Portside

An interview with Prof. Samir Amin. By JIPSON JOHN and JITHEESH P.M. SAMIR AMIN is one of the world’s greatest radical thinkers alive today. At least for the last five decades, he has been a great source of inspiration for those who dream of an alternative and better world.

Far from accepting defeat, Western tobacco companies like British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI) have instead set their sights on Africa to protect their profit margins.

Bayer and Monsanto have a long history of collusion to poison the ecosystem for profit. The Trump administration should veto their merger not just to protect competitors but to ensure human and planetary survival.

The rise of inequality in America is the outcome of a very clear political agenda of disempowering and undermining workers. Corporate dominated globalization is a key part of undermining the bargaining power of workers by giving multinational corporations massive mobility, massive flexibility, and political power.

A country that hasn’t had a civil war in more than 150 years, where secessionist movements from Texas to Vermont have generally caused merriment not concern, now faces divisions so serious, and a civilian arsenal of weapons so huge, that the possibility of national disintegration has become part of mainstream conversation. Indeed, after the 2016 elections, predicting a second civil war in the United States has become all the rage across the political spectrum.

The extreme violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar (Burma) is closer to extermination than religious persecution. One key factor insufficiently recognized is the massive land grabbing that is happening in Burma and has now reached into the poorest state, Rakhine. Land grabbing has become a major factor in multiple displacements, including in Central America. Too many explanations stop short from seeing a larger economic vortex of land grabbing.