When I was growing up in the 1950s, a photo of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932-1945) still hung in the homes of some family members and friends. Our only four-term president was remembered by them as the leader — and even the savior — of the country. Those like my parents, who experienced the Great […]
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
Call for Class Solidarity from Egyptian El Mahalla Workers
6 April 2008 — The government’s police attacked the Mahalla workers’ strike. Since the night of 5 April, so many worker leaders have been arrested. Police besieged the city. The strike couldn’t start in the morning. In the afternoon, workers, their families, and the unemployed started demonstrations. Police have attacked brutally with real bullets and […]
The Sadrist Revolt
The Student Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to take time out of his rebellion for studies. The increasingly popular Iraqi nationalist and Shi’i religious leader, it was reported late last year, is seeking the title of Ayatollah (“Sign of God”). Muqtada’s Iraqi supporters presently confer on him the title of Hujjat al-Islam (“Proof of Islam”), although […]
People’s History of American Empire
Labor and political cartoonist Mike Konopacki — close friend and collaborator of UE’s cartoonist Gary Huck — has produced a brilliant book-length graphic adaptation of a major portion of Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of the United States. Created in collaboration with Zinn and historian Paul Buhle, Konopacki’s A People’s History of American Empire […]
Interview with Mike Marqusee, Author of If I Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew
IF I AM NOT FOR MYSELF: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew by Mike MarquseeBUY THIS BOOK Your book is subtitled “Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew.” Were you always an Anti-Zionist? No. I grew up, in the 1960s, in a left-wing household in a largely Jewish New York suburb — where Israel was seen as a […]
Leading Presidential Candidates Out of Step on Health Care
“Do you support national (single-payer) health care insurance?” Click on the chart for a larger view. Sources: U.S. General Public: An AP-Yahoo! News survey of more than 1,800 people conducted Dec.14-20, 2007, by Knowledge Networks. U.S. Physicians: “Support for National Health Insurance among American Physicians: Five Years Later.” A survey of over 2,000 physicians, by […]
The Arab Conscience
الضمير العربي أنا رافضة أنا هيمنتك تحت ستار الحرية أنا رافضة رأيك نصحك بإسم الديموقراطية الحرية مش منحة تتفضل بيها علي إرادتنا تمحي المحنة إصحي يا أمة يا عربية The Arab Conscience (Al Dameer Al Arabi, directed by Ahmad Al Arian), a sequel to The Arab Dream (Al Hilm Al Arabi, 1998), premiered on Zoom […]
To Protest Indefinite Detention, Sami Al-Arian on Hunger Strike: New YouTube Video Describes His Case, Highlights His Plight
April 2, 2008 — The Department of Justice under the Bush administration continues to manipulate the legal system to keep Dr. Sami Al-Arian imprisoned indefinitely. Sami Al-Arian, a computer engineering professor from Tampa, Florida, was arrested on charges of supporting a designated terrorist organization in 2003. Al-Arian proclaimed his innocence and maintained the charges […]
Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King, Jr. — Forty Years On
April 4, 1968 was the day when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee. He had been working with the Memphis sanitation workers in their struggle for better working conditions and a union. The night before his assassination, he gave his speech that ended with the words “But I want you to know […]
Nicaragua: A Sharp Left Turn
MRZine must be commended for its recent publication of Mike Friedman’s interview with Nicaragua’s Comandante Mónica Baltodano. It is especially welcome because there has been a dearth of information and analysis about Nicaragua in the English-language world ever since the 1990 electoral defeat of the revolution. That in some ways is puzzling because the actions […]
Ask Ms. Liberty: Advice for the War-Torn
Although it’s been over five years since the United States invaded Iraq, a few non-patriots among us refuse to understand or endorse our wartime zeitgeist. I have, therefore, persuaded our noble, statuesque Icon of America to gas up her torch and shed some light on a few selfish queries posed by our huddled, recalcitrant masses. […]
Neoliberal Experts on Iran’s Economy: Out of Touch with Iranians?
It’s become quite fashionable for journalists to report on the diminishing popularity of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (for example in the Independent, the Herald Tribune and the New York Times), especially focusing on his economic policies, which were seen as one of the main reasons he was elected. But facts on the ground suggest […]
Obama, Clinton, and McCain Won’t Save the American Economy
The US media and party election machines have once again transformed the run-up to the US elections into a melodrama. Across the country, party candidates have been swaggering across stages, surrounded by stars and stripes and CNN logos, to spew out the latest piece of propaganda that the spin doctors have managed to conjure up. […]
China and the World Market: Thirty Years of the “Reform” Policy
It is now thirty years since the People’s Republic of China announced its market reform policy at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in December 1978, under the then new leadership of Deng Xiaoping. The policy followed the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the purging […]
Reviewing Iowa Terror
Meet Jesus Iowa. He’s a teen from Oaxaca whose family moves to a small Iowa town. Athlete and worker, Jesus leaves his home in the U.S. heartland after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the East Coast. That move partly heats up his community’s fears and hopes in Iowa Terror (Seventh Street Press, 2007), Mike […]
Conflict in Ohio: More to Come?
The Taft-Hartley mandatory Labor Board election is a steel trap. It extinguishes the Constitutional right of free association for most workers most of the time. It has effectively ended self-organization and the formation of new unions. Tinkering with Board election procedures in an effort to revive the labor movement is exactly the wrong course […]
No War: The Movement That Has Dissolved Itself [No war Il movimento che si è dissolto]
Cos’è successo al movimento contro la guerra che esplose nel 2003 mobilitando milioni di persone in tutto il mondo occidentale, al punto da esser definito una volta dal New York Times come «la seconda superpotenza»?Il fatto è che esso non è mai stato un movimento vero e proprio ma solo lo spasmo di un giorno, […]
Iranian Ethnic Minorities Clash on Capitol Hill
Washington DC — A March 13 event on Capitol Hill intended to expose Iran’s human rights violations was overcome with political rivalry and infighting. The event, a one-hour briefing on Iran’s human rights record, was eventually broken up by Capitol Hill police officers. The briefing piggybacked on a recent rise in concern over Iran’s […]
Argentina: Workers and the “Agrarian Strike”: The CGT against the Oligarchy and Its Proxies’ Destabilization
Thirty-two years, one month, and ten days ago — on 16 February 1976 to be exact — bankers, industrialists, the Sociedad Rural, and other leading organizations of rural sectors initiated a strike in support of a coup d’état (known as the Bosses’ Apegé Lockout), anticipating the military revolt of 24 March, all with the […]
Basra Assault Threatens Trade Unionists
28 March 2008 Basra Assault Confirms Presence of British Forces a Threat to Political and Trade Union Rights in Iraq In a series of telephone calls from Basra over the past 48 hours, Iraqi trade union activists appeal for solidarity and describe how the so-called ‘Security Plan’ started midnight 24 March with intense shelling […]
