Filed under: Asia | Tags: China, Development, Exports, Global Economy, Social Unrest
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25 June 2009
Source: World Socialist Website
The world’s second largest exporter, China, registered a record year-on-year fall in exports of 26.4 percent in May. The result followed similar trends in other export-led Asian economies including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, indicating continuing weak global demand.
China’s May export figure was worse than the 22.6 percent fall in April and is the seventh consecutive month of decline. The slide of exports is the worst since the data is collected in 1995. Imports also fell 25.2 percent year-on-year in May—a further indication of weakening exports as China imports large amounts of semi-finished goods and components for re-export.
Other Asian exporters have been hit by the recession in the US, Europe and Japan. South Korea and Taiwan saw 25-30 percent annual falls in exports and imports in May and Japanese exports tumbled by 40.9 percent. Overall world trade volume plunged by (more…)
Filed under: Africa | Tags: Africa, Al-Shahab, China, Ehiopian Government, Illegal Fishing, India, Invasion, Islamic Courts, Islamic Courts Union, Mogadishu, NATO, Occupation, Piracy, Puntland, Russia, Somali Pirates, Somalia, Somaliland, United States, Washington
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( Dated Piece – 26 December 2008 )
Source: Party For Socialism and Liberation
Piracy smokescreen used to step up military action
At the behest of the United States, the U.N. Security Council unanimously voted Dec. 16 to authorize nations to pursue Somali pirates onto land, an action which had previously been prohibited. The resolution comes at a critical juncture for Somalia, and in the shadow of Washington’s politico-military strategy in the African continent.
The pirates were originally groups of fisherman who, due to the stateless nature of Somalia, turned to piracy to combat illegal fishing vessels from around the world. They soon found their new trade much more lucrative.
The resolution also called for a regional office to coordinate the actions of a number of nations that currently have naval forces deployed in (more…)
Filed under: Africa | Tags: African Union, Capitalist Powers, Captialism, China, Colonialism, Colonization, Destablization, Economic Crisis, Genocide, Imperialism, Imperialists, International Criminal Court, Iraq, Iraq genocide, Iraqi Government, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Morgan Tsvangirai, Racism, Robert Mugabe, Sanctions, South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, United Nations, Washington, White Supremacy, ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwean People
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( Dated Piece – 5 December 2008 )
Source: Party For Socialism and Liberation
Power-sharing agreement fails to break political stalemate
Zimbabwe has been neck-deep in a political and economic crisis following in the wake of a Sept. 15 power-sharing agreement between the major political parties. The ruling ZANU-PF and the Western-backed opposition Movement for Democratic Change have been deadlocked over how ministries in a new national unity government would be allocated between the parties, with the highly coveted security ministries at the center of the dispute.
The MDC wants control of the police and internal security, which ZANU-PF is reluctant to give up in order to avoid being brought to trial before the International Criminal Court for violent clashes between the state and ZANU-PF forces on one side and the MDC on the other.
As a result of the impasse, President Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF party have continued to (more…)
Filed under: Middle East | Tags: 1967 Invasion, Arab Countries, Arab Intellecutals, Arab Monarchies, Arab Nationalism, Baghdad Pact, Bermuda Conference, Britain, China, Cold War, Colonialism, Denationalization, Egypt, European Colonization, France, Frantz Fanon, Gamal Abdul-Nasser, Gaza, Gaza Ghetto Uprising, gaza Strip, Gazans, Green Zone, Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Iranian Threat, Israel, Israel's Arab Allies, Israeli Intelligence, Isreali Massacre, Jordanian Army, Lebanon Invasion 1982, Mahmoud Abas, Moroccan dictatorship, Muslims, Nasser, Nasserism, Nazi, Nazi Genocide, Nazi-Occupied Europe, Neoliberal Arab Intellectuals, Oil Money, Omani Dictatorship, Oslo Agreement, Palestine, Palestinian Bantustans, Palestinian Liberation Organization, Palestinian People, PLO, Racism, Racist, Ramallah, Saudi Media Outlets, Settler-Colony, Soviet Union, Szmul Zygielbojm, the Bund, Third World Revolutionism, Tzipi Livni, US, US Aid, US Dictatorial Allies, Warsaw Ghetto, White Supremacy, Zionism, Zionist, Zionist Entity
4 January 2009
Source: Electronic Intifada
One is often baffled by the ironies of international relations and the alliances they foster. Take for example the Israeli colonial settlement that had declared war on the Palestinian people and several Arab countries since its inception while at the same time it built alliances with many Arab regimes and with Palestinian leaders.
While Hashemite-Zionist relations and Maronite Church-Zionist relations have always been known and documented, there has been less documentation of the services that Israel has provided and continues to provide to Arab regimes over the decades. It is now recognized that Israel’s 1967 invasion of Egypt aimed successfully to destroy (more…)
Filed under: Middle East | Tags: Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Ankara, Assualt on Gaza, Bush, China, Egypt, European Union, Fatah, fundamentalism, Gaza, gaza Strip, General Shlomo Gazit, Geneva, Hamas, IDF, Islamic Jihad, Islamists, Ismail Abu Shanab, Israel, Israeli Military Intelligence, Lebanon, London Review of Books, Mubarak dictatorship, Muslim communitites, NATO, Neve Gordon, Obama, Oslo Accords, Palestine, Palestine Authority, Palestinian Ghettoes, Palestinians, PLO, Russia, Sara Roy, Taba, UN Security Council, Washington
Source: Guardian
( 31 December, 2008 ) — The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely, as Neve Gordon has rightly observed, to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the right and the far right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon in 2006, sit back and watch.
Washington, as is its wont, blames the (more…)
Filed under: "canada", Local, North America | Tags: "canada", Africa, African-American, African-Canadian, Angola, Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Racist, Assatta Shakur, Black Action Defense Committee, Black Community, Black Left, Black Nationalism, Black Panthers, Black Power, Black Social Movements, Black Working class, Caribbean, China, Civil Rights Movement, CLR James, COINTELPRO, Criminalization, Cuban Revolution, Detriot Rebellion, Grace Lee Boggs, Guinea-Bissau, Huey Newton, James Boggs, Ku Klux Klan, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Malcolm X, Mao Zedong, Militant, NAACP, National Liberation Movements, Neoliberal Globalization, Poverty, Racism, Revolutionary, Robert F. Williams, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, The Revolutionary Action Movement, Toronto, Vietnam, Violence, Watts Rebellion, White Supremacy, Women's Liberation
The following book review has been reproduced from the 5th Volume of Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action. http://uppingtheanti.org/node/2781
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Muhammad Ahmad. We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations, 1960-1975. Charles H. Kerr Publishing, 2007
Toronto’s Black community has long suffered a crisis of increasing poverty, racism, and violence. This is largely the result of the oppression that African-Canadian people have endured through the implementation of neoliberal policies and the expansion of both the police state and the prison industrial complex. In Canada, African-Canadian people (the majority of whom are located amongst the lowest ranks of the working class) are confronted with two primary problems. First, a growing Black underclass is unable to compete for scarce decent paying jobs. Second, the Canadian ruling class – responding to the crisis of neoliberal globalization with their wars on drugs, guns, and gangs – is criminalizing Black working-class youth and expanding the prison industrial complex. In recent years, the Black left has responded to this crisis by trying to organize Black youth at the grassroots level, and by trying to build new mass organizations that can continue the legacy of militant anti-racist (more…)
Filed under: Africa | Tags: Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo Zaïre, American CIA, Banyamulenge resistance, Belgium, Berlin Conference, Burundi, China, Coltan, Congo Free State, Congolese Independence, Copper, Democratic Republic of Congo, Diamonds, European Settlers, Force Publique, Genocide, Gold, Hutu Puppet Regime, Imperialism, Israeli Mossad, Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, Joseph Désiré ‘Sese Seko’ Mobutu, Joseph Kabila, Joseph Kasavubu, Katanga, King Leopold, Laurent Kabila, Lenin, Leopold's Holocaust, Mineral Wealth, Moïse Katumbim, Molybdenum, Patrice Lumumba, Paul Kagame, Refugee Camps, Rwanda, Rwanda Genocide, Rwandan Tutsis, Slave Labour, Sony, Tin, Uganda, Uranium, US-Backed Invasion, War, Zaire
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The following is from the December 2008 issue of the Proletarian, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
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Genocidal war has raged in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since the 1998 US-backed invasion by the forces of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. At the last estimate, the war has claimed a staggering 5.4 million lives. [i.]
Yet this conflict, the most bloody since the second world war, has generated astoundingly little press coverage, and a diplomatic and political censorship over a 10-year period on the part of western governments that points to complicity, rather than ignorance or indifference.
Congo’s rich store of (more…)
