ISLAMABAD JULY 8, 2008 — Another couple of days of bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan, each with its own message and each by a different group. A couple of days ago the Americans hit a wedding party and killed over 20 people in Afghanistan. In Kabul yesterday the Indian embassy was struck by a suicide […]
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Monthly Review Magazine
Florida Unilaterally Restricts Travel to Iran, “State Sponsors of Terror”
National Call-in Day on Iran Blockade Resolutions Wednesday, July 9 is a national call-in day for H.Con.Res 362, the blockade resolution.Call your member of Congress and ask him or her not to support a blockade on Iran. Washington, DC — A law has been passed by the Florida legislature making it significantly more difficult […]
Universal Patterns within Cultural Diversity: Patriarchy Makes Men Crazy and Stupid
Islamabad, Pakistan — Some lessons learned while spending time in a different culture come from paying attention to the wide diversity in how we humans arrange ourselves socially. Equally crucial lessons come from seeing patterns in how people behave similarly in similar situations, even in very different cultural contexts. This week in Pakistan, as I […]
What Americans Don’t Know: There’s a Plan on the Table to End the Nuclear Standoff with Iran
Dear Supporter of a Just Foreign Policy, Recently we’ve seen an escalation of threats to attack Iran. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reported that Congressional leaders agreed last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran.1 The House of Representatives is currently considering a resolution promoted by AIPAC that would effectively demand […]
Economic Blues
Housing and securities prices are going down; food and fuel prices are rising. How will these opposite trends affect our economy looking ahead? The real estate bubble (US capitalism’s latest toxic mix of profit-driven over-investment, over-lending, and financial fraud) is in full “bust” mode. Residential and now also commercial real estate prices are dropping quickly. […]
Is Iran Currently an Existential Threat to the United States? A Side-By-Side Comparison of Military Capabilities
A side-by-side comparison of the two countries’ conventional military capabilities demonstrates the overwhelming superiority of the United States. It is time to inject realism into discussions about U.S.-Iranian relations. Hyping the threat about Iran obscures the bottom line: Iran does not currently represent an existential threat to the United States or its allies, and […]
Iran-US: A Gesture for Peace
July the 3rd marked the 20th anniversary of the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the US-guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, killing all its 290 passengers. The timing of the shootdown in 1988 and the circumstances surrounding it were significant in that they contradict the US government’s official position describing the incident as wholly […]
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits Be Won in US Courts?
A telling remark about US imperialism’s double standards was uttered by Clinton-era deputy treasury secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who a decade ago was the driver of reparations claims against pro-Nazi corporations, assisting plaintiffs to gain $8 billion from European banks and corporations which ripped off Holocaust victims’ funds or which were 1930s beneficiaries of slave labor […]
Bolivia: Regroup the Patriotic Movement
The decree to nationalize hydrocarbons (1 May 2006), which enjoyed 95% public approval, was the zenith of the Evo Morales government. Now it has lost the Chuquisaca Prefecture, by a narrow margin, but legally, which lets the referendums that approved the autonomy statutes in Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, and Pando camouflage their illegality. It should […]
What Can We Learn from the American Axle Strike?
The aftershocks of the late-May defeat of the American Axle and Manufacturing (AAM) strike will be felt in the unionized sections of the auto industry — and beyond — for years to come. Swinging in line with the deep concessions made in the Big 3 contract settlements last fall, the AAM deal effectively completes the […]
An Open Letter to Barack Obama on Iran
Dear Senator Obama, We the undersigned may have different views on U.S. foreign policy with respect to Iran. We all, however, are deeply concerned about the stories in the press in the past few weeks suggesting that the Bush administration might be considering a military strike on Iran, that it might give a green light […]
Evaluation of the June 28-29, 2008 National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation
Our overall assessment is that the conference was an overwhelming success. Over 400 people from many parts of the country and Canada attended, including a bus of 44 — mostly youth — from Connecticut (see breakdown by states below*). The conference met its main objective, which was to urge united and massive mobilizations in the […]
OPEC Warns against Iran War
Oil prices rise and rise. New record on Thursday: a barrel (159 liters) of oil costs more than US$145 for the first time. In the event of an attack on Iran, prices could really explode. Yesterday, the Secretary General of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Abdallah Salem El-Badri, warned. “It would be […]
When the Tough Decide to Become Diplomatic
President George W. Bush and his neo-con coterie made it a point of pride that their relationship to regimes they did not like was one of toughness, not of soft-soap diplomacy. In his State of the Union speech in 2002, Bush denounced the “Axis of Evil” — composed of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea — […]
Interview with Prof. Jose Maria Sison: On His Current Status, People’s War, and Peace NegotiationsPart I
June 27, 2008 Prof. Jose Maria Sison at his office. Thank you for agreeing to this interview. I intend to ask you questions about your legal and political situation, the people’s war in the Philippines and the peace negotiations between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the Government of the Republic of […]
Interview with Prof. Jose Maria Sison: On His Current Status, People’s War, and Peace NegotiationsPart II
People’s War in the Philippines Q1: The Arroyo regime has vowed to destroy or reduce the CPP, the NPA, and the NDFP to an inconsequential level before she steps down in 2010. Is this possible? Prof. Jose Maria Sison before a painting of the people’s war in the Philippines at the NDF Information Bureau in […]
Interview with Prof. Jose Maria Sison: On His Current Status, People’s War, and Peace Negotiations Part III
GRP-NDFP Peace Negotiations Q1: What is the position of the NDFP on the question of resuming the formal talks in the peace negotiations with the GRP? What is the key step towards overcoming all the impediments? NDFP Chief Political Consultant Prof. Jose Maria Sison (seated second from the left), at the signing of the Comprehensive […]
Occupation by Bureaucracy
A cease-fire went into effect in Gaza, offering some respite from the violence that has killed hundreds of Palestinians and five Israelis in recent months. It will do nothing, however, to address the underlying cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Intermittent spectacular violence may draw the world’s attention to the occupied Palestinian territories, but our obsession […]
Arroyo Welcomes More US Participation in the “Killing Fields” of the Philippines in the Guise of Humanitarian Intervention
A historic event worthy of the Guinness Book may have occurred in Washington in the last week of June. The worst “torture” president that the United States has ever had met the most corrupt and brutal president ever inflicted on the Filipino people. Grotesque or farcical? Bush is now credited with the horrendous deaths […]
Junto a Ti
On the eve of 1 December 2007, World AIDS Day, singer Joel Guilian, aka Joe, first released a video for the HSH-Cuba (Hombres que Tienen Sexo con Hombres, Men Who Have Sex with Men) Project of the National Center for Prevention of STIs and HIV/AIDS and the Ministry of Public Health in Cuba. Joe, “Junto […]
