Hunter-gatherers didn’t learn farming themselves, or from their immediate neighbors, but rather from distant people moving into their territory—a pattern that may have played out throughout this part of the globe.
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.
For three decades, eight members of the Quimpo family dedicated themselves to the anti-Marcos resistance in the Philippines, sometimes at profound personal cost. In this memoir, they tell stories that comprise a family saga of revolution, persistence, and, ultimately, vindication, even as easy resolution eluded them. The authors are also critical of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its rural-based strategy of protracted people’s war.
This fall the Chinese Communist Party holds its Nineteenth Party Congress. The US-China relationship is one of considerable global importance on several levels: political, economic and the situation of socialism and the international working class. Trump in his presidential campaign adopted a very hostile anti-China tone. However, after Trump assumed power, he changed; his actions towards China proved largely a continuation of established policy. Why did this happen?
Duterte's campaign to rid the Philippines of drug users and pushers through extrajudicial executions elicited shock even among the most hardened observers. And his now legendary cursing of President Obama as a "son of a bitch" - part of an angry farewell to a long-standing alliance with Washington and an embrace of China - upended Asian geopolitics.
The U.S. has Beijing surrounded by 200 bases lining the East China Sea, it has already caused the beginning of an arms race. For the first time in many years, China is increasing its military budget at the same time the U.S. continues to spend more than China and the next 11 highest-spending countries. The U.S. is depriving its own people of money that could be used to fund scientific research, healthcare, education; it is also backing China into a corner.
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BRICS and the SCO are the two largest independent international organizations to develop over the past decade. What role these new organizations will play internationally is not clear. Certainly sanction regimens will be harder to maintain because the SCO and the BRICS create alternatives. South Africa, for instance, announced that it would begin buying Iran oil in the next few months, an important breach in the sanctions against Iran.
For global companies that have shifted production to Southeast Asia's low-cost manufacturing hub, greater cross-boarder labor coordination could mean less room for wage bargaining, a squeeze on profits and maybe even higher price tags on anything from shoes and clothing to cars and electronics appliances. But even as wages rise, labor activists are confident they aren't at risk of pricing themselves out of the market.
Vietnam is justified in protesting the Chinese oil rig in the South China Sea. China is right in countering the US military buildup in southeast Asia. Duncan McFarland, who was in Vietnam at the height of the dispute in early reports from Vietnam and China. His conclusion: The working class should resist divide-and-conquer.
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