Geography Archives: Asia

Those persons who deal with these issues know that on September 11 of 2001 our people expressed its solidarity to the US people and offered the modest cooperation that in the area of health we could have offered to the victims of the brutal attack against the Twin Towers in New York.… We also immediately opened our country’s airports to the American airplanes that were unable to land anywhere, given the chaos that came about soon after the strike.… Although we resolutely supported the armed struggle against Batista’s tyranny, we were, on principle, opposed to any terrorist action that could cause the death of innocent people. Such behavior, which has been maintained for more than half a century, gives us the right to express our views about such a sensitive matter.

When India’s disgraced sports tsar, Suresh Kalmadi, walked into a New Delhi court on the morning of April 26th, a chappal (open-toed shoe) hurled at him missed by a few inches, “robbing him,” as the Calcutta Telegraph gleefully reported, of his “all seasons grin.” Kalmadi, the chief organizer of the 2010 Commonwealth Games and President […]

“Justice has been done,” said President Obama. “Justice has been done.” “Justice has been done.” Justice has been done!?  Justice!?  Justice??  For the last ten years, we’ve been engaged in an exercise of justice?  That’s what you call what we’ve been doing? Are we supposed to take out a large magnifying glass and a delicate […]

Norman Gottwald belongs to a rare breed — an American Marxist biblical scholar.  More than one jarring juxtaposition in that epithet!  Unfortunately, he is less well known outside the relative small circle of biblical scholars than he should be.  In order to introduce him to a wider audience, let me say a little about his […]

Various observers have noted this week that China’s economy will be bigger than that of the United States in 2016.  This comes from the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) latest projections, which were made in its semi-annual April World Economic Outlook database.  Since 2016 is just a few years away, and it will be the first […]

I was reading abundant materials and books to make good my promise of continuing writing on the Reflection of April 14 about the Battle of Girón when I had a look at the recent news that came yesterday, which were also as abundant as they are everyday. You could pile up mountains of news on […]

At first sight no two persons could have been more dissimilar.  One was a Cambridge don, with more than one foot in the British government; a supporter of the Liberal Party, staunchly opposed to the Bolshevik Revolution; an aesthete and a member of the Bloomsbury Group; a life peer in imperial Britain, and a solid, […]

The notion that Asian Americans are model minorities originated in the 1960s, mainly in reference to the socioeconomic gains of Japanese and Chinese Americans in particular.  It did not take long, however, for that very idea to be applied to Asian Americans as a whole, especially as it continues to be perpetuated by the mainstream […]

Adam Hanieh: Well, we’ve seen over the last few days a wave of repression [in Bahrain] that’s ongoing, repression against the protests after the Saudi troops went in on March 15, about a month ago.  As you said, there have been reports that up to 31 people have been killed during the demonstrations.  And now […]

“[T]he aim of aid is to ‘corrupt’ the governing classes.  Apart from the financial appropriations (which, alas, are well known and for which we are led to believe that the donors are in no way responsible), aid has become ‘indispensable’ as it is an important source of financing budgets and fulfils a political function. . […]

Or what’s behind Germany’s hesitant statements on Greek debt restructuring, Ireland’s move against subordinated bondholders, and the ECB’s stance on interest rates. . . . Europe is at it again, trying to pretend that it has stemmed the tide of insolvency through its program of lending huge amounts of money (at high interest rates) to […]

On behalf of the American University Anthropology department, I am deeply honored to welcome you all to AU, and to the Latin American Solidarity Coalition’s “Conference to Build a Stronger Movement to End US Militarism and the Militarization of Latin America.” It’s exciting personally to be involved in such an important event — after all, demilitarization of the Americas is now more important than ever — and I sincerely hope that we can continue this relationship and work to increase AU’s involvement with the event in the years to come, not only because it would save us money on the facility fees, but more importantly, because there is a deep thirst among AU students to become more engaged in this kind of solidarity work and because, I believe, the AU community can contribute to it in important ways. This conference is a perfect fit with all of the best aspects of this university, and those aspects — the dedication to community involvement, to social action and public intellectualism — always need reinforcing.

Weeks of highly publicized debates — some in Congress, more in the mass media — brought Republicans and Democrats to a budget deal.  To maximize public attention, they threatened a possible government shutdown.  Both parties said that large government deficits and accumulated debt were “serious problems.”  They agreed that solving them required only spending cuts, […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its April 2011 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. In the last weeks we have had an illuminating example of how a thoroughly corrupt regime can manipulate a thoroughly pliable media.  One can hope that in time […]

  The US left and progressives have been preoccupied about what we can do to impact events in the Mid-East, particularly obsessing about what we can do to counter US intervention.  In general, it is good to want to act, not just talk or analyze, in a crisis situation. However, despite the valiant and necessary […]

  隠された被爆労働：日本の原発労働者 Kenji Higuchi (樋口健二) is a photographer in Japan, acclaimed for his work of documenting the effects of industrial pollution and the exploitation of nuclear power plant workers.  This documentary film was released by Channel 4 (UK) in 1995.  Cf. Tim Shorrock, “Japan’s Nuclear Nightmare (Part One)” (18 March 2011); Tim Shorrock, “Japan’s Nuclear […]

Testimony at a hearing entitled “The U.S. Government Response to the Nuclear Power Plant Incident in Japan,” held by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the U.S. House of Representatives, 6 April 2011 Summary The crisis underway at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has revealed serious nuclear safety shortcomings […]

Gilbert Achcar defends the recently “UN-authorized” imperialist intervention in Libya on the ground that general principles may require exceptions in concrete cases.  “Every general rule admits of exceptions.  This includes the general rule that UN-authorized military interventions by imperialist powers are purely reactionary ones, and can never achieve a humanitarian or positive purpose.”1  This kind […]

In the weeks following the Fukushima accident, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and nuclear industry officials have been asserting that US nuclear plants are better prepared to withstand a catastrophic event like the March 11 earthquake and tsunami than Japanese plants because they have additional safety measures in place. According to internal NRC documents, however, there […]

  Nik Theodore is Director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a leading theorist of the urban dimensions of neoliberal restructuring.  He has collaborated closely with the Right to the City Alliance, the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, and other groups that have been at the […]