Archive | September, 2021

The Taliban were a convenient target to satisfy a political lust for revenge for 9/11.

The conception of the present as history crystallized into an important principle of the intellectual tradition of Monthly Review magazine. Viewing the present as history entails combining what is new with a grasp of the longer process that is vital to a deeper understanding of the present. This Introduction provides an initiation to the intellectual tradition of Monthly Review, from which we have selected the essays and the interview that appear in The Present as History 2021.

Here’s a look back at August’s political news and the best new music that related to it. You can also listen to a podcast of this column, including an 11-year-old schoolkid giving his verdict on all the albums.

The Critical Race Theory (CRT) frenzy has been in full swing for months now, and in the rush to make sense of this intellectual tradition, corporate media have repeatedly flocked to one individual more than any other to provide their account of CRT with the cover of authority and rigor. That person is Kimberlé Crenshaw.

The Banque Nationale d’Haiti (BNH) was housed in a whitewashed, two-story colonial building at the corner of rues Ferou and Américaine in the downtown business district of Port-au-Prince.v

lon Musk wants to go to Mars. Money, regulations, and public beaches are no object.

On the 101st anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Turkey, Peoples Dispatch spoke to Ekin Sönmez, a member of the party’s Central Committee, about how the party is confronting the urgent challenges facing Turkey’s working class and is deepening the struggle for socialism.

The early history of U.S. imperial banking and the internationalization of Wall Street began alongside the project of U.S. colonial expansion at the turn of the 19th century and ended amid the financial and economic crises of the 1930s.

The 190 countries that are members of the IMF are entitled to allowances in strong currencies which they do not have to pay back. This device is called Special Drawing Rights. To this we must add loans that the IMF can grant to a country calling for help. Loans must be repaid with interest and are tied to conditions that reinforce neoliberal policies.

Recent debates about Critical Race Theory (CRT) have been abysmally uninformed at best and utterly inaccurate at worst. From corporate media and right-wing rags to independent left media, almost everyone has misrepresented or misunderstood the origins, histories, and theories of what is today known as CRT. This three-part series corrects these misunderstandings. Part 1 provides […]

EVERYWHERE in the world people got vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus without having to pay a penny, but not in India. Everywhere in the world, historic landmarks that define a nation, that constitute the warp and woof of a nation’s consciousness, are held sacred and left untouched in their original shape, but not in India.

For Kali Akuno, co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, the wreckage of Hurricane Ida is a surreal reminder of what he and others in the Gulf Coast region experienced 16 years ago.

A few days ago, I spoke to a senior official at the World Health Organisation (WHO). I asked her if she knew how many people lived their lives on our planet without shoes.

Bell levels a class critique against the Black bourgeoisie, whom he sees as having led Black political protest down the wrong path time and time again.

By the end of April 2020, the coronavirus epidemic outbreak was reaching millions. Thousands were dying daily. Nearly one third of the worldwide population was experiencing different degrees of forced quarantine.

New data sheds light on how much overseas coal power capacity China is involved in, and to what extent it is changing.

There is not even-handed regulation of doctors worldwide regarding complicity with torture. The case of the Israeli Medical Association serves as a prime example.

The latest IPCC report paints a picture of five potential futures for humanity. In the worst one, if corporations keep calling the shots, we could see catastrophic warming of up to 5.7˚C.

Academics are perfectly placed to wage a rebellion: we exist in rich hubs of knowledge and expertise; we are well connected across the world, and to decision-makers; we have large platforms from which to inform, educate and rally others all over the world; and we have implicit authority and legitimacy, which is the basis of political power. We can make a difference.

Editors urge ‘fundamental changes to how our societies and economies are organized’.