Archive | Commentary

The political conflict over the Bush administration’s plan for a bailout of the banks, brought about both by differences with the Democrats and even more intensely with rightwing Republicans, makes it highly unlikely that Congress will be able to pass a bailout plan that can stabilize the financial situation along the lines that Secretary of […]

  Ten years ago this month I was new doctor, an intern doing primary care.  It was a joy that fall to begin at an outstanding clinic in a rural village where I would learn to see both adults and children over the next 3 years. My first week at the clinic, an elderly patient, […]

My name is Dan, and I’m a Republican.  Though it’s been almost eight years since I voted GOP, the shame and regret haunt me daily.  Just the sight of ‘W’ mugging for the cameras on the evening news is enough to fill me with despair. It all started innocently enough.  I tried my first shot […]

Herbert Langer, The Thirty Years’ War, Trans.C. S. V. Salt, Blandford Press, 1980 The seventeenth century was ruled by an aristocratic caste that no longer exists, save in the minds of the credulous and easily-deceived.   It was an imaginary caste of devils, angels, and other powers now consigned to oblivion.  For peasant and prelate, soldier […]

Justice for our sister Marcella Sali Grace! Brother and sisters, Our hearts are full of sadness and rage because our sister Sali was brutally raped and murdered 20 minutes from San Jose del Pacifico, and up to now the Oaxacan Attorney General’s Office, as is its custom, is not doing anything despite the fact that […]

EVER QUESTIONED A REAL LIVE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATOR? We urge all friends of Monthly Review in the Bay Area to stand up for the freedom of our beloved friend Dr. Binayak Sen on Saturday, September 27th, when his jailer appears at Berkeley. This Saturday, September 27th, come question Vishwa Ranjan, the head police official in […]

On September 10 the U.S. government acknowledged that its Secure Border Initiative (SBI) was behind schedule and over budget.  Promoted in 2005 as a new way to block unauthorized immigration, the $2.7 billion project was supposed to create a 670-mile physical and “virtual” fence by the end of this year along the 2,000-mile border with […]

Friends, Enemies, and “Existential” Threats In the ceaseless and invariably bellicose calls for war (both open and clandestine) against Iran, perhaps one argument invoked by pro-war pundits and politicians stands out and takes pride of place above all others: Iran, it is claimed, “poses an existential threat to the state of Israel.”  It’s certainly been […]

The Communist Party of Israel condemns law enforcement authorities’ lenient hand with settler groups. The Extreme Right is a threat to democracy. Prominent Israeli historian Professor Ze’ev Sternhell was lightly wounded in the early hours of the morning on Thursday after a bomb went off outside his front door on Shai Agnon St. in Jerusalem.  […]

  Treasury Sec. Hank Paulson’s $700 billion bailout plan now has a name: the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.  But even as Capitol Hill debates TARP, few seem to have noticed the proposal item that puts taxpayers on the hook for future bailouts.  It’s in Section 6, and the key phrase is this: “The […]

Capitalism happens.  When and where it does, capitalism casts its own special shadow: a self-critique of capitalism’s basic flaws that says modern society can do better by establishing very different, post-capitalist economic systems.  This critical shadow rises up to terrify capitalism when — in crisis periods such as now — capitalism hits the fan.  Karl […]

When did abortion become the health-care procedure whose name we dare not speak?  In the mass mailing Planned Parenthood sent out last week, the word “abortion” appears nowhere.  Not even the flaccid euphemism “pro-choice.” What’s going on here?  Why did Planned Parenthood opt to gag itself in its solicitation of funds for their services, at […]

Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, has adopted the rhetoric of change which has captured the imagination of many Americans and non-Americans around the world. But when it comes to the foreign policy, there are enough reasons to remain sceptical.  Will he adopt a foreign policy with objectives which differ from those of George Bush, […]

Faced with the failure of the financial sector and the possible collapse of the economic system, Republicans and Democrats are working together feverishly to come up with a plan and find the funds to save the American financial system.  The Congress that has been unable to provide adequate funding to health, education, housing, public transportation, […]

  The financial sector meltdown spelt an opportunity for the system to reinvent itself. Will the financial sector meltdown in the developed economies lead to a rethink about the path the global economy has traversed in the last few decades? Simply put, will it curb the primacy of finance, will it rein in the penchant […]

  In a statement drafted in scrupulously selected terms and circulated with exceptional discretion, the so-called U.S. Aid for International Development (USAID) has publicly confessed to having squandered taxpayers’ money in its dirty war on Cuba. It did so in the face of warnings by certain scandalized congress members and the embarrassing revelations of audits […]

In US capitalism’s greatest financial crisis since the 1930s Depression, status-quo ideology swirls.  The goal is to keep this crisis under control, to prevent it from challenging capitalism itself.  One method is to keep public debate from raising the issue of whether and how class changes — basic economic system changes — might be the […]

“The West is living through an economic and social crisis so unprecedented in its tempo, so complex in its effects, that there are many who do not know that it is taking place.”                     — Michael Harrington, The Next Left (1987) The nationalization of American International […]

  On September 18, 2008 Human Rights Watch released a report entitled “Venezuela: Rights Suffer Under Chávez.”   The report contains biases and inaccuracies, and wrongly purports that human rights guarantees are lacking or not properly enforced in Venezuela.  In addition, while criticizing Venezuela’s human rights in the political context, it fails to mention the […]

Elegy is a fitting title for Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s recent adaptation of the short novel by Philip Roth, The Dying Animal.  It is a pensive lament for its principal character, who sadly is never fully realized in this work. The film follows the life of sixty-something David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley), a professor and critic […]