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  • Monthly Review Essays
  • Killing Civilians to Protect Civilians in Syria

    Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn

    The drums of war are beating again.  The Obama administration will reportedly launch a military strike to punish Syria’s Assad government for its alleged use of chemical weapons. A military attack would invariably kill civilians for the ostensible purpose of showing the Syrian government that killing civilians is wrong.  “What we are talking about here […]

  • The Struggle Continues: Seeking Compensation for Vietnamese Agent Orange Victims, 52 Years On

    Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn

    The drums of war are beating again.  The Obama administration will reportedly launch a military strike to punish Syria’s Assad government for its alleged use of chemical weapons. A military attack would invariably kill civilians for the ostensible purpose of showing the Syrian government that killing civilians is wrong.  “What we are talking about here […]

Monthly Review Essays

  • Nikolai Gogol’s Department of Government Efficiency
    Andy Merrifield A 1926 Soviet illustration of a production of Gogol's play The Government Inspector, showing audience members in the foreground, and actors on stage in the background.

    Almost two centuries after its opening night, Gogol’s five-act satirical play The Government Inspector continues to create a stir with every performance, seemingly no matter where. Maybe because corruption and self-serving double-talk aren’t just familiar features of 19th-century Russia, but have become ingrained facets of all systems of government and officialdom, making them recognizable to […]

Lost & Found

  • Dividends Are Not Royalties: The SAT and Surplus Value
    Michael Parenti A young man at a desk takes the SAT.

    Michael Parenti, the Marxist author and scholar, died on January 24, 2026 at the age of ninety-two. This article originally appeared in Monthly Review 45, no. 5 (October 1993). It has been frequently noted that IQ examinations, while professing to measure innate intelligence, are riddled with racial, gender, and class biases. Thus a low-income, inner-city youth, […]

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