The following statement was started by the participants in the Climate Change|Social Change conference. Anyone who agrees with it is welcome to add their signature, and an updated list of signatories will be issued on a regular basis (contact: <climateconf@greenleft.org.au>.). It is being distributed to environmental, trade union, Indigenous, migrant, religious and community organisations […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
The Future of the Labor Movement? Reflections on the Labor Notes Conference
See, also, Dave Regan, “Why We Demonstrated in Dearborn,” MRZine, 2 May 2008; and Stephanie Luce, “Rebuilding Labor’s Power: There Are No Shortcuts,” MRZine, 2 May 2008. I had a fantastic time at the Labor Notes conference last weekend, and am eager to build on the new connections I made and campaigns I learned about. […]
The Maoist Electoral Victory in Nepal: Interview with Shyam Shrestha, Former Chief Editor of Mulyankan Monthly Magazine
The elections in Nepal on Thursday, April 10th, resulted in a victory for the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), stunning the mainstream international press. Mulyankan monthly magazine is almost 18 years old. It is the largest leftist monthly magazine of Nepal, with a circulation of 30 000 copies per month. Shyam Shrestha has been actively […]
Historic Elections in Nepal
Surprising even the Nepalis themselves, the Constituent Assembly elections went quite smoothly, considering the great tension in the country. According to The Himalayan, only 33 of the total of 20,889 polling stations had to postpone polling to a later date, due to various forms of irregularities. The turnout was much higher than expected, more than […]
The End of Osheroff’s Dance: Lessons from a Life of Resistance and Love
As Abe Osheroff’s body slowly began to betray him in his 80s and 90s, one of his favorite lines was, “I have one foot in the grave but the other keeps dancing.” That dance ended on Sunday, April 6, when the 92-year-old Osheroff died of a heart attack at his Seattle home. Osheroff is remembered […]
Pledge of Commitment: People of Faith with Palestine in Struggle
Pledge of Commitment: People of Faith with Palestine in Struggle Our world is in crisis. We face a growing, more aggressive empire with an insatiable appetite for consuming the resources of our world, subverting justice and humanity by its desire to strengthen its global hegemony; destroying the environment; feeding racist ideologies and practices of […]
Confronting the Economic Crisis: The New Deal at 75 — Lessons for Today
When I was growing up in the 1950s, a photo of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932-1945) still hung in the homes of some family members and friends. Our only four-term president was remembered by them as the leader — and even the savior — of the country. Those like my parents, who experienced the Great […]
The Sadrist Revolt
The Student Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to take time out of his rebellion for studies. The increasingly popular Iraqi nationalist and Shi’i religious leader, it was reported late last year, is seeking the title of Ayatollah (“Sign of God”). Muqtada’s Iraqi supporters presently confer on him the title of Hujjat al-Islam (“Proof of Islam”), although […]
China and the World Market: Thirty Years of the “Reform” Policy
It is now thirty years since the People’s Republic of China announced its market reform policy at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in December 1978, under the then new leadership of Deng Xiaoping. The policy followed the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the purging […]
No War: The Movement That Has Dissolved Itself [No war Il movimento che si è dissolto]
Cos’è successo al movimento contro la guerra che esplose nel 2003 mobilitando milioni di persone in tutto il mondo occidentale, al punto da esser definito una volta dal New York Times come «la seconda superpotenza»?Il fatto è che esso non è mai stato un movimento vero e proprio ma solo lo spasmo di un giorno, […]
Iranian Ethnic Minorities Clash on Capitol Hill
Washington DC — A March 13 event on Capitol Hill intended to expose Iran’s human rights violations was overcome with political rivalry and infighting. The event, a one-hour briefing on Iran’s human rights record, was eventually broken up by Capitol Hill police officers. The briefing piggybacked on a recent rise in concern over Iran’s […]
How to Counter the Danger of War at This Sensitive Moment
Unfortunately, influential American and Israeli opponents of Iran have been successful: using negative propaganda of the sort that claims that Iran has an intention to cause a nuclear holocaust and that a Third World War and “Islamic fascism” must be prevented, and tying the disaster of Iraq to Iran’s interference, they have turned Iran into […]
Unpleasant Anniversaries
March is a cruel month in the recent history of the Middle East. This year is the fifth anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie who was crushed to death by an Israeli soldier driving an armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozer on March 16, 2003 as she attempted to stop the gigantic vehicle from destroying the […]
The March 20, 2008 US Declaration of War on Iran
March 20, 2008, destined to be another day of infamy. On this date the US officially declared war on Iran. But it’s not going to be the kind of war many have been expecting. No, there was no dramatic televised announcement by President George W. Bush from the White House oval office. In fact […]
Market Terrorism
The intimate partnership between mainstream economics and right-wing ideology has long trumpeted the wonderful efficiency of markets. In these partners’ fantasy, markets are truly wondrous coordination mechanisms that perfectly match the supply of goods and services to what buyers demand. All this happens, they say with immense self-satisfaction, without the intervention of any government or […]
Chronology of the 4th Generation War against Venezuela
The US Government is waging war on Venezuela — not your typical, traditional war, but a modern, asymmetric — 4th Generation War – against President Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution. Below is a presentation I created regarding the pattern and escalation of US Government aggression against Venezuela, with clear quotes and cites as evidence to […]
When Henry Kissinger Opines
When Henry Kissinger opines in an op-ed in the Washington Post, it behooves us all to pay attention. There is a message there. Kissinger has always presented himself as the supreme “realist” proponent on U.S. imperial policy. But he has also always taken care not to distance himself too far from the conservative political Establishment. […]
Civil Liberties and People’s Movements under Attack in India: The “Maoist” Scare
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its March 2008 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. The struggle for democratic rights in India, its forward and backward movement, has been continuous from the days of British colonialism to the present. Independence and Emergency, for […]
Barack Obama’s Speech on Race: New Challenges for Him, the Democrats, and Us
Barack Obama’s speech on race, the greatest speech by a major American political figure in decades, elevates the discussion of race in America to a new level. What makes this speech so powerful is not only what he said, but also what it requires us to ask and what it demands that we reply. With […]
The Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Since August 2007, US and European banks have constantly made headline news concerning the deep crisis they are going through and its knock-on effect on the neoliberal economic system as a whole. Asset depreciation for these banks currently stands at over 200 billion dollars. Several banking research services and seasoned economists estimate that the final […]
