Archive | Commentary

  What you need to earn every month to buy a house, in euros: 10634 What you actually earn every month, in euros: 1063 How many years it will take to pay off the mortgage: 106 How many times a month you will be able to go out to dinner . . . To see […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

I was immensely saddened to hear of Fred Halliday‘s untimely passage.  I knew Fred since 1978 when through a New Left Review friend, Robin Blackburn, I met him at his London home on my way to revolutionary Iran, temporarily forfeiting my US education for the sake of the greater cause.  Fred was putting the final touches on his seminal book on Iran, Iran: Dictatorship and Development, which had the distinct flaw of depicting the Shah’s regime as “strong,” rather belatedly adding a final chapter to account for the unexpected whirlwind “populist” revolution that did not lend itself easily to Fred’s conventional Marxian class analysis.

The much-ballyhooed Tea Party “movement” that has arisen to absurdly accuse the corporate and imperial Barack Obama administration with “socialism,” “favoring the poor,” and other “radical leftist” crimes claims to be a decentralized, independent, “grassroots,” and popular/populist uprising against concentrated power.  Contrary to that claim, Part 1 of our report presented recent polling data showing […]

Pity poor Angela!  The rock is Greece and its economic woes.  The hard place is North Rhine-Westphalia, where an extremely crucial election is due on May 9th — very soon but not soon enough!  And Chancellor Merkel is caught directly in the middle! Europe and the world have been waiting for Germany to commit itself […]

“Finally, light at the end of the tunnel!” Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist.  This cartoon was published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 24 March 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

  Abstract: China’s integration into the global economy, while rapid, has been managed as part of a wider liberalization process.  The structural changes in the rural economy arising from these twin processes have led to widening intra-rural inequalities.  To address these, the central leadership has, in Polanyian manner, moved to counter some of the adverse […]

As I have noted previously, Latvia has experienced the worst two-year economic downturn on record, losing more than 25 percent of GDP.  It is projected to shrink further during the first half of this year, before beginning a slow recovery, in which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that it will not reach even its […]

The Census Bureau reported on Monday that the vacancy rate edged up to 11.0 percent of all housing units in the first quarter of 2010, slightly above the year-round average of 10.9 percent for 2009.  The data showed a slight decline of 0.1 percentage points in the vacancy rate for ownership units compared with the […]

On Tuesday April 27, Fahad Hashmi took a government plea bargain.  He pleaded guilty to 1 count of conspiracy for allowing an acquaintance to store waterproof socks, ponchos, and raincoats in his apartment.  The government dropped the other 3 charges.  Fahad made this decision after having served 3 long years in solitary confinement and one […]

In a democratic society, when there is a deep crisis, it is customary for the government to dissolve parliament and call elections in order for the people to decide.  This happened in Britain and France after mass strikes and demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s. After mass Yellow Shirt protests against the government in Bangkok […]

Yet again, business leaders, politicians, academics, and media are blowing smoke around Greece’s efforts to cope with “national debt” problems.  Something far more important for the world than this small country’s financial travails is at stake.  Indeed, what is at stake affects us all.  What is happening in Greece parallels developments everywhere; only details and […]

  Solidair/Solidaire, the weekly journal of the Workers Party of Belgium (PVDA-PTB), interviewed John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, 26 April 2010 Solidair/Solidaire: Many green thinkers reject a Marxist analysis because they think that the Marxist approach to the economy is a very productivist one, focused on growth and seeing nature as “a free […]

Click on the link below to watch the video of “Born Free”: www.miauk.com Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, known as M.I.A., is a British artist, rapper, and activist of Tamil Sri Lankan origin, currently based in Brooklyn.  Her father Arul Pragasam (aka Arular), a graduate of the Peoples’ Friendship University, helped found the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of […]

  Abstract: This study examines the informal work aspects of global restructuring with a focus on relations of gender, solidarity, and conflict in the workplace.  Rather than trying to conduct a macro level analysis of restructuring process, the study aims to explore how this process is embedded at the local level by focusing on industrial […]

today, in a free clinic near the mean streets in the city of angels 6000 hardscrabble members of Marx’s always unpopular reserve army of unemployed, and their blank-faced children lined up uncomfortably outside of the Los Angeles Sports Arena to get their yellow wristbands their once-in-a-million ticket to see in the flesh a dentist, a […]

On Tuesday April 27, Fahad Hashmi took a government plea bargain.  He pleaded guilty to 1 count of conspiracy for allowing an acquaintance to store waterproof socks, ponchos, and raincoats in his apartment.  The government dropped the other 3 charges.  Fahad made this decision after having served 3 long years in solitary confinement and one […]

Pro-democracy Red Shirt leaders believed an armed military crackdown was due at 4 am Bangkok time, 27th April.  Tense situation earlier.  But so far at 14:00 no sign of an attack. No Pasaran! Watch this video from 10th April 2010 (Prachatai).  This is how Abhisit’s military-backed government tries to stay in power: tanks against unarmed […]

A talk delivered to the Fifth Bil’in International Conference for Palestinian Popular Resistance, held in the West Bank village of Bil’in on April 21 Israel’s apologists are very exercised about the idea that Israel has been singled out for special scrutiny and criticism.  I wish to argue, however, that in most discussions of Israel it […]

Jesse Freeston: Last week, the Bolivian city of Cochabamba and the country’s president Evo Morales played host to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.  The conference sought to distinguish itself from the United Nations conferences for giving a greater voice to civil society and expanding the conversation beyond […]