Subjects Archives: Agriculture

Over the past decade, a new rise of mass struggles in Latin America has sparked an encounter between revolutionists of that region and many of those based in the imperialist countries.  In many of these struggles, as in Bolivia under the presidency of Evo Morales, Indigenous peoples are in the lead. Latin American revolutionists are […]

  The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is currently holding an emergency summit in Rome that will be focusing on the ongoing global food crisis, but rejuvenating and protecting agriculturalists does not seem to be on the agenda. In the past couple of months, the attention of the world has been directed at the issue […]

The dusty calles (streets) and campos (fields) in Immokalee, Florida are abuzz with the news of a fresh victory over a fast food giant: Miami-headquartered Burger King.  Those farmworkers/campesinos who remain in Immokalee — the tomato season there ended in April — will probably get their news through the low-powered radio station, Radio Conciencia, a […]

It is 14th Jeth, 2065, [Tuesday, May 27th, 2008] in Nepal, the day before the Constituent Assembly is to convene and declare Nepal a full Republic.  The king remains in his palace.  The form of the new government, who will lead it, whether the old parliamentary parties will join in a Maoist-led government or, as […]

  Anyone walking a month ago along Rothschild Boulevard, one of Tel Aviv’s central streets, was probably surprised to see some 200 Arab women along with Jewish artists and intellectuals, marching to demand the right to work in dignity.  Only a couple of days after the attack in Jerusalem, these women made their presence felt […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its May 2008 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. Today, but few can recall memories of the Bengal famine of 1943 and 1944.  Most disturbingly, after almost two decades of “reform” and a full decade or more […]

Q. On May Day what was the message that the party was putting to the workers? On the historic May Day our message to the working class was, we are making revolution in Nepal in a very indigenous way, but we have a lot of challenges to face.  The reactionaries won’t leave the stage of […]

Introduction People across the world, from Mexico to Mozambique, have once again been taking to the streets in protest.  The reason is to demand that their most basic need be met: access to food.  With food prices skyrocketing over the last few months, billions of people around the globe have been relentlessly driven towards starvation.  […]

  A month after Zimbabwe’s March 29 elections, the winner of the presidential poll remains unknown.  The delay adds considerable additional complexity to the many undercurrents of the country’s problems. By virtue of the suspicious, poorly explained delay in announcing who won the presidential poll, the authorities in Harare have ensured that the only outcome […]

“What I find a bit reprehensible is the tendency of certain Western voices to . . . raising concerns about China’s attempt to get into the African market because it is a bit hypocritical for Western states to be concerned about how China is approaching Africa when they have had centuries of relations with Africa, […]

For some time now the rising cost of food all over the world has taken households, governments and the media by storm.  The price of wheat has gone up by 130% over the last year.1 Rice has doubled in price in Asia in the first three months of 2008 alone,2 and just last week it […]

  The following statement was started by the participants in the Climate Change|Social Change conference.  Anyone who agrees with it is welcome to add their signature, and an updated list of signatories will be issued on a regular basis (contact: <climateconf@greenleft.org.au>.). It is being distributed to environmental, trade union, Indigenous, migrant, religious and community organisations […]

Nicolas Sarkozy has gone out of his way to sound pro-American.  He made a special visit in 2007 to Kennebunkport to have a cozy meeting with George W. Bush.  Since neither spoke the other’s language, they must have had translators.  So perhaps I might be allowed to try to translate what has been going on. […]

Fernando Lugo, a bearded, left-leaning bishop, is expected to win Paraguay’s historic presidential election on April 20th, upsetting a 60-year rule by the right-wing Colorado Party.  While escaping the heat of the Paraguayan sun by sitting in the shade of an orange tree, farmer union leader Tomas Zayas explains, “If Lugo is elected, it will […]

It is now thirty years since the People’s Republic of China announced its market reform policy at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in December 1978, under the then new leadership of Deng Xiaoping.  The policy followed the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the purging […]

When Henry Kissinger opines in an op-ed in the Washington Post, it behooves us all to pay attention.  There is a message there.  Kissinger has always presented himself as the supreme “realist” proponent on U.S. imperial policy.  But he has also always taken care not to distance himself too far from the conservative political Establishment. […]

The battle against US imperialism and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has once again been taken to the streets of Mexico City.  On the 31st of January, hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers came out in protest against the free trade onslaught that the people of Mexico have been subjected to.  This time, […]

A two-day national agrarian strike against a pending Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States ended on Wednesday February 20th, leaving four farmers dead after President Alan Garcia declared a state of emergency and ordered a violent crackdown.  Farmers are demanding financial support from the government in the face of a predicted increase in […]

Except for a hardy band of neo-con optimists and the official apologists of the Bush regime, almost everyone is agreed today that the United States has gotten itself into a nasty, self-wounding mess in Iraq where it is fighting a drawn-out guerrilla war it cannot win.  At the same time, a very large number of […]

Written hurriedly in Caracas February 2008 Background These are some brief impressions and reflections in the midst of a short visit to Venezuela.  For 10 days I traveled with a wonderful group of 23, mainly from the New York City area (with delegates from Washington, DC, Washington State, and myself from Vermont).  It was led […]