Subjects Archives: Agriculture

  • Venezuela: In Transition towards Socialism?

    Nationalization and Workers’ Control: Achievements and Limitations The economic, social and political situation in Venezuela has changed a lot since the failure of the constitutional reform in December 2007, which acted as a warning to the Chávez government.1  This failure had the effect however of reviving the debate on the need to have a socialist […]

  • Are Immigrants “Good for the Economy”?

    U.S. progressives have expressed a great deal of concern about the effects of anti-immigrant hysteria in the general population, from criminal attacks on immigrants to vicious legislation like Arizona’s SB 1070.  But instead of just condemning the hysteria, maybe we need to ask ourselves what we’ve been doing to counter it. Not very much, according […]

  • FDI as a Means of Financing Development

    Discussions on foreign direct investment (FDI) as a means of financing development often suffer from two different shortcomings.  The first, a very basic one, confuses real with financial resources.  The second does not distinguish between different forms of foreign direct investment.  The question of financing development is concerned with finding the real resources for increasing […]

  • Prosperity or Plunder? Nigeria Slipping at an Oily Crossroads

    “Disaster” doesn’t begin to describe the troubled oil scene in Nigeria.  Last June, in the immediate wake of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the New York Times ran an article exposing a crisis in Nigeria that should have been capable of piquing the conscience of even the most hardened oil barons.  It […]

  • Tehran Zoo

      Arash Khakpour and Arash Radkia are filmmakers based in Tehran, Iran.  For more information, visit <www.tehran-zoo.com>. | Print  

  • Egypt: Growing Protests over Water Shortages

    Tens of thousands of people in Egypt — Africa’s second most populous country — have taken to the streets in recent months to protest against water shortages, a fact which goes some way to explaining the government’s reluctance to relinquish its current share of River Nile water. On 26 July, 600 people from the southern […]

  • Iceland after the Fall

      Financial crises and uncertainty go hand in hand; some make sacrifices and others plan on having to.  But how many countries stricken by the global crisis actually feel existentially threatened? Iceland does.  Since the start of the kreppa (“catastrophe” in Icelandic) in the fall of 2008, the small island nation of 320,000 has had […]

  • Socialism or Reformism?

    I We live at a time when resistance to the inequities that exist in this world and the struggle for a better world are almost totally detached from any striving for socialism.  Climate change, imperialist aggression, forcible dispossession of peasants in the name of “development”, oppression of the tribal population, gender discrimination, and ecological degradation […]

  • Après moi, le déluge: War, Debt, and Revolution

      Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution.  Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007.  x + 415 pp.  Notes, bibliography, and index.  $39.95 U.S.  ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12499-5 (hb). The subtitle of Michael Sonenscher’s book calls to mind at least two different, and separate, historical problems.  First, […]

  • Portugal: The Unfinished Revolution

      Ronald H. Chilcote.  The Portuguese Revolution: State and Class in the Transition to Democracy.  Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010.  xix + 316 pp.  $79.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7425-6792-4. The Portuguese Revolution that brought regime change on April 25, 1974, did not bring about a revolution: the popular revolutionary elements that tried to move the […]

  • Cochabamba Conference: Climate Radicals Leave Much to Ponder

    The climate crisis and efforts to tackle it have witnessed unprecedented mobilisation of popular movements, NGOs, think tanks, experts, intellectuals and activists, as was evident at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen last December.  Of course, this “civil society” activism has embraced a very wide spectrum of opinion.  Amongst the most vociferous, at various gatherings as […]

  • Food Sovereignty Tour + Agroecology Short Course in Venezuela

      STUDY TOUR TO VENEZUELA: Food Sovereignty, Social Movements and Social Change July 19 to August 2, 2010 Please register asap! You are invited to participate in a two-week study tour to study food sovereignty, social movements, and social change in Venezuela, 19 July to 2 August, 2010.  The tour will examine issues of land […]

  • Arizona: Grassroots Organizing to Repeal All Anti-Immigrant Laws

      Joel Olson is a member of the Repeal Coalition in Flagstaff, Arizona.  Repeal spearheaded the grassroots mobilization that successfully pressured the Flagstaff City Council to pass an injunction threatening a lawsuit against the state for its anti-immigrant law SB 1070. SB 1070 has clearly reignited the immigrant rights movement.  What is SB 1070 and […]

  • Pakistan: Beyond the Sound Bites

    D. Raghunandan: [Media reports of] Pakistan tend to be overdetermined, or overwhelmed, by the issues of terrorism and extremism.  Professor Aijaz Ahmad . . . recently spent some time in Pakistan, and we thought this offers a good opportunity to look at other aspects of life in Pakistan.  Aijaz, what do you think Indians and […]

  • Interview with Gopalji, Spokesperson of the Special Area Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in a Forest in Jharkhand, Eastern India

    Communism in the rest of the world seems to have collapsed.  What hope do you have of achieving a socialist state in India? The claim that there is no hope for socialism and communism, that they are dead, is mere propaganda unleashed by the imperialists and the apologists of capitalism.  The 20th century saw the […]

  • Cosmopolitanism and Secularism: Working Hypotheses

      Listen to Étienne Balibar: Étienne Balibar: . . . I will be trying to reverse the implicit rule of this kind of event.  Far from coming with positions for which I would argue, I mean already established positions for which I would argue, trying to convince others that they can be shared, I’m coming […]

  • GM Crops: The Societal Context of Technologies

    The Bt brinjal debate has featured technological worries relating to genetically modified crops which appear relatively minor in comparison to the critical issue of who controls Indian agriculture and therefore food security in India.  While there cannot be a mere technological fix to the problems of Indian agriculture, technology — and therefore GM — will […]

  • Spill Here, Spill Now

      “So today we’re announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration. . . . We’ll protect areas that are vital to tourism, the environment, and our national security.” — Barack Obama, 31 March 2010 “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills.  They are technologically very advanced.  […]

  • BP: The Worst Safety and Environmental Record of All Oil Companies Operating in the United States

      BP is a London-based oil company with the worst safety and environmental record of any oil company operating in America.  In just the last few years, BP has pled guilty to two crimes and paid over $730 million in fines and settlements to the US government, state governments, and civil lawsuit judgments for environmental […]

  • No Indian Miracle

      Paul Jay: So there’s a lot of talk about the growth and expansion in India and China, and especially India these days.  We’re hearing again about the Indian miracle.  Whose miracle is it, anyway?  And is it such? Jayati Ghosh: No, it’s not actually a miracle.  First of all, let me clarify.  India and […]