Geography Archives: Asia

  Two weeks ago, the 10th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council summit, held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, approved the SCO Rules of Procedure and the regulation on procedure for future membership expansion. Before the summit, Chinese diplomats ritually pointed out that approval of the admission regulations was the first step in forming the basis for a […]

The text below is an excerpt from “Imperialism and the Gulf War,” which was first published as the “Review of the Month” of the April 1991 issue of Monthly Review (42.11).  While the exact character of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party state is certainly debatable (“lack of government corruption”? — only relatively so in comparison to […]

  What the group around Khomeini succeeded in doing was to unite behind it a wide section of the middle class — both the traditional petty bourgeoisie based in the bazaar and many of the first generation of the new middle class — in a struggle to control the hierarchies of power.  The secret of […]

Everyone is talking about China’s currency, it seems.  Amidst months of building tension, there is an apparent consensus among most economists, the financial press, and leading economic policy makers in the West that the renminbi is hugely undervalued, making China’s exports unfairly competitive.  The global imbalances created by such ‘mercantilist’ and ‘protectionist’ exchange rate strategies, […]

Russia’s Iran Policy Since the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic has worked hard to cultivate a strategic partnership with post-Soviet Russia.  Of course, for many Iranians, there is heavy historical “baggage” attached to relations with Russia/the Soviet Union.  But, from an Iranian perspective, Russia is […]

In terms of the total system, these [the dominant classes in the most advanced capitalist countries] are the classes which have the power of initiative: they are, so to speak, the independent variables.  The behavior of other classes — including the subordinate classes in the dominant countries as well as both the dominant and the […]

  Despite what the experts of barefoot diplomacy1 never stop repeating, there is nothing even remotely anti-American in the Brazilian position on Iran: our motives, unlike those of the bullying trio (USA, France, United Kingdom), are clear, transparent and openly stated several times. We support the peaceful development of nuclear energy.  We do not believe […]

The global financial crisis that began in 2007 was clearly about money, credit, and finance.  For mainstream economists and politicians — from neoliberals like John B. Taylor at Stanford and Tony Abbott, through pragmatists like Barack Obama and Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, to Keynesians and social democrats like Paul Krugman at Princeton and John […]

  To: Mr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India; Mr. Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister of Orissa; Mr. Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Environment and Forests; Ms. Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson of the National Advisory Council We write to express our concern at several violations of legal process in the approval of the POSCO […]

To: Business Editor The New York Times I appreciate your detailed reporting on Chinese unions and workers vs. Japanese employers, but I write to ask whether that use of your resources is the cause of your ignoring similar union stories here at home. For example, I can find no coverage in the Times of the […]

The interview with Giovanni Arrighi below was conducted on 12 November 2005, at the “Kapitalismus Reloaded” international conference held in Berlin.  It is published in English here today to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Arrighi’s death. A. Fathollah-Nejad (AFN): Does the West have to fear China? G. Arrighi (GA): I don’t think so.  I mean […]

Prior to the 2008 US presidential election, in an essay entitled “What the Future Has in Store for Iran,” I predicted that regardless of who is elected president, the US foreign policy toward Iran will be determined largely by Israel and its various lobby groups in the US, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee […]

  Anxiously waiting outside the court of the chief judicial magistrate Mohan Tiwari in Bhopal on 7 June, 36-yearold Raghu Jaidev and many other victims of the Bhopal catastrophe were crestfallen, some of them, outraged, upon hearing the verdict of the trial that had lasted 23 long years.  “Rich people always get away”, said Jaidev, […]

  The May 28 arrest of U.S. attorney and Chicago native Peter Erlinder by the Paul Kagame dictatorship in Rwanda reveals much about this regime that is routinely sanitized in establishment U.S. and Western media coverage and intellectual life.  But if we use Erlinder’s arrest to call attention to some less-well-known facts, a much grimmer […]

Under the radar screen at the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (SE&D) last month, the US and China continued to discuss a bi-lateral investment treaty (BIT).  If the final negotiated text looks like the majority of US BITs it could threaten financial stability and economic growth in China. The US and China began negotiations toward […]

The global Sixties began in Tokyo on June 15, 1960, with the death of Michiko Kanba, an undergraduate at Tokyo University.  On the night of her death she had joined a group of fellow university students at the front of a massive demonstration — 100,000 people deep — facing off against the National Diet Building. […]

A version of this essay was delivered to the “Think outside the Bomb” event in Austin, TX, on June 14, 2010. If we are serious about the abolition of nuclear weapons, we have to place the abolition of the U.S. empire at the center of our politics. That means working toward a world free of […]

  Translator’s note: “Regarding the present upsurge of worker action in China, liberals have used their discursive power in the overseas media to frame the strike wave as a tale of workers’ struggle for ‘independent unions,’ as if this were a repetition of Solidarnosc.  What do Chinese workers want?  What is the direction of the […]

The thunderous events set in motion by Israel’s storming of the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the peace flotilla challenging the blockade of Gaza, have thrown important light on the overall situation in the Middle East.  Turkey has emerged as the major protagonist among the forces that support the Palestinian cause.  This is extremely […]

The U.S. and European Union together make up about half of the global economy, and recovery is quite uncertain in both of these big economies.  Contrary to a lot of folk wisdom and political posturing, the problem is not irresponsible government spending in either case, but a lack of commitment by the authorities in both […]