• After MRZine

    Today MRZine comes to an end, after over a decade’s run.  Thank you for your past support. Needless to say, Monthly Review itself will endure hasta siempre, its presence online steadily expanding, including on Facebook and Twitter. My next project is to establish Movement Translation Service (MTS), inspired by People’s Translation Service and similar efforts […]

  • Paraguay: President Lugo Ousted; UNASUR Won’t Recognize Successor; Peasants and Others Protest the Coup

    Ten months to go till the upcoming elections, the Senate of Paraguay dismissed the President of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, by a vote of 39-4, for allegedly “poor performance in office,” in an express impeachment whose legitimacy has been questioned by not only the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) but also the Organization of American […]

  • Zainab al-Hosni, the “Flower of Syria,” Alive and on TV: Will Human Rights Organizations and Mass Media Issue Corrections?

    Zainab al-Hosni, dubbed the “Flower of Syria,” who the Syrian opposition claimed was tortured and murdered, burned and decapitated, by the Syrian government, has just appeared on Syrian TV, very much alive.  Here is the video of the TV interview with Zainab, who says she fled from her family home because her brothers were beating […]

  • The Rise and Fall of Libya

    Upon the US capturing Saddam Hussein out of a “spider hole” and parading his abject person on TV, Tariq Ali wrote: “My first reaction to the capture of Saddam Hussein was both anger and disgust.  Anger with the old dictator who could not even die honourably.  He preferred to be captured by his old friends […]

  • “Not Only for Facundo Cabral, But Also for the Future of Our Children”

    Argentinean singer Facundo Cabral, best known for his song “I’m Not from Here, Nor Am I from There,” was murdered this morning on his way to Guatemala’s La Aurora airport after a concert tour of that country. In his 2006 interview with Télam, Cabral said: “People often call me maestro, singer-songwriter, poet, troubadour, minstrel, and […]

  • Bernard-Henri Lévy’s “SOS Syrie” Conference: Zionists, Muslim Brothers, and Other Leaders of “Change in Syria”

    Bernard-Henri Lévy, well known for his devotion to humanitarian military interventions, organized a conference to “stop the massacre” in Syria, “SOS Syrie,” in Paris on the fourth of July.  There is no doubt that BHL is eager to replicate his Libyan success in Syria.  Given the clear Russian opposition to any military intervention in Syria, […]

  • Al Jazeera’s Beirut Bureau Chief, Ghassan Ben Jeddo, Resigns

    As-Safir, a left-wing Lebanese newspaper, first reported on Saturday that Al Jazeera’s Beirut bureau chief Ghassan Ben Jeddo resigned.  The news has now been confirmed by Al-Manar, which has interviewed Ben Jeddo. According to As-Safir, Ben Jeddo resigned first and foremost because “Al Jazeera abandoned an ideal of objectivity and professionalism and resorted to gutter […]

  • Loving the Libyan Rebels

    The multinational empire has come up with a great deal for itself: using Libya’s own money to finance the Libyan rebels to fight against Libya.  Ali Tarhouni, a US-educated economist who just got appointed “finance minister” of the rebel “Interim Transitional National Council,” explains the deal: “Right now, there is no immediate crisis kind of […]

  • French Leftists for the Libya War

    What with the bruising pension battle antagonizing the whole of the French working class last year, and a spate of scandals, including one exposing financial ties between his short-lived foreign minister (since sacked) and the deposed president of Tunisia, French President Nicolas Sarkozy‘s popularity was at an all-time low, and his party was battered in […]

  • Japan’s Government Takes Break from Nuclear Class War against Its Own People and Issues Nonsensical Statement on Libya

    The Japanese government, taking a break from its nuclear class war against its own people, issued a nonsensical statement on Libya,1 supporting the Western war against Libya . . . and at the same time claiming to support the African Union, which is opposed to the war, and the Arab League, which is now trying […]

  • An Appeal to All Foreign Embassy Personnel and International Media Present in Japan, regarding the Nuclear Disaster

    You have seen the Japanese government’s response to the nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan.  Top officials have been slow to expand the exclusion zone around the Fukushima 1 and 2 Nuclear Power Plants.  They have been less than forthcoming in providing information about exactly in what state the reactors in trouble are.  By failing in […]

  • Longing for Revolution in Saudi Arabia

    Protests demanding democratic rights in general, as well as the release of Sheikh Tawfiq al-Amer (arrested in February this year for advocating constitutional monarchy), were held on Friday, 4 March 2011, in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Al-Ahsa Qatif The protests, albeit far from the magnitude seen in Arab intifadas elsewhere, still appear to […]

  • Black Africans Live in Fear in “Free Libya”

    Al Jazeera reports that Black African workers now live in fear in the rebel-held territories in Libya.  Some of them have been attacked by mobs, others have been imprisoned, and some of their homes and workshops have been torched.  “Many African workers say they felt safer under the Gaddafi regime,” says Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland, […]

  • Imperialists Prepare for Military Intervention in Libya

    The Libyan exiles and defectors begging for no-fly zones failed to get them at the United Nations Security Council on Saturday, but they are inching closer to lining up Western military support nonetheless.  This just in from the Wall Street Journal today: The Pentagon is repositioning warships and planes in the waters off Libya to […]

  • What Does the Libyan Opposition Want?

    As everyone knows, Muammar Gaddafi is an authoritarian dictator.  Authoritarian dictators are a dime a dozen in world history, though, so that is not what would distinguish him from the rest of his kind in history books.  What might make him stand out is this: in the twilight of his autocratic career, Gaddafi had become […]

  • Al Jazeera Promotes Libya’s “Crown Prince” Who Calls for Military Intervention in Libya

    Al Jazeera received a lot of kudos for its exciting coverage of the intifadas in Tunisia and Egypt.  Many of us in the West in particular found it to be a useful source of information, since the Western media’s coverage of them, largely shaped by imperialist preferences as always, was quantitatively lesser and qualitatively worse […]

  • What Is the National Front for the Salvation of Libya?

    In his blog Lenin’s Tomb, Richard Seymour asserts confidently: Because the trouble for the US and UK governments in this revolt is that they really, really don’t want Gadaffi to fall.  Gadaffi is someone with whom they can do business.  By contrast, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, long a leading element in […]

  • The Day of Wrath in Bahrain

    Among the most watched Bahraini protest videos today is this one showing police attacking protesters in Duraz, Bahrain, 14 February 2011: Protest organizers say a protester by the name of Ali Abdulhadi Mushaima, 27 years old, was killed by police in Manama. For many reasons (the corporate media’s propaganda system, many Bahraini protesters’ apparent religiosity, […]

  • Iran: Green Solidarity with (Some) Arabs

    Critics of the Islamic Republic of Iran held a protest on 25 Bahman 1389 (14 February 2011).  The protest turnout today — far from negligible given the well known severe limits to anti-systemic dissent imposed by the state — apparently failed to meet the expectations of some of its supporters, so one such individual went […]

  • Iran: Hard-Line Women Heckle Mashaei

    On 22 Bahman 1389 (11 February 2011), the 32nd anniversary of the victory of the revolution in Iran, hard-line women heckle Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the right-hand man of the president of Iran.  The hecklers are heard shouting: “Down with monafeq!  Monafeq, get lost!”  “Mashaei, be ashamed!  Resign from the government!”  “Down with the anti-velayat-e faqih.”  […]