Archive | Commentary

MRZine Editor’s Introduction The crisis in which we find ourselves is not a crisis of the capitalist class, much less a crisis of the capitalist mode of production.  Nor is it even a crisis of neoliberalism.   It’s a crisis of the working class, plain and simple.  What’s in store for us, especially in the […]

People in Cincinnati, like others around the country — either having lost their jobs or fearful of losing them — have been waiting anxiously, some desperately, for news that President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would help them.  Now the news has arrived, and the news is that help is coming.  Help for the banks and […]

RICHMOND, VA, March 30 — In a scene reminiscent of the 2007 grassroots mobilization around the case of the Jena 6, nearly 700 people marched Sunday from a Baptist church to the courthouse of rural Powhatan County, Va., about 30 miles west of Richmond. The majority-Black crowd, which included a sizable number of local white […]

  Chestnut Hill, MA — After administrators at Boston College forced the cancellation late Friday afternoon of an academic lecture featuring Professor Bill Ayers, student organizers of the event have decided that the show will go on — off-campus.  Student groups and faculty at Boston College drew criticism from a right-wing talk radio show host […]

On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez convened state governors, city mayors, and legislators from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) to discuss the next stage in the construction of “21st Century Socialism,” following two important electoral victories for Chávez and his supporters over the past four months. Chávez urged governors and mayors to promote […]

  On March 28, Palestinians and international activists gathered to protest the long-time closure of Shuhada Street in Hebron, leaving one arrested and five injured. The protest was attended by about 50 local and international activists, including MK Mohammad Barakeh of Hadash and Palestinian Legislative Council member Sahar Qawasmi.  Giving a passionate and fiery speech […]

Today at dawn, New York City police surprised a gang of free market fanatics just before they could set off a massive dynamite explosion that would have blown away the entire northern wall of lower Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.  The gang members, clad in black Armani ski masks and tasteful Christian Dior jogging suits, fled […]

Dear friends, Today was Land Day in Palestine and around the world.  Hundreds of events were being held in honor of our Land that so many trespassers now live on.  The first land day in 1976 set a trend of defiance and resistance.  Different groups mark the day differently.  Demonstrators in Hebron were attacked by […]

I think that what we’re going through now — which is really just starting, we’re nowhere in the middle of it yet either, I think — is much bigger and more extensive than the Great Depression.  There are particular difficulties of fixing it because of the fact that it is bigger, it is more global, […]

Letter from the legitimate president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to Secrectary of State of the Government of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton on the occasion of her visit to Mexico in March 2009.  Translation by Dan La Botz.  Spanish language original follows. Federal District, Mexico March 25, 2009 Mrs. Hillary Clinton […]

Private capitalism (in which productive assets are owned by private individuals and groups and in which markets rather than state planning dominate the distribution of resources and products) has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to flare out into overproduction and/or asset inflation bubbles that burst with horrific social consequences.  Endless reforms, restructurings, and regulations were all […]

For the last week I have been with the JanaMukti Sena, the People’s Liberation Army, mostly with the Kalyan/Anish Memorial Brigade of the 3rd division. This is the People’s Hospital.  Set up by the People’s Army, it now serves both them and the public.  It has many facilities, including a pharmacy, an operating room for […]

Berlin, London, and Rome Berlin, Frankfurt, London, Paris Vienna

  HAVANA, 26 March (IPS) — While the work of women filmmakers in Latin America and the Caribbean has made its presence undeniable, their work still suffers from certain invisibility in a medium where men have traditionally had hegemony. The “Women in the Contemporary Audiovisual Media” Web site, created by the New Latin American Cinema […]

  Iranian director Soudabeh Moradian films the daily life of her country, as she sees it, as she lives it, without comment.  A new episode of her chronicles of Iran is broadcast on ARTE.tv each week. Watch five episodes — “The Bus Driver,” “In Front of the University of Tehran,” “To Be 24 Years Old […]

The system isn’t in crisis, the system is crisis! Manifesto Can we oust the bankers from power? Can we get rid of the corrupt politicians in their pay? Can we guarantee everyone a job, a home, a future? Can we establish government by the people, for the people, of the people? Can we abolish all […]

Sofie from Norway Asks What Iranians Would Think about Her Art Project of Having a Woman Pose in Burqa in the Red Light District of Amsterdam Sara in Iran Compares Her Project with Sofie’s Sofie Asks Iranian Women: “Are You Protected in a Burqa?” Sara Answers Sofie’s Question Couscous Global makes and broadcasts movies of […]

This video was first released by EuroPalestine on 11 March 2009.

John Maynard Keynes was once irritated by a half-witted critic: “When the facts change, I change my mind.  What do you do, sir?” In 2004 I wrote in the London Review of Books, “this is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as occurred with the 1992 jihad […]

Questions to Young Iranians Young Iranians Discuss Iran’s Government Young Iranians Debate Israel, America, and Iran’s Nuclear Program Young Iranians Debate Obama and Ahmadinejad Couscous Global makes and broadcasts movies of young people in debate all over the world.  The project originated in the audience’s responses to Couscous and Cola, a documentary TV series about […]