Archive | Commentary

The Heritage Foundation recently expressed concern that “unless entitlement spending is reined in, it will consume all federal revenue in just 42 years, with nothing left over for defense.” Interestingly, Heritage made no mention of why entitlement spending is projected to rise so quickly.  The fact is that the federal government is projected to spend […]

What I like most about war is its budget. Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was first published by Granma.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  | Print

  Children . . . Detainees / أطفال . . . معتقلین Mohammad Saba’aneh, born in 1979, is a Palestinian cartoonist in Jenin.  His Web site is <www.jffra.com>.  This cartoon was published in Maktoob.com on 6 May 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  According to Defence for Children International – Palestine Section […]

While the world media was focused on a boring battle between the Tories and their New Labour cousins in Britain, a historic struggle was underway in Nepal.  Nine months after the victory of the Maoists in the 2008 constituent assembly (CA) elections, bourgeois forces, with support from the Indian government, succeeded in forcing them out […]

Perhaps the wild swings in financial and stock markets over the last week will make people give closer scrutiny to what is going on in Europe, which would be a good thing for the world.  According to most news reporting, markets are worried about a potential default by Greece on its sovereign debt, and the […]

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist.  This cartoon was published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 12 May 2010. | Print

  Palestinian civil society has called on Elton John to respect its boycott call and cancel his June 17th concert in Tel Aviv.  If he does so, he’ll be joining Santana and Gil-Scott Heron, who recently cancelled their spring concerts in Israel.  This video suggests six reasons why Elton should join the BDS (boycott, divestment, […]

  On 26 April 2010, the management of Middlesex University in London, England announced that it was cutting all its philosophy programs and shutting down the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, the top-rated research department at Middlesex.  The statement below offers solidarity from Zagreb, Croatia to the campaigners to Save Middlesex Philosophy. — […]

La Paz, 10 May — The President’s Chief of Staff, Óscar Coca, said on Monday that no general strike is happening in Bolivia, referring to the indefinite general strike called by the Bolivian Workers’ Center (COB), and asked the leaders of this trade union organization to make sensible decisions on their demands.

  Listen to Étienne Balibar: Étienne Balibar: . . . I will be trying to reverse the implicit rule of this kind of event.  Far from coming with positions for which I would argue, I mean already established positions for which I would argue, trying to convince others that they can be shared, I’m coming […]

Uncle Sam: I decide who gets to have and doesn’t get to have nuclear energy.  Not for nothing am I an overbearing superpower. Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was first published by Granma.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  | Print

The Bt brinjal debate has featured technological worries relating to genetically modified crops which appear relatively minor in comparison to the critical issue of who controls Indian agriculture and therefore food security in India.  While there cannot be a mere technological fix to the problems of Indian agriculture, technology — and therefore GM — will […]

  We are writing in support of Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal who have been unjustly detained for more than nine months.  These three young people are active members of a global community opposed to US aggression in the Middle East.  They do not deserve to be punished for the policies of their […]

A longtime reader of Monthly Review, and a Marxist for all his adult life, Alexander Saxton might be one of the oldest, continuously active radicals in the United States.  Born in Manhattan in 1919, he met the novelist, John Dos Passos, and the poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, when he was a young man, and […]

Second (Party List) Vote, Preliminary Results, in PercentDifference between 2010 and 2005 Second (Party List) Votes, in Percentage Points The state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the valleys of the Rhine and Ruhr is far and away the most populous German state, with 18 million people.  Once extremely prosperous, much of it is now in the […]

Officer, seeing a poor dark-skinned man, in the light of Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law: “And you want me to have a more reasonable suspicion?” Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was published by Cambios en Cuba on 9 May 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  | | […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

Red Shirt protests in Bangkok, which started in mid-March, are about to be wound up.  The leaders have accepted a compromise with the military-backed Abhisit government.  Elections will not be held immediately, but on 14th November.  Earlier Abihist had indicated an election in February 2011 at the earliest. It is unclear whether the blanket censorship […]

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist.  This cartoon was published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 9 September 2009.   Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

Comrade Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, denounced any negotiations with the occupation, saying that “the solution to the critical historical conflict in the Middle East will only be the establishment of one state on the entire Palestinian national soil, from river to sea, with full […]