Subjects Archives: Ecology

  • Their Crisis or Ours?  The Battle over the World’s Food Supply Relocates to Rome

      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 […]

  • Florida Farmworkers Chop Up Burger King

    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 […]

  • On The Eve of Republic in Nepal: An Exclusive Interview for MRZine with CPN(Maoist) Leader Prachanda

    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 […]

  • An Arab Woman Running for Mayor of Tel Aviv

      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 […]

  • India’s Emerging Food Security Crisis: The Consequences of the Neoliberal Assault on the Public Distribution System

      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 […]

  • The Next Step in Nepal:An Interview with Dr. Baburam Bhattarai of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

    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 […]

  • Liberalizing Food Trade to Death

    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.  […]

  • Global Economic Crisis: Interview with John Bellamy Foster

    The current global financial crisis is said to originate with a few dodgy “sub-prime” mortgages made by US banks to poor people. Yes, the financial crisis that began in late 2007 is associated with the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market.  But that is just one aspect of a much larger financial crisis and that […]

  • The Complexities of Zimbabwe

      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 […]

  • Fueling Food Shortages

    Where is Harry Chapin when you need him?  The popular folk singer (Cat’s in the Cradle), who lost his life in an auto crash 27 years ago, was an indefatigable force of nature against hunger — in this country and around the world. To hear Harry speak out against the scourge of hunger in a […]

  • An acid test

    While on May 1st, Workers Day, our people are joyfully celebrating this year, which marks half a century since the triumph of the Revolution and the 70th anniversary of the creation of the CTC, our sister republic of Bolivia, committed to the health, education and guaranteed security of its people, is just a few days or even hours away from suffering dramatic events.

  • China Still a Small Player in Africa

    “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, […]

  • Making a Killing from Hunger: We Need to Overturn Food Policy, Now!

    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 […]

  • Rebuke Clinton for Threatening to “Totally Obliterate” Iran

      On Tuesday, the same day as the Pennsylvania primary, Senator Hillary Clinton promised to “totally obliterate” Iran should Tehran develop a nuclear weapon and use it against Israel. Her comments, which were aired on Good Morning America, come at a time of increasing tensions between the US and Iran amidst allegations of Iran’s involvement […]

  • Climate Crisis — Urgent Action Needed Now!

      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: <[email protected]>.). It is being distributed to environmental, trade union, Indigenous, migrant, religious and community organisations […]

  • Capitalism and Climate Change

    John Bellamy Foster, Marxist ecologist and editor of Monthly Review, addressed the Climate Change I Social Change Conference on “Capitalism and Climate Change,” Sydney, April 11, 2008.  Foster’s talk was part of a panel discussing “Climate Change and Its Social Roots.”  The conference was organized by Green Left Weekly.  Below is Foster’s talk in five […]

  • France Back in NATO?  Is This for Real?

    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. […]

  • Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay’s Next President

    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 […]

  • China and the World Market: Thirty Years of the “Reform” Policy

    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

    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. […]