San Francisco State University students occupied the Business School and hundreds of students supported the occupation on 9 December 2009. Produced by Labor Video Project. Contact: P.O. Box 720027, San Francisco, CA 94172; (415) 282-1908; . | | Print
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
An Interview with Bernard D’Mello, Deputy Editor of the Economic & Political Weekly
See, the Maoists have a strategy, the protracted people’s war strategy. Since the merger of CPI(ML) People’s War and the Maoist Communist Centre, they have moved the struggles of the rural poor to a higher level, so to say. This is one of guerrilla warfare and the establishment of guerrilla zones. The state has reacted, […]
Prueba de fraude electoral en Honduras
The Real News tiene prueba de como el Tribunal Supremo Electoral de Honduras reportaron cifras equivocadas. Cifras, se dice, han servido para consolidar el golpe de estado. Realizado por Jesse Freeston, desde Honduras. In English: Jesse Freeston, “Honduran Elections Exposed” (The Real News, 6 December 2009). | | Print
Christian Communists, Islamic Anarchists? Part 2
In Part 1 of this article we argued that Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou’s account of the foundation of Communist universalism in the event of Christianity signals a number of inconsistencies immanent to their respective ontologies (Coombs 2009). For Žižek it appears difficult to reconcile his touted open interpretation of Hegel with the ontological significance […]
An Open Letter to the UN Climate Change Gathering in Copenhagen
Allow me to make a few points about the current international negotiations which are likely to make a huge impact on the future of the planet. At the heart of the issue is the trade off that has to be made between those who want to continue on a path of exploitation and the protesters […]
Taming the Deficit: Saving Our Children from Themselves
Understanding the Deficit One of the most popular causes among Washington political insiders is reducing the budget deficit. The conventional story in these circles is that current and projected future deficits will place an unbearable burden on future generations. Their argument is that the need to reduce the deficit is a question of intergenerational equity. […]
Christian Communists, Islamic Anarchists? Part 1
The defeat of the Marxist emancipatory project has brought an end to radical secular universalism. The result has been twofold: identity politics and their post-modern ideologies of difference have become the legitimating motifs of Western democracies, whilst radical political Islam has taken the anti-systemic baton of secular Marxism, but subverted it with a brand of […]
Attack on an All-women Fact-finding Team in Narayanpatna, Orissa
Today an all women fact finding team comprising of activist friends like Madhumitta Dutta, Shweta Narayan (from our Collective in Besant Nagar) and 6 other women were attacked on their way to Narayanpatna, Orissa, where a democratic tribal movement led by the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh is being brutally suppressed by the police at the […]
The Impact of the Crisis on Women in Developing Asia
Introduction: As developing Asia is the most “globalised” region of the world in terms of both trade flows and financial flows, it was expected that the global crisis would adversely affect the region. However, while the impact has indeed been strong, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth has, as of yet, not been negative; rather, the […]
Selling Out Health Care Reform: Interview with Dr. Andy Coates
The battle for health care reform is heating up in Congress. The House has already passed one bill, and the Senate is debating another version. But as Dr. Andy Coates explains, both bills will fail in solving the health care crisis — and, in fact, place a greater financial burden than ever on working people. […]
The New-Style Mall and Liberal Populism
The Hammond Square Mall in Hammond, Louisiana, was a staple of my childhood. My family didn’t go there all that often, but when my parents felt we needed to shop for things besides food, that’s where we usually went (there weren’t many options at the time in my hometown of Amite, Louisiana). I was always […]
End Monopoly Capitalism to Arrest Climate Change
Human societies have created the bases of our survival, sustenance and advancement through the use of our natural resources in production with rudimentary tools and rising levels of science and technology. Yet in no time in history has environmental destruction been systematically brought about in most parts of the world. The people of the […]
The Idea of Iran
Michael Axworthy. A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind. New York: Basic Books, 2008. 352 pp. $27.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-00888-9. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, a large number of Iranians joined the ranks of expatriates living in Europe and the United States. Suddenly uprooted and finding themselves in unfamiliar surroundings, some of […]
In Response to the Bosnia Genocide Lobby
The original title for the article that follows was “Response to ‘Raoul Djukanovic’.” “RD” is the Internet pseudonym of Daniel Simpson, who we mention in our second paragraph (below), and who, as a member of what we refer to as the Bosnia Genocide Lobby, assails us wherever we publish something related to the former Yugoslavia. […]
Beyond Optimism and Pessimism: The Differential Effects of Nuclear Proliferation
Abstract: What is the effect of the spread of nuclear weapons on international politics? The scholarly debate pits proliferation optimists, who claim that “more may be better,” against proliferation pessimists, who argue that “more will be worse.” These scholars focus on the aggregate effects of nuclear proliferation, but never explicitly consider the differential effects […]
Honduran Elections Exposed
Jesse Freeston, Producer, The Real News Network: The Honduran elections of Sunday, November 29 were unique in that they were less about who was going to win than they were about how many people were going to vote. Both major presidential candidates were supporters of the June 28 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and […]
Bolivia under Evo Morales: The Pace and Depth of Social and Political Change
General elections were held in Bolivia on Sunday, December 6, 2009. A few weeks before these elections I had the opportunity to discuss the contours of Evo Morales’ first term in office with the Bolivian Ambassador to Canada, Edgar Tórrez Mosqueira. The following interview provides a backdrop to the elections that were held yesterday, […]
America Crashes White House Dinner
(PU) Last night, in another embarrassing lapse of security, nine Secret Service agents were trampled to death when approximately 658,000 U.S. residents of every race, age, and sexual orientation mobbed the White House, demanding admission to a state dinner. Most explained that their reason for crashing the dinner was to have a chance at appearing […]
Index: The Privatized War in Afghanistan
Additional number of American troops President Obama plans to deploy to Afghanistan: 30,000 Total number of U.S. troops that will be there after the deployment: 98,000 Number of private contractors working for the U.S. in Afghanistan as of September 2009: 104,101 Percent by which that number grew between June and September: 40 Percent of […]
Memories, Nightmares, and Hopes
Eric Davis. Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 397 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-520-23546-5. This review has been a long time coming, but during this time, Davis’s book has become the subject of extensive comment, achieving an almost iconic, certainly landmark, status in […]
