In Pattaya, Thailand on Friday, demonstrators — members of the National United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), aka Red Shirts — broke the police cordon around the hotel where the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Summit was to be held, demanding the resignation of the illegitimate government. The Thai government responded by declaring […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
Deconstructing Labor: What Is “New” in Contemporary Capitalism and Economic Policies: a Marxian-Kaleckian Perspective
Paper presented at the Congrès Marx International V, Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre, October 2007 1. Introduction About a decade ago the radical left, both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, had been gripped by an understanding of contemporary capitalism as based on a three-pronged tendency: ‘globalization’ as an already accomplished state, the ‘end of labor’ due […]
Which Side Are You On? Hakenmura and the Working Poor as a Tipping Point in Japanese Labor Politics
This article analyzes one of Japan’s most widely reported labor stories in recent years. The unusual degree of national attention given to this incident is evidence that the labor question has become a central issue in Japanese politics.1 It also offers insight into critical shifts in the landscape of both labor politics and labor […]
Wrestling with the Past
Sonya Huber. Opa Nobody. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. xvi + 358 pp. Illustrations. ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6; $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6. In recent years, scholars have grappled with the specific manner in which recent generations of Germans and Austrians have confronted their own familial complicity in Nazism. The narratives revealed by these studies […]
China’s Way Forward? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Hegemony and the World Economy in Crisis
2008 — Annus Horribilis for the world economy — produced successive food, energy, and financial crises, initially devastating particularly the global poor, but quickly extending to the commanding heights of the US and core economies and ushering in the sharpest downturn since the 1930s depression. As all nations strive to respond to the financial […]
G20 and Inter-capitalist Conflicts
In the Financial Times of March 31st, Martin Wolf set down a straightforward criterion to evaluate the outcomes of the G20 meeting in London. Will they decide, he asked, to put forward a plan to shift world demand from the countries with a balance of payments deficit to those with a surplus? The underlying reasoning […]
Scholars around the World Express Concerns about Current Crisis in Northeast Asia
Despite some hopeful signs in the last two years, the Korean peninsula is again teetering toward crisis. The Six Party Talks are stymied. Progress toward normalizing relations between the United States and North Korea has stalled. Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated. In this context, North Korea’s rocket launch this week and the overreaction […]
The Blighted Groves of Academe
The more I read about the state of our colleges and universities, the more thankful I am that I quit my job at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown (UPJ) in 2001, after thirty-two years of teaching. I wrote the following essay a dozen years ago, and since then, matters have gotten progressively worse, […]
The G20 and the HIRCs
A group of seven highly indebted rich countries (HIRC) of the world have organized a meeting of twenty nations in London in order to discuss the future of the world’s finances. They have invited some creditors among developing countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, some Arab countries, China, and India, leaving aside all the […]
Chávez and Ahmadinejad Call for Breaking Free from Free Trade
The presidents of Venezuela and Iran met on Thursday at the presidential palace in Tehran, where they agreed on the need to make a systemic change that allows countries to break free from free trade and promote fair trade and complementary relations between countries. The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud […]
FTA — Now More Than Ever
FTA (Dir. Francine Parker, 1972). Preamble: “This film was made in association with the servicewomen and men stationed on the United States bases of the Pacific Rim, together with their friends whose lands they presently occupy.” Accepting his Oscar for Best Actor, Sean Penn jokingly referred to the Academy as lovers of “commies and homos.” […]
The Obama Stimulus — A View from Cincinnati, Ohio
People in Cincinnati, like others around the country — either having lost their jobs or fearful of losing them — have been waiting anxiously, some desperately, for news that President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would help them. Now the news has arrived, and the news is that help is coming. Help for the banks and […]
Restructure the Big 3, But Not with Bankruptcy
MRZine Editor’s Introduction The crisis in which we find ourselves is not a crisis of the capitalist class, much less a crisis of the capitalist mode of production. Nor is it even a crisis of neoliberalism. It’s a crisis of the working class, plain and simple. What’s in store for us, especially in the […]
This Crisis of Capitalism Is Not All Bad News
I think that what we’re going through now — which is really just starting, we’re nowhere in the middle of it yet either, I think — is much bigger and more extensive than the Great Depression. There are particular difficulties of fixing it because of the fact that it is bigger, it is more global, […]
The State of Iraq: An Interview with Patrick Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn is the Baghdad correspondent of the Independent and the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. How do you interpret the latest election results in Iraq? Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has obviously done well and so has his […]
Did Iran Reject Obama’s Overture?
Iran’s response to a supposedly conciliatory address March 20 by U.S. President Barack Obama has been met with a torrent of “we-told-you-sos” by the U.S. media. The Los Angeles Times reported that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had simply “dismissed President Obama’s extraordinary Persian New Year greeting. . . .” The Christian Science Monitor […]
Venezuela: Anti-Crisis Measures without Devaluation or Higher Gas Prices: VAT Rises 3%, But Minimum Wage Rises 20%
No neoliberal package, to the disappointment of the Right! President Chávez announced a series of “anti-crisis measures” to protect the country from the capitalist crisis, which are devoid of the typical neoliberal ingredients that the Right predicted. The 2009 budget is revised based on $40 a barrel (previously it was based on $60). Sumptuary expenses […]
How to Spend the Money
The ongoing financial and economic crisis has had at least one significant impact on the world of ideas: it has brought back to the forefront the recognition of the crucial role of government expenditure in stabilising economies and averting or mitigating recessions. It is true that the continued opposition of some leaders, such as Angela […]
Protests Mark the Sixth Anniversary of the Iraq War
From the Bush Wars (more Iraq than Afghanistan) to the Obama Wars (more Afghanistan and Pakistan than Iraq). . . . Scenes from the “March on the Pentagon” RallyVideo by William Hughes Hollywood San Francisco Atlanta St. Paul, Minnesota Madison Tacoma
Marxism and the Crisis of Capitalism
Capitalism is going through its greatest crisis since the 1930s or before. The banking system has been saved from meltdown (at least for the time being) only by extensive government intervention in the USA, Britain, and a number of other countries. Stock markets all over the world have plummeted. A long and deep recession […]
