Despite some hopeful signs in the last two years, the Korean peninsula is again teetering toward crisis. The Six Party Talks are stymied. Progress toward normalizing relations between the United States and North Korea has stalled. Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated. In this context, North Korea’s rocket launch this week and the overreaction […]
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Monthly Review Magazine
Turkey: “NATO: 60 Years Is Enough” and “Obama, Go Home”
Cf. Emine Özcan, “Thousands of People Say ‘Enough’ to 60 Years of Nato” (Bıa News Centre, 5 April 2009).
Israel Railways Accused of Racism over Sacked Arab Guards
A decision by Israel’s state-owned railway company to sack 150 Arab workers because they have not served in the army has been denounced as “unlawful” and “racist” this week by Arab legal and workers’ rights groups. The new policy, which applies to guards at train crossing points, is being implemented even though the country’s Arab […]
Gringo: Reviewing a North American Anti-imperialist Student’s Experience of Latin America
Chesa Boudin, Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America, 240 pages, Scribner (April 2009). Chesa Boudin’s South American travel memoir and coming of age story Gringo is good and useful on several levels. It’s a poetically personal On the Road for a new generation and a vivid primer in the human cost of […]
Do Darfur’s IDPs Have an Urban Future?
Most of Darfur’s internally-displaced camps are urban settlements in all but name. In geographical terms the most striking impact of the last seven years has been to change Darfur from being overwhelmingly scattered rural villages and hamlets to huge extended cities. In the wake of the abrupt expulsion of the international NGOs which provided a […]
Evolution of the Mexican State
The Mexican state appears to be changing, leading a number of Mexican intellectuals to speculate on the nature of the change. This is not simply a question of Mexico becoming a “failed state,” about which there has been much speculation, but rather an attempt to theorize the evolution of the Mexican state at this moment. […]
Israel on Trial
Chilling testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law. The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come. Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions. While […]
The Iran-Venezuela Bi-national Bank Launched
The president of the new financial institution, Kurosh Parvizian, noted that this institution is a smart project in the face of the international economic crisis. The creation of a bi-national fund, which will have a capital of 1.2 billion dollars, will strengthen Venezuela’s strategic alliance with Iran and South-South cooperation. The president of Venezuela, Hugo […]
Summer 2009 Medical Mission to Treat Iraqi and Palestinian Refugees in Syria
The home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees for over half a century, Syria has since 2003 taken in over 1 million Iraqi refugees. The International Crisis Group estimates that 57% of Iraqis in Syria are affected by chronic medical conditions and a late 2007 survey conducted by IPSOS found depression and anxiety highly […]
Chávez: The Empire of the Dollar Is Coming to an End
Proposal for the Creation of the “Petro” Currency Should Not Be Seen in Isolation Caracas, 31 Mar (ABN) — The proposal of the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, to create a new currency called the “Petro” should not be seen in isolation from what is happening in today’s global economy, said the governor of […]
The Blighted Groves of Academe
The more I read about the state of our colleges and universities, the more thankful I am that I quit my job at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown (UPJ) in 2001, after thirty-two years of teaching. I wrote the following essay a dozen years ago, and since then, matters have gotten progressively worse, […]
Unemployment Jumps to 8.5 Percent, Economy Sheds 663,000 Jobs
The age-adjusted unemployment rate is already above the 1982 level. The unemployment rate jumped to 8.5 percent in March as the economy shed another 663,000 jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the job loss reported for March, and upward revisions of 84,000 for the prior two months, the economy has lost an […]
France: Anti-NATO Protesters Clash with Police, 300 Arrested, 105 Detained
The clashes between police and anti-NATO demonstrators in Strasbourg on Thursday, 2 April resulted in 300 people arrested and 105 detained, according to the figures released by the police on Friday. DDP, a Germany news agency, reported that its photographer was injured by a rubber bullet during the clashes. The Résistance des Deux Rives collective […]
Motorola Sells Israel Bomb Division as National Boycott Campaign Advances
Washington, DC (April 2) — The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and allied organizations participating in a national boycott campaign against Motorola welcomed news that Motorola Israel Ltd. has sold its Government Electronics Department, which made several products that enable Israel’s military occupation of and human rights abuses against Palestinians. The reported sale […]
Death of a Demonstrator in London Was Not So “Natural”: Police Provoked Confrontations
Activists interviewed by an alternative journalism collective Pueblos Sin Fronteras reported that the police provocation made the protests violent, penning demonstrators in separate corrals and preventing them from moving for hours, without access to water, food, or restrooms. This may explain the collapse of a citizen who died this Wednesday while the demonstrators were […]
The G20 and the HIRCs
A group of seven highly indebted rich countries (HIRC) of the world have organized a meeting of twenty nations in London in order to discuss the future of the world’s finances. They have invited some creditors among developing countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, some Arab countries, China, and India, leaving aside all the […]
Anti-G20 Protesters Rock the City of London
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – See also TeleSur‘s coverage of the protest. Hamish Macdonald’s report was broadcast by Al Jazeera on 1 April 2009.
Changing the Rules of War
The extent of Israel’s brutality against Palestinian civilians in its 22-day pounding of the Gaza Strip is gradually surfacing. Israeli soldiers are testifying to lax rules of engagement tantamount to a license to kill. One soldier commented: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a […]
Chávez Proposes Creation of OPEC Bank to Cushion Impacts of Global Recession
During his speech, the Venezuelan head of state insisted that “the agreements not remain on paper” as in previous years. He condemned the arrest warrant on the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, issued by the International Criminal Court “by order of the United States” and stressed the need to create a currency to confront the […]
Chávez and Ahmadinejad Call for Breaking Free from Free Trade
The presidents of Venezuela and Iran met on Thursday at the presidential palace in Tehran, where they agreed on the need to make a systemic change that allows countries to break free from free trade and promote fair trade and complementary relations between countries. The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud […]
