Archive | November, 2006

As critics of Hollywood are fond of saying, the best way to identify a Hollywood movie is to check if it has all the usual accoutrements — among them, at least one car chase and a few cataclysmic explosions.  True to tradition, the latest James Bond film, Casino Royale recently released by Columbia Pictures, fulfills […]

  Has Canada become an imperialist state, as some on the Left argue?  On the surface, a case can be made.  Why did Canada participate in the kidnapping and expulsion of Haiti’s elected head of state, Jean-Bertrand Aristide?  Why are Canadian troops fighting the insurgency in Afghanistan while supporting a regime dominated by feudal warlords?  […]

Berlin’s new government started off on the wrong leg.  Will it ever get both feet on the ground?  And if it does, what direction will the feet be facing?  Before describing its first blunders, a brief look backwards could be helpful. Both of the two parties running the city-state of Berlin took losses in last […]

A NEW MOMENT It’s a new political moment for the antiwar movement. Washington’s failure in Iraq is undeniable: even Henry Kissinger says a U.S. victory is impossible.  The Iraq war was the prime reason the U.S. electorate delivered a huge “thumping” to George Bush on November 7.  The administration is openly flailing about for any […]

“la mayor amenaza a la Revolución está por dentro” “Estamos enfrentando al poder más grande que hay en el planeta con una gran capacidad de presión, de chantaje”, afirmó Chávez al referirse al Gobierno de Bush. “La Alternativa Bolivariana que tiene ya una serie de caminos Petrocaribe, Petrosur, Petroandina, algunas propuestas ya está en marcha”, […]

FIGARO-Autor Siegfried Stadler bringt beides zusammen: die Märchen von Marx und die Märchen der Brüder Grimm.  Herausgekommen ist eine Radio-Märchenserie. “Es war einmal …” Karl Marx war ein Märchenerzähler.  Und das ist noch freundlich ausgedrückt, aus der Sicht derer, die ihn für den Begründer des real – existierenden Sozialismus halten, der den Menschen die Freiheit […]

  This world — a banquet of flowers just above hell. Kobayashi Issa was born on 15 June 1763 in Kashiwabara, Shinano Province (Shinanomachi, Nagano Prefecture today).  Denied his inheritance by his stepmother and stepbrother, he made a living as an impoverished traveling teacher of poetry.  The language of his poems is as simple and […]

Since the coming into power of the Stephen Harper Conservative government in January of this year, there has been much gnashing of teeth over the foreign policy stance of Canada.  In particular, Canada’s relation with the U.S. on a phalanx of fronts has been at the center of controversy.  One has been the softwood lumber […]

L’assassinat de Pierre Gemayel, ministre libanais de l’Industrie, est un acte indéniablement terroriste qui intervient à un moment délicat de polarisation politique au Liban.  L’empressement de Washington – et certains de ses clients libanais – à désigner la Syrie souligne d’emblée l’enjeu géopolitique de la situation au Liban. Mais cela n’empêche pas de noter, froidement, […]

The recent election win of an incumbent and centrist GOP governor in California over his Democratic rival by double digits might suggest that the political status quo is alive and well.   Is this gubernatorial landslide a triumph of centrism in the face of left and right extremism?  Have California voters spoken and returned to their […]

America stands shamed in the eyes of the world thanks to the Bush administration’s crime spree.  And, as a partial result, the Democrats scored a resounding triumph in an election where only 40.4% of eligible Americans cast ballots.  40.4%!  So much for urgency. The Democrats, covering their aid-and-abetment in the American catastrophe called Iraq, chortled […]

The massive grief for Tower Records is staggering.  Since the announcement that it would be liquidating and selling to Los Angeles-based Great American Group, music fans and journalists alike have been dreading the moment when the super-chain will be closing its doors; a moment which will arrive any day now.  Anyone who passes by a […]

Critical students of ethnically coded nationalism would agree: propagating the glory of “our” race or culture almost always entails the suppression of equal status for the race or culture that is represented as its other.  West Asia is no exception.  Iranian and Arab identity politics thwarted, perverted, and dismembered communitarian thinking for long periods in […]

  This is Sid Shniad’s presentation to the LaborTech 2006 panel on “The Corporate Media Assault and Developing a Labor Media Strategy” (18 November 2006). — Ed. This panel is called Corporate Media Assault and Developing a Labor Media Strategy.  In my view, the issue should be framed as a discussion of the overall corporate […]

  “The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’  But . . . the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’” — Martin Luther King, Jr.1 “The truth […]

NAKED IMPERIALISM:The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance by John Bellamy FosterREAD EXCERPTBUY THIS BOOK John Bellamy Foster’s Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance was published by Monthly Review Press in May 2006.  It consists of essays written between September 2001 and September 2005, addressing the origins of today’s undisguised imperialism, led by the […]

Peter McLaren, Rage and Hope: Interviews with Peter McLaren on War, Imperialism, and Critical Pedagogy (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 394 pages, paper $32.95. “One morning they gave us a guinea pig.  It came to the house in a cage.  At midday, I opened the door of the cage.  I returned home at nightfall and […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its November 2006 issue features the following editorial.  — Ed. The November 8, 2006 agreement between the seven parties alliance (“SPA”) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (“CPN(M)”) brings peace, confirms the subjection of king and army […]

Occidente aparece, de pronto, desprovisto de sus mejores virtudes, construidas siglo sobre siglo, ocupado ahora en reproducir sus propios defectos y en copiar los defectos ajenos, como lo son el autoritarismo y la persecución preventiva de inocentes.  Virtudes como la tolerancia y la autocrítica nunca formaron parte de su debilidad, como se pretende ahora, sino […]

Exit polls conducted at last week’s elections reveal the contradictions and limits of the Democrats’ victories.  As reported in the New York Times (November 9, 2006, page P7), the four fifths of US voters who are white preferred Republicans (52 to 48 percent), while Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians chose Democrats (by 89 to 11, 70 […]