Archive | December, 2003

This is not the article I started out to write. What I wanted to write about was the Patriot Act and the way this Federal statute was giving license to federal, state and local law enforcement to curtail our due process protections, by blurring the line, which is more fluid than ever, between what law enforcement can do in the name of foreign intelligence and what it can do in the name of a domestic criminal investigation

In this space we have followed as best we can the evolving revolutionary struggle in Nepal. Our most recent comment in February 2003 accompanied the presentation of an interesting article on women’s leadership in the revolutionary struggle. We then noted with relief and pleasure the ceasefire of January 29, 2003 that promised to bring an end to the brutality and bloodshed that had engulfed a beautiful people and a beautiful land

While we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington, we should as well be commemorating another event. On the eve of the 1963 March on Washington, the life of one of the 20th century’s most brilliant individuals came to an end. W.E.B. Du Bois, scholar, Pan Africanist, political leader, champion of the struggle against white supremacy in the United States, died in Ghana, August 27, 1963

No doubt, Monthly Review will not want debate on John Saul’s contributions to continue indefinitely. At the same time, his recent response to Jeremy Cronin (Monthly Review, December 2002) contains certain allegations about my conduct, which deserve space for a response

On Saturday, May 3rd, 2003 Monthly Review and the University of Vermont co-sponsored “Imperialism Today,” a one-day conference in honor of Harry Magdoff. Invited speakers were asked to discuss the context and workings of the current U.S. global hegemony, the means by which control is exercised over resources and the global periphery, the maintenance of (and challenges to) ideological hegemony, and the prospects for anti-imperialism.

Genocide used to be a crime without a name. Although the most heinous of all crimes, the concept was not introduced into international language until after World War 2. Until then, military invasion and destruction of other peoples and cultures masqueraded under such slogans as progress and spreading civilisation

Diana Johnstone’s Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press, 2002) is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the causes, effects, and rights-and-wrongs of the Balkan wars of the past dozen years. The book should be priority reading for leftists, many of whom have been carried along by a NATO-power party line and propaganda barrage, believing that this was one case where Western intervention was well-intentioned and had beneficial results. An inference from this misconception, by “cruise missile leftists” and others, is that imperialism can be constructive and its power projections must be evaluated on their merits, case by case. But that the Western intervention in the Balkans constitutes a valid special case is false; the conventional and obvious truths on the Balkan wars that sustain such a view disintegrate on close inspection

In this space we have had occasion to provide some, we trust, interesting and important documents from the revolutionary forces in Nepal. The most recent was the letter we received on September 5th, 2002 from Dr. Baburam Bhattarai (https://monthlyreview.org/0902bhattarai.htm). In the intervening four months events have moved at a fast pace