Geography Archives: Asia

The mass slaughter of 57 civilians in Maguindanao, the Philippines, on November 23 by a local warlord may seem a minor incident compared with the much more heinous destruction of whole villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan by US drones.  In the Philippines, however, it acquires symbolic density by the resonance of contextual historic factors linked […]

An important feature of the global monetary regime of the last three decades is the imbalance in the distribution of current account balances across countries and country groupings.  Recently, the most glaring discrepancy is the fact that a huge US balance of payments deficit is being substantially financed by developing countries and not largely by […]

“The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the foremost minds of the ruled class, the more stable and dangerous becomes its rule.” — Karl Marx A few days back, I received a ‘Dear friends’ email from Mr. Najam Sethi, ex editor-in-chief of Daily Times, Pakistan, announcing that he, together with several of his […]

Over 300 antiwar protesters took part in a demonstration at the gates to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Dec. 1 as President Barack Obama sought to justify his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Facing police and soldiers at the Highland Falls gate to the Academy, demonstrators repeatedly chanted, “30,000 more! […]

  Jesse Freeston: Only the governments of Taiwan and the United States have sent international observers, and the delegation funded by the US State Department arrived at the Electoral Tribunal at the same time the leaders of all six independent human rights monitors in Honduras were delivering their request that the elections be suspended. Dr. […]

Jeanne Theoharis is the author of an April 2009 article in The Nation, entitled “Guantanamo at Home,” which focuses on the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of US citizen Syed Hashmi in a New York City prison with Guantanamo-like conditions.  Theoharis holds the endowed chair in women’s studies and is an associate professor of political science […]

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has definitely had a very good crisis.  Just over a year ago, it was an institution on life support: ignored by most developing countries; derided for its failure to predict most crises in emerging markets and its often counterproductive responses to such crises; even called to book by its auditors […]

Recent press reports suggest that President Obama is likely to try to sugarcoat his announcement next week of a major military escalation in Afghanistan with talk of “exit ramps”: opportunities in the future to evaluate and possibly reduce the U.S. military commitment.  That’s supposed to make opponents of military escalation feel better, the media suggests. […]

  Paul Jay: . . . How bad is unemployment in China now?  And how much worse might it get if the yuan were to appreciate? Minqi Li: Well, it’s reported that during the current crisis about 40 million Chinese workers have already lost jobs.  And, of course, if there is a further appreciation of […]

In his wild and slanderous “Open Letter to Amnesty International” (signed, fittingly, “Yours, in disgust and despair”),2 The Guardian-Observer‘s veteran reporter Ed Vulliamy explains that two “main concerns” motivated him to draft his repudiation of AI’s choice of Noam Chomsky to deliver this 2009 Stand Up for Justice lecture: One is that the “pain” individuals […]

The Killing Continues Since the suspension of the death penalty in Japan in September of 2009, the US is the only developed nation in the world that continues to execute its citizens — but, perhaps, not for long.  The unmasking of the political agenda behind state-sanctioned killing during the past 25 years and the growing […]

What started as a focus on protests against military supremacy has silently led to a focus on support for civilian supremacy.  The retirement of Rookmangud Katawal, the ex-military chief and the main person who triggered the present crisis, has de facto diverted the attention of the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to support civil […]

Edgar White was born in Montserrat West Indies.  He has lived in the United States and England.  His plays have been successfully presented in New York, London, and Africa.  In the following autobiographical extract, he describes how his radical activities in the seventies led him to being sent down from Yale. for Cornel West It […]

Alfred W. McCoy.  Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State.  Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. In the build-up to the Iraq and Afghan wars, liberal humanitarians and neoconservatives alike bantered on and on about the necessity of empire and its capability of removing tyrannical […]

  In Mexico City on October 28, the International Tribunal on Trade Union Freedom (October 26, 2009-May 1, 2010) concluded its first of two public sessions with a scathing preliminary report that condemned President Felipe Calderón for his violent union-busting measures since taking office after his questionable 2006 election.  The Tribunal had been organized in […]

The Harold Wolpe Lecture, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 5 November 2009 In 1982, I published a book, jointly with Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi, and Andre Gunder Frank, entitled Dynamics of Global Crisis.  This was not its original title.  We had proposed the title, Crisis, What Crisis?  The U.S. publisher did not like that title, but we […]

In defense of civilian supremacy over the military and the democratic “New Nepal” process, the revolutionary movement of Nepal, led by the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists), has initiated a nationwide “People’s Movement” to topple the government and anti-people forces. This comes after a Maoist-led government resigned in May due to what was essentially […]

  Amandla: Early in 2009 you published your book The Great Financial Crisis (coauthored with Fred Magdoff).  Could you reflect now almost a year later on what made the current recession more severe than previous recessions?  Why has it been compared to the Great Depression and what type of recovery are we likely to see? […]

In the months following the outbreak of the financial crisis in late 2007, the general climate among economists and economic commentators was kind of a stupor.  Mainstream economists and conservative politicians — who had clamored for decades for the government to keep its hands off the economy, for balanced budgets, and for taxes as low […]

I hate to sound like the grouchy Grinch.  Here in Berlin radio and TV are celebrating the Fall of the Wall twenty years ago so intensively there’s hardly a moment for the weather report, which, unfortunately for all the planned events, turned out nasty and rainy.  From my window I just watched the fireworks’ brave […]