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  • Monthly Review Essays

About Justin Podur

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer and a writing fellow at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. You can find him on his website at podur.org and on Twitter @justinpodur. He teaches at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. He is the author of the novel Siegebreakers.
  • An aerial view showing destruction in Rafah, Gaza, January 2025.

    The Genocide in Palestine Is Powered by Zionism, Not “AI”

    Yarden Azoulay Katz and Justin Podur

    We keep hearing that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is “AI-powered.” Many pundits warn that this marks a new era in warfare, the first time that “automated” war has been waged. Foreign Policy declares that “AI Decides Who Lives and Dies.” Vox reports that “AI tells Israel who to bomb.” The Washington Post claims “Israel offers […]

  • Hugo Chávez

    The media myth of ‘once prosperous’ and democratic Venezuela before Chávez

    Originally published: FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) on August 26, 2021 (more by FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting))  |

    Economists typically use GDP per capita to assess how rich a country is. It is basically a measure of the average income per person. If journalists cared to be at all precise when they say that Venezuela had once been “rich,” then that’s a statistic they’d cite.

  • There’s No Right to a Trial in a Counterinsurgency

    Policing the poor and minorities as counter-insurgency

    Originally published: Socialist Project - The Bullet on October 28, 2020 (more by Socialist Project - The Bullet)  |

    Here are seven counterinsurgency features of policing and the inequities in the criminal justice system.

  • Tiktok

    AEP 59: The American Trap sprung on Tiktok and Huawei, with Carl Zha

    Originally published: The Anti-Empire Project on August 3, 2020 (more by The Anti-Empire Project)

    Back with Carl Zha of Silk & Steel podcast, who we last saw in our episode on the India-China border conflict.

  • Al Jazeera Thousands hold 'national strike' in Colombia over budget cuts

    The people of Colombia are cracking up the walls of war and authoritarianism

    Justin Podur

    The protests that started with the national strike called by Colombia’s central union on November 21 to protest pension reforms and the broken promises of the peace accords have persisted for two months and grown into a protest against the whole establishment. And the protests have continued into the new year and show no signs of stopping.

  • Israeli forces fire tear gas at Palestinian demonstrators during weekly protests

    Imagining a free Palestine should be commonplace—that’s why I wrote the novel ‘Siegebreakers’

    Justin Podur

    The siege of Gaza is crushing the people who live under it, and it is crushing all of our imaginations.

  • Ricardo Hausmann, right, in a recent interview, talked about the being in touch with the World Bank and the IMF to 'rebuild' Venezuela.

    Inside the neoliberal laboratory preparing for the theft of Venezuela’s economy

    Originally published: Peoples Dispatch on February 15, 2019 (more by Peoples Dispatch)  |

    Among the academics pushing hard for regime change in Venezuela is Ricardo Hausmann, now an adviser to Juan Guaido, who has “already drafted a plan to rebuild the nation, from economy to energy.”

  • Ed Herman (Photo Credit: YouTube Screengrab)

    What can Noam Chomsky’s co-author teach us in the age of Trump?

    Originally published: AlterNet on February 20, 2018 (more by AlterNet)  |

    The story goes that Einstein’s theory of relativity began with a simple question: What if a person could sit on a beam of light? A single inquiry led to an entire field of study, and perhaps the world’s most famous scientific breakthrough.

    The late Ed Herman’s questions were less playful. They were about war and death, lies and power politics, but they too created entire areas of study. If properly considered, they can even guide us through the perilous age in which we’re living.

  • Rania Khalek Interviewed by Chris Hedges

    The Much-Maligned Views of Rania Khalek on Syria

    Originally published: The Bullet on April 4, 2017 (more by The Bullet)  |

    The people that have written about Rania [Khalek] publicly range from truly creepy stalkers to left academics who fired off a quick set of libels and then expressed dismay at the responses to them. But other than people talking about her, it is in fact rather difficult to find any sources for these “views” of hers that apparently disqualify her to speak or publish on any topic.

  • Palestine Doesn’t Get to Have a 9/11

    Justin Podur

    “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  • The Mumbai Attacks

    Justin Podur

    The scale of the attacks is incredible: the Taj, the Oberoi Trident, a major train station (CST), a major hospital (Cama), a cafe that’s favored by tourists (Cafe Leopold), the Jewish center, all in different parts of the city.  Some attackers came by sea, others set off bombs, others just entered buildings or public areas […]

  • The Writ of the State: Is Pakistan’s Insurgency Fueled by Too Little State, Too Much, or the Wrong Kind?

    Justin Podur

    ISLAMABAD JULY 8, 2008 — Another couple of days of bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan, each with its own message and each by a different group.  A couple of days ago the Americans hit a wedding party and killed over 20 people in Afghanistan.  In Kabul yesterday the Indian embassy was struck by a suicide […]

  • On a Quest for Secular Piety: Reviewing Tarek Fatah’s Chasing a Mirage

    Justin Podur

    Tarek personally asked me to review his book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State (CM).  With a book being favorably reviewed in the Canadian (and US and UK) media, including the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Huffington Post, the UK Guardian, and the Asper-family owned newspapers (Ottawa Citizen and […]

Also By Justin Podur in Monthly Review Magazine

  • The Guaidó Era June 01, 2021

Books By Justin Podur

  • Extraordinary Threat: The U.S. Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela July 04, 2021

Monthly Review Essays

  • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
    Sam-Kee Cheng A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].

    1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

Lost & Found

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    Robert W. McChesney Bob McChesney on Saving Journalism

    Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.

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