Archive | Commentary

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its March 2008 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. The struggle for democratic rights in India, its forward and backward movement, has been continuous from the days of British colonialism to the present.  Independence and Emergency, for […]

Barack Obama’s speech on race, the greatest speech by a major American political figure in decades, elevates the discussion of race in America to a new level.  What makes this speech so powerful is not only what he said, but also what it requires us to ask and what it demands that we reply.  With […]

  Maryam Firuz in the final decade of her life Maryam Firuz, the first woman who became a political committee member of a party in Iran, passed away in Tehran, in the afternoon of Wednesday, 12 March 2008.  She was an iconoclast, a friend of many artists and intellectuals, and a prisoner for seven years. […]

Since August 2007, US and European banks have constantly made headline news concerning the deep crisis they are going through and its knock-on effect on the neoliberal economic system as a whole.  Asset depreciation for these banks currently stands at over 200 billion dollars.  Several banking research services and seasoned economists estimate that the final […]

March 19, 2003: a date that will live in infamy.  Perhaps not in the minds of many of our fellow citizens, but surely to most people around the world.  On that date, U.S. military forces invaded Iraq. Almost a year later I was in a small farming village some miles north of Baghdad, accompanying members […]

If I could be a bird I would fly to Guantanamo and perch on the barbed wire fence of Guantanamo prison and sing a song of praise of praise for your courage and sing a song of love march 18 2008; brooklyn; d.b. This poem by Dennis Brutus was posted to Debate, a discussion list […]

  The recent beefing up of the US Navy in the Mediterranean has caused concern in Russia and some Mediterranean countries.  Experts believe the appearance of US warships off the coast of Syria and Lebanon presages a US military operation in the region. The recent deployment of the US Navy guided missile destroyer DDG 67 […]

The world appears to be on the verge of an economic crisis and, if it turns out to be as serious as some think, one that could rival or exceed the great panics of the late nineteenth century and the decade-long Great Depression.  The crisis began with unscrupulous mortgage lending on an enormous scale, leading […]

Reeling from the blow that it received in the aftermath of the Colombian military’s illegal incursion on March 1 into Ecuador — which resulted in the brutal massacre of a number of civilians and members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), including its chief negotiator Raul Reyes — US imperialism has once again […]

  In September 2000, I decided to do my part to bring peace to the Middle East.  As a Canadian attorney of Palestinian origin, I believed I could use my legal skills to help broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.  Naive?  Perhaps. I left my comfortable life in California and moved to […]

  As feminists and people of conscience, we call for solidarity with Palestinian women in Gaza suffering due to the escalating military attacks that Israel turned into an open war on civilians.  This war has targeted women and children, and all those who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, and are also denied […]

The battle against US imperialism and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has once again been taken to the streets of Mexico City.  On the 31st of January, hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers came out in protest against the free trade onslaught that the people of Mexico have been subjected to.  This time, […]

If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s most intractable, much the same can be said of the parallel debate about whether its resolution can best be achieved by a single state embracing the two peoples living there or by a division of the land into two separate states, one for Jews and the […]

  Rafah, the Gaza Strip, March 3 — Israeli officials said today that they finished their military operation in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli attacks continue, and we fear that Israel is still planning a major invasion.  On February 29th, Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai warned of “a bigger holocaust” for Palestinians. From […]

In November 2007, the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors reducing immigration, released a report entitled “Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A Profile of America’s Foreign-Born Population.”   The report was covered widely in the media, and the author, Center staff researcher Steven Camarota, was given many opportunities to repeat his […]

  A coalition of Mexican unions and social movements has been calling for a continental workers’ campaign for a living wage and social justice in the three NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) countries.  The original call was made in November 2006 (see Richard Roman and Edur Velasco, “Mexican Workers Call for a Continental Workers’ […]

The world’s largest prison — Gaza prison with 1.5 million inmates, many of them starving, sick and penniless — is receiving more sympathy and protest by Israeli citizens, of widely impressive backgrounds, than is reported in the U.S. press. In contrast, the humanitarian crisis brought about by Israeli government blockades that prevent food, medicine, fuel […]

Doug Minkler is a San Francisco Bay Area artist specializing in fundraising, outreach, and educational posters. Minkler has collaborated with ILWU, Rainforest Action Network, SF Mime Troupe, ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, CISPES, United Auto Workers, Africa Information Network, ADAPT, Cop Watch, Street Sheet, and Veterans for Peace among others. He can be contacted at […]

  Prince William County, Virginia has become ‘ground zero’ in the war against immigrants. Prince William has implemented a draconian policy targeting the immigrant community.  Mexicanos Sin Fronteras, a community-based, all volunteer organization, has been working tirelessly since last July to organize mass resistance. In October of 2007, the all-white Prince William County Board of Supervisors, […]

Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai’s much publicized remark last week about Gaza facing a “shoah” — the Hebrew word for the Holocaust — was widely assumed to be unpleasant hyperbole about the army’s plans for an imminent full-scale invasion of the Strip. More significantly, however, his comment offers a disturbing indication of the Israeli […]