The question is, how did we let it get to this point — how have the American people allowed their government for decades to be so hypocritical, and to support these authoritarian regimes, and to continue at this very moment to support some authoritarian regimes and not others? SUZI WEISSMAN INTERVIEWED Mark LeVine on March [...]

While the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) experiences difficulties in recruiting workers willing to go to Fukushima to clean up the damaged reactors, the WHO is planning to conduct an epidemiological survey on the catastrophe. This is the first of two reports by Paul Jobin offering a worker-centered analysis of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Liquidators [...]

“Lean production is a literally global phenomenon.  Much of what is mistakenly called globalization, or more accurately the creation of international production networks, is based on adoption of lean production by capitalists across the world.  The international spread of lean production has both pulled workers apart, pitting them against one another in competition for jobs, [...]

while the nation of working poor booted  down to permanent  hunger and poverty. The total list of executives with such salaries would grow further as more companies reveal their figures in the coming days. For the previous fiscal 2009-10, there were more than 800 corporate honchos with a pay package of over Rs one crore. [...]

“Adivasis have been increasingly harmed by industrial mining projects. The state uses colonial legislation such as the Land Acquisition Act to dispossess them of their land and sell it to mining companies, both Indian and foreign. However, the state has been far less active in providing the benevolent functions of the state, such as healthcare, [...]

“I am not a sympathiser or opposer of Naxals” : Binayak Sen “47 per cent of the children aged below five were underweight. One-third of our newborns are malnourished at birth. Malnourishment at birth contributed significantly to problems during adult life. A large sections of our population are in a chronic state of malnutrition.” such large sections [...]

“Her name was Africa. His name was IMF. He set her up to be pillaged, to go without health care, to starve. He laid waste to her to enrich his friends. Her name was Global South. His name was Washington Consensus. But his winning streak was running out and her star was rising.” Standing on [...]

We live in a complex, divided society. We are divided by wealth, income, education, housing, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. These divisions are much discussed; in the last two years, there have been entire series in our major newspapers devoted to the growing income divide. The wealth-flaunting of today’s rich was even the [...]

REVIEW In a very well-known passage, Marx said, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.” Elsewhere, he said, “The tradition of all the dead generations weighs [...]

WORLD BANK  REPORT 2011 [This report, in two volumes, was prepared at the request of Government of India. Volume II contains the full detailed report with all analyses and findings, while Volume I is a more condensed version highlighting main conclusions.] See below the last  chapter from Vol.I of the report: CHAPTER-8:Political Economy of Social Protection(SP) Reform [...]