Subjects Archives: Agriculture

One of the greatest insights of Karl Marx was his perception of the capitalist system as a self-acting, self-driven and “spontaneous” order.  Far from being a malleable system, where intervention by the State could be used for bringing about basic changes in the mode of its functioning, in which case of course the need to […]

  After a decade of political polarization and international standoff, the debate on Zimbabwe has finally been opened up to a wider reading public, thanks to Mahmood Mamdani’s “Lessons of Zimbabwe,” appearing in the London Review of Books (04/12/2008).  Renowned scholars, within and without Africa, have broken their silence and have taken public positions.  The […]

  Despite Promises to Facilitate Humanitarian Aid, Policy of Deliberate Obstruction Continues Even after the Ceasefire: The amount of industrial diesel Israel has permitted to enter Gaza is just 64% of the total needed to operate the power station. Since the fighting ended, Israel has totally obstructed the transfer of vital spare parts needed to […]

The Geir Haarde government of Iceland became the first in the world to fall in the wake of the financial meltdown.  Now, Iceland has a provisional coalition government, headed by the world’s first lesbian prime minister, Johanna Sigurdardottit of the Social Democratic Alliance.  Left-Green Movement Chairman Steingrimur J. Sigfusson is reportedly now appointed Minister of […]

  In January 1984, mass movements began to rise again in Brazil.  The working class was reorganizing, accumulating organic forces.  Underground parties, such as the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), etc., were already in the streets.  We had won only a partial amnesty, but a majority of exiles had returned. […]

I have a six-year-old son.  His name is Jin-Gyu.  He lives off me, yet he is quite capable of making a living.  I pay for his lodging, food, education, and health care.  But millions of children of his age already have jobs.  Daniel Defoe figured out in the 18th century that children are able to […]

Human rights, including the right of workers to form trade unions, to strike, and to bargain collectively with employers, are universal and indivisible rights which inhere in all human beings by virtue of their humanity. The Liberal Party government of the Canadian province of Ontario, however, is challenging this notion by calling on the Supreme […]

Academics, Intellectuals and Members of Parliament from around the World Call for Charges against Giles Ji Ungpakorn to be Dropped Academics from U.K, Canada, France, South Africa, Ireland, Australia, South Korea, Greece and the U.S.A., including those from Oxford University and SOAS London University, have signed an open letter calling for charges of lèse majesté, […]

  “When I began hill walking in Palestine a quarter of a century ago I was not aware that I was traveling in a vanishing landscape.” — Raja Shehadeh, Author, Palestinian Walks (2008) For centuries, the landscape in historic Palestine was dominated by agriculture, in an organic relationship between agrarian villages such as Husan and […]

Amid the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, the agricultural sector continues to struggle.  Although the plunge in agricultural output over the last few years has often been commented on in the Western media, little or no attention is paid to the complex factors contributing to that decline.  Instead, matters are reduced to a simple generalization.  It […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]

  “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]

Introduction Indigenous peoples in Indo-Afro-Latin America, especially Bolivia and Ecuador, are rising up to take control of their own lives and act in solidarity with others to save the planet.  They are calling for new, yet ancient, practices of plurinational, participatory, and intercultural democracy.  They champion ecologically sustainable development; community-based autonomies; and solidarity with other […]

Over the 1980s and 1990s we witnessed the simultaneous rise of two reactionary political projects, Hindutva and neoliberalism, to a position of dominance in India.  Such a combination is not unusual, in that neoliberalism is usually allied with and promoted by socially reactionary forces (such as the hyper-nationalism of the “bureaucratic-authoritarian” dictatorships in Latin America, […]

It is too soon to know exactly what material damage was caused by Hurricane Paloma, the third hurricane of great intensity to hit us in less than 10 weeks during the present hurricane season, but, facing this new blow dealt by nature, we Cubans can affirm that it is fortunate that we have a Revolution.  […]

  Dikmen Valley in Ankara, Turkey was originally Dikmen Village.   The village goes back to the 1950s, but it wasn’t settled in the form of a squatter [gecekondu in Turkish] neighborhood till around 1968.  The valley has five etapes.  The first and second etapes were settled the earliest while the fourth and fifth etapes were […]

Since the second half of the 1990s, the internal public debt of the world’s developing countries has increased significantly.  This increase is now reaching alarming proportions in a number of middle-income countries.  While some very poor countries have not yet been affected, the historical trend indicates a continuing rise in the debt level for developing […]