Archive | Commentary

  One side is the barely veiled alliance between Washington and Micheletti.  The other side consists of the Constitutional Zelaya Government, the National Front against the Coup d’Etat and the principal former presidential candidate linked to the latter who has decided to boycott the November 29 elections.  The candidate had formally taken his final position […]

The 60-day delinquency rate in the 3rd quarter was 58 percent above the year-ago level. There appeared to be a sharp falloff in the housing market in October, as the November 30th expiration date for the first-time homebuyers tax credit approached.  As expected, this credit pulled home purchases forward, leading to a substantial increase in […]

Edgar White was born in Montserrat West Indies.  He has lived in the United States and England.  His plays have been successfully presented in New York, London, and Africa.  In the following autobiographical extract, he describes how his radical activities in the seventies led him to being sent down from Yale. for Cornel West It […]

  Abstract: Using Jowett and O’Donnell’s system of propaganda analysis, the present case study concentrates on America’s dominant propaganda messages, techniques, and media channels used in Iran during the time period between 1951 and 1953.  The chosen period is of historical significance since it entails the Iranian nationalization of oil crisis and the 1953 coup […]

This morning at 7:45 I was on the University of Illinois campus for a graduate student employee rally.  After a bargaining update, we moved in groups to begin picketing key campus buildings.  The Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), was going on strike after contract negotiations with the […]

What started as a focus on protests against military supremacy has silently led to a focus on support for civilian supremacy.  The retirement of Rookmangud Katawal, the ex-military chief and the main person who triggered the present crisis, has de facto diverted the attention of the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to support civil […]

  During my teaching career I’ve worked under nine different superintendents.  I’ve taught for nearly 30 years, so the average reign of a Milwaukee superintendent has been a little over three years, about normal for big city school districts. While some people, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, decry these short tenures as a […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its November 2009 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. We last commented on events in Nepal in our May editorial, following the attempt of the ceremonial president to exercise royal authority by “countermanding” the decision of the […]

  Director’s Statement I first had the idea to make a film about anti-Semitism when my earlier work Checkpoint was released.  In one of that film’s many reviews, I was called “the Israeli Mel Gibson,” not because of my good looks, but because the views I had expressed, critical of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, […]

While former Illinois Senator Barack Obama mulls flushing another $40 billion a year in our tax dollars down the toilet in Afghanistan — that’s the estimated annual cost of sending 40,000 more troops for the next several years — graduate employees at the University of Illinois, a “land grant” public institution, are going on strike […]

  I fear that Tom Walkom of the Toronto Star is bang on when he argues that the next victims of the recession will be public sector workers.  As he writes: The federal government has already signalled plans to get tough with its workers.  In Ontario, Premier Dalton McGuinty gave notice this week that the […]

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) expressed concern about the government’s move to seize mosques in New York, Maryland, California, and Texas.  Officials accuse the foundation that owns the mosques of being tied to the Iranian government. SEE: Feds Move to Seize 4 Mosques (AP) CAIR said the unprecedented move by the government may have […]

  I read volume 1 of Marx’s Capital while working on a production line in a food factory.  I don’t mean I read it during my tea breaks, I read it while “working” on the line.  I had an injury and was doing a ‘quality control’ job which entailed sitting next to a conveyor watching […]

  North versus South Cf. SOURCE: Financial Times, 18 October 2009 Laz (Humberto Lázaro Miranda Ramírez) is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published by Juventud Rebelde. | | Print  

  Dina A. Amin.  Alfred Farag and Egyptian Theater: The Poetics of Disguise, With Four Short Plays and a Monologue.  Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008. xxx + 321 pp. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8156-3163-7. This urgently needed book is an investigation of Egyptian theatre through the works of the preeminent Egyptian playwright Alfred Farag (1929-2005), during […]

President Obama will go to Asia and has promised to say something about the exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the U.S. dollar.  It would be good if some enterprising journalist asked him why the United States is worried about the Chinese dumping their dollars, and why U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently said […]

  Saturday, November 14th, from 7 to 11 PM @ the Martin Luther King, Jr. Labor Center for 1199 SEIU 310 W. 43rd Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues, Manhattan, NYC Dance performance by the Het Heru Healing Dancers and special surprise guests. Admission: $20 Food and beverages will be sold All proceeds go to […]

Is it just me, or is the pontification of Western leaders about corruption in Afghanistan growing rather tiresome? There is something very Captain Renault about it.  We’re shocked, shocked that the Afghans have sullied our morally immaculate occupation of their country with their dirty corruption.  How ungrateful can they be? But perhaps we should consider […]

Alfred W. McCoy.  Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State.  Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. In the build-up to the Iraq and Afghan wars, liberal humanitarians and neoconservatives alike bantered on and on about the necessity of empire and its capability of removing tyrannical […]

Prabhat Patnaik.  The Value of Money.  New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2008/New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.  Excerpt: “Introduction.” Prabhat Patnaik is an eminent and prolific economist who has worked creatively for 40 years at the intersection of Marxian and Keynesian theoretical traditions.  In addition to his writings on Marxism and Keynesianism per se, he has […]