Geography Archives: Japan

  Prodded by Amnesty International (AI), the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Asian Human Rights Commission, Reporters Without Borders, and other international organizations, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo recently cobbled a group to look into the allegations of massive human rights violations — over 729 victims of extrajudicial killings, and 180 involuntary “disappearances,” by the latest count — during her […]

1. Introduction This commentary is offered as a contribution to the ongoing debate on the Bamako Appeal.  On the 18th of January, on the day preceding the start of the Polycentric World Social Forum in Bamako, Mali, a conference was held in the same capital, commemorating the holding of the Bandung Conference 50 years back.  […]

Today’s Liberation Day, one of the few holidays celebrated in both North and South Koreas, so it’s a good day to start boycotting Japan. Outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid his respects at Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine for war dead on Tuesday, the anniversary of his country’s World War Two surrender, a parting shot […]

One of the neocon myths that has gained currency post-9/11 asserts, referring to opponents of Israel and the United States, that “they are against who we are, not what we do.”  Hence, the argument concludes, there is nothing we can do to diminish their antagonism.  A variant of this fiction is that Iran’s Islamic elite […]

A sharp reversal is now hitting the US housing market: another of this system’s endemic boom-bust cycles.  As is widely known, over the last decade at least, while the US economy became sharply more unequal (rapidly rising gap between rich and poor), it managed to avoid a severe recession.  Goods and services purchases kept rising […]

  Part 1 Wednesday, 19 July, Afternoon (The local time is six hours behind Japan Time.) After many detours, I arrived at Beirut. Planning to cover Samawa, I left Japan a week ago (on the 12th), and I was making preparations in Amman, but I couldn’t arrange for an entry into and security in Iraq, […]

At a time when the Iraq war continues to be a defining issue on the American scene, it is ironic that the most powerful and uncompromising documentary on the subject remains almost entirely unknown and unseen in this country.  It took Japanese filmmaker Takeharu Watai a year and a half to film more than 123 […]

In one of her last essays published in the United Kingdom, the late Susan Sontag compared the pictures of tortured Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq with the photographs “of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880s and 1930s, which show smalltown Americans, no doubt most of them church-going, respectable citizens, […]

Erik C. Nisbet & James Shanahan, “MSRG Special Report: Restrictions on Civil Liberties, Views of Islam, & Muslim Americans,” Media & Society Research Group, Cornell University, December 2004 Actual mass murderers are higher on my watch list than those who just think or shout hateful beliefs.  But you would be mistaken if you thought the […]

A nation of immigrants: This is a convenient myth developed as a response to the 1960s movements against colonialism, neocolonialism, and white supremacy. The ruling class and its brain trust offered multiculturalism, diversity, and affirmative action in response to demands for decolonization, justice, reparations, social equality, an end of imperialism, and the rewriting of history — not to be “inclusive” — but to be accurate. What emerged to replace the liberal melting pot idea and the nationalist triumphal interpretation of the “greatest country on earth and in history,” was the “nation of immigrants” story.

The aim of this paper is to try to understand the Israeli industrialists’ strategy in the globalization process in the course of the recent years.  The new strategy was implemented in the days of the first Intifada (the Palestinian uprising) in the late 80s.  At that time voices were heard in the Association of Israeli […]

Since my essay on the Danish cartoons was published on 21 February 2006, I have received dozens of emails supportive of my argument that racism has no place on the left.  Additionally, comments on the article posted on MRZine show that there are people willing to stand up against anti-Muslim bigotry.  However, what is deeply […]

In the early 1980s, General Motors workers in Canada refused to follow their American parent (UAW) in opening their collective agreement.  The ensuing conflict eventually led to the Canadians breaking away to form their own Canadian union (CAW).  Earlier this month, the CAW leadership opened the collective agreement in Oshawa, threatening the end of a […]

  SOLIDARITY FOR SALE: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America’s Promise by ROBERT FITCH AUTHOR’S NOTE READ EXCERPT BUY THIS BOOK Michael D. Yates: Robert, let’s start off with a question not directly connected to your book Solidarity for Sale.  Some commentators say that today labor unions and labor movements are irrelevant […]

The demo in Perth on 18 March 2006 was attended by about a thousand people, down substantially from the size of demos before the beginnng of the Iraq War. The majority of people out in downtown Perth on Saturday were shopping. They weren’t hostile — rather, openly indifferent or mildly curious about the people who […]

Although the corporate media gave a lot more coverage than usual to this year’s Vancouver rally, what they did provide was as inaccurate as ever.  A realistic crowd estimate for the Vancouver march and rally would be in the 3,000-4,000 range. Yet CBC Radio was running 500, The Province newspaper had 1000, and the TV […]

“Rosa Luxemburg, imprisoned in the Breslau penitentiary, is able to continue working on her herbarium. Her secretary Mathilde Jacob, the only one able to visit her in prison, brings along the plants. ‘I can botanize once again, this is my favourite occupation and best way to relax. Since May 1913 I have pasted in about […]

[On February 4, 2006, the Socialist Project organized a labor forum in Windsor to get an update on the struggle at Delphi and to consider its implications for Canada.  Speakers at the forum included Dennis Delling, a Delphi worker and activist in mobilizing the resistance against the corporation; Jerry Tucker, former head of New Directions […]

The following is a conversation with Heinz Dieterich about his friendship with Hugo Chávez, irregular war, the new Venezuelan military doctrine, and an account of the Bolivarian revolution in Latin America. Heinz Dieterich is a sociologist and economist.  He has been a professor at Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City since 1977.  Since the 1990s, […]

El futuro de la Revolución Bolivariana en América Latina se ve más brillante desde que Evo Morales participa en la construcción del Bloque Regional de Poder (BRP) de América Latina, en lo que será probablemente el año más peligroso para la humanidad desde el fin de la “Guerra Fría”: el año del ataque de la […]