Walden Bello
Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Walden Bello is senior analyst of the Bangkok-based institute Focus on the Global South and representative of Akbayan (Citizens’ Action Party) in the House of Representatives of the Philippines. He can be reached at waldenbello@yahoo.com.
Articles by this author
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Views Tuesday, March 12, 2019 Why Free Trade Is Bad for You (or Most of You at Any Rate) Walden Bello was invited by The Economist to debate the chief economist of the World Trade Organization, Robert Koopman, at the Asia Trade Summit in Hong Kong, on February 28. Billed as the “Great Trade Debate” in an era of rising anti-free trade sentiment, the Oxford-style 20 minute debate took... Read more |
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Views Friday, July 21, 2017 It’s Not Only Necessary to Develop an Alternative to Globalization — It’s Entirely Possible Free trade and the freedom of capital to move across borders have been the cutting edge of globalization. They’ve also led to the succession of crises that have led to the widespread questioning of capitalism as a way of organizing economic life — and of its paramount ideological expression,... Read more |
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Views Friday, February 03, 2017 Trump’s Travel Ban: The View from One Permanently on US Immigration’s Watch List As a citizen of the Philippines who’s been detained and subjected to questioning and “secondary screening” almost every time I’ve entered the United States, I feel much sympathy for those whose freedom of movement has been violated by Donald Trump. There’s a difference in our situations though... Read more |
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Views Thursday, November 17, 2016 How Obama’s Legacy Lost the Elections for Hillary If there’s one certainty that emerged in the 2016 elections, it was that Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat stemmed from her loss of four so-called “Rust Belt” states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which had previously been Democratic strongholds, and Ohio, a swing state that had twice... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, August 30, 2016 From the Battle of Seattle to the Financial Crisis I had many lessons from the Battle of Seattle, and one of them was that policewomen can deal it out as good as any policeman. I got beaten up, badly, by one of Seattle’s best. Yesterday, I decided go down memory lane and visit the scene of the crime. I remember seeing Medea Benjamin of Code Pink... Read more |
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Views Thursday, May 19, 2016 People Are Likening the Next Philippine President to Donald Trump. Here’s Why. International reports about the recent election in the Philippines invariably refer to its result as a “political earthquake.” The metaphor is accurate. A year ago, few believed that Rodrigo Duterte, the mayor of Davao, would be the next president of the Philippines. Duterte had achieved a... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 06, 2016 The Ultimate Blowback from U.S. Foreign Policy? Donald Trump. When the late Chalmers Johnson introduced the word “blowback” to describe the adverse consequences of Washington’s actions in the world, he wasn’t referring simply to the victims of U.S. imperial interventions striking back on American soil. More importantly, he saw the resulting destabilization of... Read more |
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Views Friday, October 02, 2015 China’s Stock Market Crash Is the Latest Crisis of Global Capitalism It’s always amazing how the stock market pulls big surprises on those who should know better. The momentous rise in share prices in the Shanghai stock exchange from mid-2014 to the middle of this year, when the composite index shot up by 150 percent, should have been a strong indication of what... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 06, 2015 Europe’s Big Banks Are Fueling the Continent’s Far-Right Fascists For a moment this summer, it appeared that Greece had cornered its creditors. In a hotly contested vote in which their European neighbors openly intervened, Greeks overwhelmingly voted to reject more austerity. In a controversial turnaround, however, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras then... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, March 18, 2015 The US Military Just Plunged Philippine Politics into Crisis Early in the morning of January 25, commandos belonging to the Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police crept into the southern town of Mamasapano — a stronghold of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The elite Seaborne Unit had come for Zulkifli Abdhir, a Malaysian bomb... Read more |