Place: Asia

Japan’s 5.26 trillion-yen fiscal 2019 defense budget set a new record for the fifth straight year, as the country continued to beef up its armed forces while keeping a wary eye fixed on North Korea and China. The

This is a critical moment in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2019, uprisings have emerged in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran. All have opposed authoritarianism, neoliberalism, poverty, corruption, religious fundamentalism and sectarianism. Women have been active participants

Teresa Wright, Popular Protest in China, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 2018
and
Jessica Chen Weiss, Powerful Patriots: Nationalist Protest in China’s Foreign Relations, Oxford University Press, 2014.
Teresa Wright’s concise but comprehensive overview, Popular Protest in China, has only become more relevant in the

Human beings have been repeatedly subjected to mass displacement and migration due to war, strife and conflict originating on the grounds of religion, race or ethnicity. If a “sneak peak” is taken into the pages of documented human history of

Sabrina, a graphic novel by Nick Drnaso, is the first graphic novel to be long listed for the Man Booker Prize in the award’s long history. It came as a surprise to many of the loyalists of the literary community

Resistance to the Indonesian government continues in West Papua, and it has a history.
Shortly after declaring independence in 1961, following the departure of the Dutch (who controlled the region), West Papua was invaded by Indonesian forces—Indonesia felt as though the

Remember when the Berlin Wall came down? I do.
Glued to TVs in DeKalb, Illinois, my college friends and I watched in envy and amazement as the young Berliners on our screens swarmed all over that unholy edifice attacking it with

In early December of 2017 the Trump Administration officially withdrew the United States from the UN Global Pact on Migration, claiming the 2016 accord “undermine[s] the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders.”

Editors’ note: This is the third of three articles providing analysis of what’s happening now in China – and why.
China moved towards creating a business-friendly environment for private enterprises in the reform and opening up period in the late 1970s.

Trade and currency wars, financial volatility and economic turbulence are now the most important features of the world economy.

The elements of a new international financial crisis are in place. Although we do not know when it will break out, it

Facebook Livestream Dialogue between Chinese, Algerian, Sudanese, Iranian, Venezuelan and U.S. Labor Activists on International Labor Solidarity.

Editors’ note: This is the second of three articles providing analysis of what’s happening now in China – and why.
[Interview with the author on Democracy Now.]
On the U.S. left, China is treated for the most part as an afterthought, an

The irony of India celebrating its 72nd year of national independence as it orchestrates a coup and military lock-down on the occupied territory of Kashmir was apparently lost on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi used the occasion of an annual

Editors’ note: This is the first of three articles providing analysis of what’s happening now in China – and why.

Hong Kong Teachers in Protest
The people of Hong Kong are in the fight of their lives against their own government and the Chinese Communist Party. Carrie Lam, the enclave’s chief executive, appointed by Beijing, earlier this year attempted to rush

Fifty years ago this fall, a campus upsurge turned opposition to the Vietnam War into a genuine mass movement.
On October 15, 1969, several million students, along with community-based activists, participated in anti-war events under the banner of the “Vietnam Moratorium.”

As the Indian government resorts to annexation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir at gunpoint, detaining its political leaders and cutting off all means of communication, we extend our solidarity to the people of Jammu and Kashmir as they

Ecosocialists must stand in support of the millions of democracy protesters in Hong Kong and call on American trade unions and the left to join us. The Chinese Communist Party is on a suicide mission to destroy planet Earth in

Many Iranian youth admire the radical direct actions and the mass mobilizations of Hong Kong youth in the streets. We honor the memory of the rebellious youth in Tiananmen Square who were massacred by the Chinese regime in June 1989. Your struggle is our struggle. Your victory will be our victory, and our loss will be our loss.

We have been slimed. An article by Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal on the recent Socialism 2019 Conference — which appears on their rancid website, The GrayZone, and is apparently being widely circulated — is a scurrilous attack not only

One of the most important issues of our time is the intensifying rivalry between the imperialist Great Powers: the United States, China, the EU, Russia, and Japan. Diplomatic rows, sanctions, trade wars, military tensions, and, ultimately, major wars now loom