Geography Archives: Southeast Asia

  • Philippine Revolutionary Leader Arrested in the Netherlands

    Jose Maria Sison has been a leading figure of the Philippine national democratic revolution for almost 40 years.  He is one of the pioneers who revived the anti-imperialist movement in the Philippines in the early 1960s, and he was elected chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968 when it was refounded on […]

  • On the Concept “Totalitarianism” and Its Role in Current Political Discourse

    A Cardinal Principle of Modern Liberalism The basic assumption of modern liberalism is that freedom is involved in an ongoing, all encompassing struggle against a dangerous enemy, totalitarianism.  The existence of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were and still are presented as the quintessential totalitarian formations.  Liberal thinkers stress that totalitarianism is on the […]

  • The US and the 21st Century

    Introductory Note: This essay is an adaptation and reworking of a historic 1963 document of the Students for a Democratic Society.  Its original was mimeographed in several thousand copies and distributed jointly by the SDS National Office and the newly-created Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP).  America and the New Era was intended to be […]

  • Keep on Pushin’

    TODAY’S ANTIWAR DILEMMAS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE In March 1965, before ordering the first deployment of U.S. ground troops to Vietnam (U.S. “advisers” had been there for years) President Lyndon Johnson told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara: “I don’t think anything is gonna be as bad as losing, and I don’t see any way of winning.” […]

  • 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 […]

  • Dignity Returns

    “Dignity Returns” is becoming a unique clothing label and logo in Thailand, a “workers’ brand” at a factory run and owned entirely by its 30 workers in Bangkok.  The Solidarity Factory in western Bangkok is an example for garment workers anywhere in the world.  Turning out T-shirts, headbands, kids’ clothes, in an operation without bosses, […]

  • It’s Not Race or Class — It’s Race and Class: An Interview with Roderick Bush

    WE ARE NOT WHAT WE SEEM: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century by Roderick D. BushBUY THIS BOOK Roderick Bush is an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at St. John’s University in New York.  He is the author of We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in […]

  • Nepal: Witnessing the People’s Movement

      As the Nepalese people’s struggle against the autocratic feudal monarchy to establish a democratic republic hit a high point during the month of April, it coincided with the arrival from India of the Second International Road-Building Brigade.  While the old oppressive and exploitative feudalist world was being attacked and dismantled in the country’s towns […]

  • The Dogs of War — Barking at the Moon?

    The current debate in Congress over the war in Iraq has put the myth of victory and its opposite — surrender– back on the front pages.  These are actually more than myths; they are genuine misrepresentations of what’s happening in Iraq — lies, in other words.  It doesn’t really matter, though, because those who want […]

  • On Neoliberalism: An Interview with David Harvey

    A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM by David HarveyBUY THIS BOOK Neoliberalism has left an indelible, smoldering mark on our world for the last thirty years.  Eminent Marxist geographer David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, 2005), spoke earlier this year to Sasha Lilley, of the radical radio program Against the Grain, about […]

  • Constituent Assembly Now!

      Yesterday’s so-called royal proclamation does not have any worth and significance other than fulfilling feudal arrogance and underrating the great Nepalese sea of the masses, which, chanting slogans of constituent assembly and republic, is flowing into the streets to give a new direction to the world by creative application of people’s revolution in the […]

  • Mass Upsurge in Thailand: Students and Workers on the March

      “Predictions are suspect.  But something new is happening. . . .” — Paul Buhle1 A people’s movement against the “class war from above” is beginning to crystallize across Thailand.  Students and unionized workers have suddenly emerged as a new force in the streets in helping to organize a broad-based people’s alliance to oust the […]

  • 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 […]

  • Naming The System

      Most of us grew up thinking that the United States was a strong but humble nation, that involved itself in world affairs only reluctantly, that respected the integrity of other nations and other systems, and that engaged in wars only as a last resort. This was a nation with no large standing army, with […]

  • A Means to Effect the Peaceful Overthrow of a Tyrant

    The summer 2005 revelations by former FBI assistant director W. Mark Felt that he was the source known as Deep Throat that helped bring down Richard Nixon has revived talk among certain US residents regarding the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.  While I have great reservations about the likelihood of such an event […]

  • Commodity Fetishism: A Concept for Organizing against Sweatshop Labor and Neoliberal Globalization

    Two URPE Insights First, I should start by assuring you that I have not gone round the bend. I am not about to suggest that we dust off our volumes of Capital, corner some poor unsuspecting soul, and then launch into some long-winded exegesis of the concept of commodity fetishism. That sounds more like a […]

  • 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 […]

  • Border Vigilantes and Mass Migration

    Vigilantism along the U.S.-Mexico border, which dates back to the U.S. conquest of Mexico, refuses to die.  The latest vigilante group, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, claims 15,000 volunteers willing to patrol the border in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.  During April, the group staged a border watch in southern Arizona to stop illegal […]

  • “Pas de vacances pour les bourgeois!”

    “Pas de vacances pour les bourgeois!” (no vacation for the bourgeois) was a favorite slogan at the Sorbonne during the May 1968 nationwide revolt in France. Not supported by any established political parties (including the CPF), the movement which originally started among students who took over the universities came to include workers who occupied factories […]

  • Lift the Cap on Social Security Taxes

    My four-year-old son is fond of asking me, “how goes the work?” Well, if he means working for economic justice, the answer is, “not so well, Sam.” Oh, there are signs of hope. The anti-globalization movement has challenged prerogatives of capital in the international economy. And the Bush administration’s attempt to privatize social security by […]