Part I Combine the strengths of the environmental and anti-war movements to defeat U.S. Middle East policy, end the Iraq War, and join the global community in the common struggle for a sustainable future. Communities Uniting for Climate Action Now! This April 14th, tens of thousands of Americans will gather all across the country at […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
The Maelstrom
Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin University of California Press Every city has its cemetery. But the greatest have mass graves. Beneath St. Petersburg lies a virtual hecatomb — the remains of conscript laborers who died draining the Neva marshes for the palaces of Peter’s courtiers. The Belle Epoque structures of […]
A Red in the House
Stephen Fleischman, A Red in the House: The Unauthorized Memoir of S.E. Fleischman. New York: iUniverse, 2004. 366pp, $24.95 paperback. This review is late in coming because it has taken a couple of years for me to understand who this Fleischman fellow is, with the tough, brilliant commentaries on various issues in CounterPunch and elsewhere. […]
Reinventing the Wheel: The Future for the UAW
The latest news from the Big Three (Chrysler, Ford, and GM) automakers is bad. As of Valentine’s Day — how appropriate for North American workers to receive another shot to the heart — the permanent force reduction now exceeds 100,000. Most of the jobs eliminated are hourly workers, UAW and CAW union members in fact […]
Reflections on Letters from Iwo Jima
War is dehumanizing. By its very nature, it forces a coarse division between us and the other. All the lofty ideals — be they revolutionary or reactionary — cannot change this. Clint Eastwood‘s new movie Letters from Iwo Jima is a sobering and deeply humanist perspective on the horrors of war. Relying on a […]
Where Is the German Trade Union Movement and Where Is It Going?
Germany is the world’s leading exporter and the third largest industrial economy, following Japan and the United States. German multi-nationals are drowning in supreme opulence, yet the wages of German workers remain severely depressed. The Wall Street Journal, engaging in low-intensity class struggle labor journalism, confirmed in its January article “German Unions See Leverage […]
U.S. Imperialism and Arroyo Regime in the Philippines on Trial at the Permanent People’s Tribunal, the Hague
An interview with Luis Jalandoni, chairperson of the National Democratic Front-Philippines Negotiating Panel, follows E. San Juan, Jr.’s analysis. The February visit of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples, Prof. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, reconfirmed the barbarism of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s de facto martial-law regime in the Philippines. Stavenhagen bewailed the worsening pattern of […]
Uprising against the “War on Terror”: The Danger of US Foreign Policy to International Security
For those among us who hoped that 2007 would be a more orderly year in world politics, the current trends have been frustrating. Over the past few weeks, the Bush administration has pursued the escalation of two major international crises. The first major crisis is taking place in Somalia, where the Ethiopian Army and its […]
Now (That the Dems Have Taken Back Congress) What?
The November ’06 election presents socialists and progressives in the US with a (thankfully) new situation. The next couple of years offer many opportunities, questions, and dilemmas . If we squarely face the many complications inherent in the current balance of class forces in America, maybe we can help to keep things moving away from […]
Picturing Reality
A Sense of History? “Kahin building, kahin trame, kahin motor, kahin mil; sab milta hai yahan par bas milta nahin dil,”1 croons the late Johnny Walker to Sahir Ludhayanvi‘s immortal lyrics (CID, 1956) while ruing the difficulties one has to face in finding true love in a world of industry, automation, and speed. In […]
Ammunition against the Empire
Need a crash course on the present state of the world? Want to untangle the terminology, separate the victims from the victimizers, understand the dynamics of unilateralism, and deduce what can be done about it all? I’d like to introduce you to a small literary arsenal. A good place to begin is the book […]
Remembering Where Flowers Come from on Valentine’s Day
Every year on Valentine’s Day, millions of Americans head to their local florist shop or supermarket to buy flowers for a friend, spouse, or family member. Some place their orders through NPR, which rewards contributors to public radio with a dozen roses sent to the person of their choice. Especially if there’s a romantic relationship […]
Is the Big Ship America Sinking?Contradictions and Openings
There’s something happeningWhat it is ain’t exactly clearBuffalo Springfield, 1966 Are we in the midst of a momentous turn in world politics? Donald Rumsfeld has been shuffled out of the Pentagon. Daniel Ortega, Washington’s nemesis from the Sandinista Revolution of the late 1970s, is back as President of Nicaragua. Hugo Chavez has been triumphantly re-elected, […]
Abolish It!
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. […]
General Strike in Kashmir
The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front called a bandh, i.e., a general strike. The strike began today, 6 February 2007. The JKLF chairman Mohammed Yasin Malik said at a press conference in Srinagar: “Peace process and killing of innocent Kashmiris cannot go together, and the recent discoveries about the killings of innocent Kashmiris by Indian forces, […]
Change the System — Not the Climate!
Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth has helped dramatize the enormity of the global environmental crisis. The scale of the threat posed by industrially induced global warming, and the short time in which to take meaningful action to prevent catastrophic consequences, makes the question of how to combat global warming arguably the most urgent […]
Once Again to Washington, DC
Jane Fonda told the crowd at the January 27, 2007 demonstration in Washington DC that it had been 34 years since she had appeared at an anti-war demonstration, due to the lies told about her by the right wing. It has been almost 38 years since my first DC demonstration, the great outpouring of November […]
Academia and Social Change
The American Historical Association (AHA) is the most prominent professional organization for American historians. Its annual meeting, held recently in Atlanta, featured abstruse panels and presentations with titles such as “Disciplined Bodies and the Production of Space, Place, and Race: Atlanta’s Latino Day Laborers at the Cusp of the Twenty-First Century” and “The Desire […]
Mass Movement to End the War Now
To endorse the statement below, please go to: www.petitiononline.com/NYCLAW2/petition.html. January 24, 2007 Despite overwhelming rejection of its policies in the November elections, the Bush administration has steadily escalated its war in the Middle East. This has meant not only ordering thousands more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, but arming and financing Israel’s attacks on Lebanon […]
The “Special Economic Zone” Debacle of the Left Front in West Bengal
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its January 2007 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. In an article entitled “Capital, Technology and Development,”1 Harry Magdoff, refuting the myth of bourgeois social science that capital and technology are the magic which will bring the […]
