Archive | March, 2009

The baseball and football classics fill the stadiums and amuse the masses all over the world. Obviously we all consider ourselves experts on the subject –myself included- and get involved in heated arguments with anybody…

RICHMOND, VA, March 30 — In a scene reminiscent of the 2007 grassroots mobilization around the case of the Jena 6, nearly 700 people marched Sunday from a Baptist church to the courthouse of rural Powhatan County, Va., about 30 miles west of Richmond. The majority-Black crowd, which included a sizable number of local white […]

People in Cincinnati, like others around the country — either having lost their jobs or fearful of losing them — have been waiting anxiously, some desperately, for news that President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would help them.  Now the news has arrived, and the news is that help is coming.  Help for the banks and […]

Background Raymond Deane, “A Public Stoning in Germany,” Electronic Intifada, 6 March 2009; and Yossi Bartal, “The German Left and Israel,” Alternative Information Center, 18 March 2009. We are peace activists of Jewish background.  Some of us typically identify in this way; others of us do not.  But we all object to those who claim […]

Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas.  Produced by Michael Fox and Sílvia Leindecker.  Purchase from PM Press. The new documentary Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas proves that democracy can and should be more than casting a ballot every four years.  This empowering film gives hopeful and concrete examples from around the Americas […]

MRZine Editor’s Introduction The crisis in which we find ourselves is not a crisis of the capitalist class, much less a crisis of the capitalist mode of production.  Nor is it even a crisis of neoliberalism.   It’s a crisis of the working class, plain and simple.  What’s in store for us, especially in the […]

When Venezuelan voters approved a referendum allowing for indefinite re-election on all elected posts, commentary immediately turned to what the reform meant for chavistas — particularly, the prospect of having Hugo Chávez as president until 2019 or later.  Far less attention was paid to what the defeat meant for the opposition or to its reaction. […]

Most of the international cable news referred only to my criticisms of Biden’s statements in Viña del Mar contained in my Reflection aired by CubaDebate and published by our press on Monday 30 under the title: “China, the future great economic power”. Only EFE included a few lines at the end of its news report […]

On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez convened state governors, city mayors, and legislators from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) to discuss the next stage in the construction of “21st Century Socialism,” following two important electoral victories for Chávez and his supporters over the past four months. Chávez urged governors and mayors to promote […]

Dear friends, Today was Land Day in Palestine and around the world.  Hundreds of events were being held in honor of our Land that so many trespassers now live on.  The first land day in 1976 set a trend of defiance and resistance.  Different groups mark the day differently.  Demonstrators in Hebron were attacked by […]

  On March 28, Palestinians and international activists gathered to protest the long-time closure of Shuhada Street in Hebron, leaving one arrested and five injured. The protest was attended by about 50 local and international activists, including MK Mohammad Barakeh of Hadash and Palestinian Legislative Council member Sahar Qawasmi.  Giving a passionate and fiery speech […]

I think that what we’re going through now — which is really just starting, we’re nowhere in the middle of it yet either, I think — is much bigger and more extensive than the Great Depression.  There are particular difficulties of fixing it because of the fact that it is bigger, it is more global, […]

“It’s a well-established fact,” reports the New York Times Book Review, “that Americans are reading fewer books than they used to.”1  According to the National Endowment for the Arts, more than 50% of those surveyed haven’t cracked a book in the previous year.  In labor circles, the percentage of recent readers may be even smaller.  […]

Today at dawn, New York City police surprised a gang of free market fanatics just before they could set off a massive dynamite explosion that would have blown away the entire northern wall of lower Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.  The gang members, clad in black Armani ski masks and tasteful Christian Dior jogging suits, fled […]

  Chestnut Hill, MA — After administrators at Boston College forced the cancellation late Friday afternoon of an academic lecture featuring Professor Bill Ayers, student organizers of the event have decided that the show will go on — off-campus.  Student groups and faculty at Boston College drew criticism from a right-wing talk radio show host […]

These days, many news cables are talking about China’s economic potential.

Private capitalism (in which productive assets are owned by private individuals and groups and in which markets rather than state planning dominate the distribution of resources and products) has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to flare out into overproduction and/or asset inflation bubbles that burst with horrific social consequences.  Endless reforms, restructurings, and regulations were all […]

Letter from the legitimate president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to Secrectary of State of the Government of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton on the occasion of her visit to Mexico in March 2009.  Translation by Dan La Botz.  Spanish language original follows. Federal District, Mexico March 25, 2009 Mrs. Hillary Clinton […]

For the last week I have been with the JanaMukti Sena, the People’s Liberation Army, mostly with the Kalyan/Anish Memorial Brigade of the 3rd division. This is the People’s Hospital.  Set up by the People’s Army, it now serves both them and the public.  It has many facilities, including a pharmacy, an operating room for […]

  Iranian director Soudabeh Moradian films the daily life of her country, as she sees it, as she lives it, without comment.  A new episode of her chronicles of Iran is broadcast on ARTE.tv each week. Watch five episodes — “The Bus Driver,” “In Front of the University of Tehran,” “To Be 24 Years Old […]