without Washington’s […]
Bad Omens for the Lower Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its June 2009 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. The dire consequences of human induced climate change are now most often presented as facing us in the near future. We suggest that the future, as far as […]
