For much of the period from the 70s through the 80s, I was quite concerned with the way in which Third World movements for national liberation were sidelining women’s issues and relegating these to the background. In this piece I centerstage the Philippines which I believe may serve as an illustrative case. Let me try […]
Geography Archives: Philippines
To End the Israeli-Arab Conflict [En finir avec le conflit israélo-arabe]
Nous appelons, alors que le Moyen-Orient est plongé dans sa crise la plus grave depuis des années, à une action urgente de la part de la communauté internationale en vue d’un règlement global au conflit israélo-arabe. Nous sommes tous perdants dans ce conflit, à l’exception des extrémistes, qui prospèrent à travers le monde en exploitant […]
Venezuela and South Africa: Redistributive Policies vs. Neo-liberal Economic Policies
Traveling to both Venezuela and South Africa this past summer, through my work as an academic sociologist, I was able to observe firsthand two radically different approaches to “third world” development: a “redistributive approach” in Venezuela, and a set of basically neo-liberal economic policies in South Africa. Although this was not a consciously designed research […]
Class Struggle and Socialist Revolution in the Philippines: Understanding the Crisis of U.S. Hegemony, Arroyo State Terrorism, and Neoliberal Globalization
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 […]
The Case against Collaboration between India and Israel
After thirty-four days of relentless aerial bombardment and a ground invasion, Israel’s brutal assault on Lebanon’s civilian population has come to a halt, at least temporarily. As the dust from the rubble of Lebanon’s ruined cities, villages, and infrastructure settles, and as bodies of victims are recovered and buried, and the human losses mourned by […]
Interview with Paul LeBlanc
Paul LeBlanc Paul LeBlanc is what I have called an “organic intellectual,” a scholar and activist who has risen directly out of the working class. Paul is the author of many books, including A Short History of the U.S. Working Class (Humanity Books, 1999) and Black Liberation and the American Dream (Humanity Books 2003), […]
Ten Questions for Movement Building
For five weeks in the late spring of 2006, we toured the eastern half of the United States to promote two books — Letters From Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out (Nation Books, 2005) and Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (AK Press, 2006) — and to get at […]
Reflections on the June 9-10, 2006 Hong Kong Conference: “The Fortieth Anniversary: Rethinking the Genealogy and Legacy of the Cultural Revolution”
Flying into Hong Kong with my wife, Amy Demarest, early in the morning of June 8, 2006 and jetlagged, I wasn’t sure I’d be up to the next two days of a fully packed conference on the Cultural Revolution. The conference was sponsored by the China Study Group, Monthly Review, and the Contemporary China […]
Filipino American Hip-Hop and Class Consciousness: Renewing the Spirit of Carlos Bulosan
“Filipino writers in the Philippines [and the United States] have a great task ahead of them, but also a great future. The field is wide open. They should rewrite everything written about the Philippines and the Filipino people from the materialist, dialectical point of view — this being, the only [way] to understand and interpret […]
Philippines: State of Emergency for the U.S. Empire
On the morning of February 24, 2006, President Gloria Arroyo issued Proclamation 1017 (PP 1017), which declared a State of Emergency throughout the Philippines. Using identical words as those of Ferdinand Marcos when he declared martial law in 1972, Arroyo ordered the armed forces to suppress “any act of insurrection or rebellion.” Arroyo claimed there […]
Getting to the Point of No Return: A Conversation with Andre Vltchek
Andre Vltchek Andre Vltchek is a Czech-born American writer who has written for Der Spiegel, Asahi Shimbun, the Guardian, and many other international papers. He has reported on the violence of the neo-liberal order from all over the globe, but especially from Indonesia, about which he has made a ground-breaking documentary: Terlena: Breaking of a […]
Art, Truth, & Politics
In 1958 I wrote the following: There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false. I believe that these assertions still make sense and do […]
Japan’s Modern Historical Loop
The news of world affairs these days is highly unlikely to delight the Japanese survivors of the two nuclear terrorist attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States’ armed forces sixty years ago. Those attacks were not meant to convince the Japanese leaders to surrender, something which they were about to do anyway, but […]
Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda: Part Three
In Part Two, we examined the rapidly changing nature of post-secondary teaching, one of the two reasonably skilled jobs among the top ten jobs estimated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to show the highest job growth between 2002 and 2012. The other job is nursing. Job experts claim that there is a […]
Ring-Tone Revolution in the Philippines
“Hello, Garci. . . . Will I win by one million votes?” is ringing on cellphones throughout the Philippines. It is the taped voice of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo talking with commissioner of elections Virgilio Garcillano, nicknamed “Garci” in May 2004 before the election results were announced. Arroyo did, in fact, win by a million […]
