Geography Archives: Asia

  Notes of Anatoly S. Chernyaev Gorbachev: My intuition tells me — something is worrisome.  I am afraid we are losing time!  Everybody is getting used to it.  I guess they say, well, there is a war going on, everything in its turn, such is life.  “The strange war!” — soon they will attach this […]

Saadia Toor is an assistant professor at Staten Island College, author of a forthcoming book on Pakistan from Pluto Press, and part of the group Action for a Progressive Pakistan. The Pakistani Army has launched a major offensive against Taliban forces in the province of Waziristan.  What is behind this assault, and what impact will […]

  In 1992, I was a thwarted, guilt-ridden and depressed revolutionary, living underground with my lesbian partner and two-year old daughter in St. Louis.  I was part of a tiny group that had gone underground at the beginning of the 1980s, responding to the collapse of the mass movements after the end of the Vietnam […]

  Sunday’s suicide bomb attack on a conference hall in the Pishin region of Iran’s vast Sistan and Balochistan province is by all accounts a major blow against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the most important military and security institution in the country. It is now known that at least 42 people were killed […]

  Why would Philippine judges hamper a human rights investigation into a killing field where many human remains are found in Davao, victims allegedly of the infamous death squad?  Why would the members of the Commission on Human Rights be charged themselves?  Human Rights Watch says local authorities are obstructing the course of justice and […]

If time lags matter, news of the dollar’s demise as the world’s principal reserve currency is grossly exaggerated.  That prediction has been periodically heard at least since the early 1970s when the United States brought the Bretton Woods arrangement to an end by breaking the link between dollar and gold.  As is obvious, whatever else […]

  Author’s Note: This story was recently posted on CounterPunch.   Here I have corrected a couple of errors pointed out by readers.  The essay is taken from my book, In and Out of the Working Class.  I worked for the United Farm Workers Union during a sabbatical leave in the winter of 1977.   I […]

In June, the People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project visited Venezuela in order to assess the state of its healthcare system.  The People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project models itself on the Cuban community-based approach to healthcare, and has established a project along those lines in a small neighborhood in Washington, DC.  The visit was […]

Whereas: The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, attacks on Pakistan, military aid to Colombia, Israel and many of the countries that use US aid for repression of indigenous and popular movements, are making the people of the US and the world less safe. And Whereas: These wars and military aid are bankrupting the people of the […]

It is spell-binding to see how the U.S. establishment can inflate the threat of a target, no matter how tiny, remote, and (most often) non-existent that threat may be, and pretend that the real threat posed by its own behavior and policies is somehow defensive and related to that wondrously elastic thing called “national security.” […]

  Dear Indian Reader, Not that I would ever, ever consider you to be a dummy — heaven forbid!  After all, you are no US citizen of the (George Dubya) Bush years now, are you?  🙂  You are no placid ignoramus, incapable of pointing to ‘Eye-rack’ on a map, utterly untouched by any knowledge of […]

  Dear Friends, The Defenders will be co-sponsoring an event this evening with the Richmond Peace Education Center.  It’s a Teach-In, Richmond’s contribution to the Oct. 17 national day of actions against wars and sanctions.  This event consists of a film screening and presentations by local activists and individuals concerned about the militarized path the U.S. […]

In the past few months, the government, by repeatedly asserting its perception of the Maoists as the ‘biggest threat to internal security’, by criminalising the CPI (Maoist), and through a sustained project of trying to build a consensus against various forms of popular upsurge and dissent, has been creating ground for the onslaught that is […]

Analytical Monthly Review On Monday, October 12th, it was reported that Manmohan Singh — despite the request of air chief marshal P. V. Naik to permit IAF personnel in helicopters to attack inhabitants of the hilly regions — had announced that the armed forces would not be deployed against the domestic left-wing opponents of the […]

Rescued from a state of near-irrelevance by the world recession and an infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars (mostly from the U.S., Europe, and Japan), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is now thinking of expanding its role into previously uncharted territory.  In Istanbul for the fall meetings of the IMF, Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn […]

A United Nations report commission, created after the 2008-2009 Gaza War, has released a thundering report that has ripped through the Palestinian and Arab street, threatening to bring down Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and his entire cabinet.  Mandated to lead the mission was Richard Goldstone, the respected South African president of the United Nations Human […]

President Obama is coming under attack from the Right for his reluctance to grant the request of General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, for more U.S. troops.  On the other side of the equation sits the majority of the American people, who are against sending more troops and in fact oppose […]

Chandra Muzaffar is Malaysia’s best-known public intellectual.  He has written widely on questions related to Islam, inter-faith relations and liberation theology, issues that he discusses in this interview with Yoginder Sikand. Q: Much of your writing focuses on a critique of capitalism and consumerism, or what you very aptly term as ‘moneytheism’, which you contrast […]

Gregory S. Taylor.  The History of the North Carolina Communist Party.   Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009.  258 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-57003-802-0. The History of the North Carolina Party by Gregory S. Taylor offers a window into the efforts of the North Carolina Communist Party (NCCP) and further dispels stereotypes that early […]

  “This is really a simple picture, and yet it explains so much of what Asia is today.  It looks at developing Asia as a whole region, from China and India to places in-between, and breaks the overall GDP down into two main shares: the black line is the export share and the red line […]