Archive | Commentary

On Monday, November 12, we here in Troy, NY were lucky enough to have Michael Yates visit us on his book tour, his 52nd stop, to be exact. In addition to the talk at Troy’s “Sanctuary for Independent Media,” co-sponsored by the Troy Area Labor Council of the AFL-CIO, Yates gave several interviews on WRPI, […]

  Die ständigen Mitglieder des UN-Sicherheitsrats hatten sich im Atomstreit mit dem Iran Anfang Oktober geeinigt: Die Entscheidung über verschärfte Sanktionen wird vertagt, bis die Internationale Atomenergiebehörde (IAEO) einen neuen Bericht über das Atomprogramm Irans vorgelegt hat.  Aber so viel Geduld wollten die USA nicht aufbringen.  Im Alleingang verschärften sie die Wirtschaftssanktionen, stuften die Revolutionsgarden […]

Tallulah is a small town in Northeastern Louisiana, one of the poorest regions in the US.   It is about 90 miles from the now-legendary town of Jena, and like Jena it is a town with a large youth prison that was closed after allegations of abuse and brutality.  Also like Jena, residents of Tallulah are […]

Introduction On the 17th and 18th of November 2007, the finance ministers and reserve bank governors of the G20 countries, along with leading International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank officials, will be gathering in the seaside village of Kleinmond, South Africa.1  During this meeting — which will be hosted by the current Chair of […]

  For the last 20 years, the U.S. government has accused me of being a terrorist.  Along with six other Palestinians and a Kenyan, we were dubbed the “Los Angeles Eight” by the media.  Our case even made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. On Oct. 30 — 20 grueling years after the early morning […]

The Los Angeles Times reports that Disneyland is retooling its boats-on-water rides because of the raging obesity epidemic in the United States, “to deal with the delicate problem of bottoming-out boats.” People are simply getting too fat for the existing rides, including the now satirically named “It’s a Small World”: “Forty-one years after the whimsical […]

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is on the mark in organizing the growing army of service workers in the US, and is on the move in sharp contrast to the industrial unions that have been stalled and subverted by anti-union legislation and massive offshoring (see “The Fight of Our Lives: The War of Attrition […]

Upcoming New York Area Events on Immigration with Jane Guskin & David Wilson authors of The Politics of Immigration: Questions & Answers For information:Website: thepoliticsofimmigration.org/ Blog:thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/ Email: [email protected] NOVEMBER  2007 Thursday, Nov. 15, between Noon and 1 pm Interview on “Lakou New York,” hosted by Dahoud André and Ernest Banatte (“Mèt Bano”) For listeners in […]

On November 5th, retired general Raúl Baduel shocked many in Venezuela and abroad by delivering a prepared statement condemning the proposed constitutional reform and urging a “NO” vote on December 2nd.  The shock felt by many and the outrage by some is no doubt the result of such a high-level defection: until July, Baduel had […]

Poppin’ Fresh, chubby little standard-bearer for the mass marketing of lip-smacking glutens, interrupted regularly scheduled TV programming today at 8:46 a.m. to announce the imposition of martial law across the continental United States. “Now, don’t you folks go out of your homes, and don’t you try to stop those roundups in the streets — we’ve […]

  INTRODUCTION Five years into the US-UK illegal invasion of Iraq and its consequent catastrophe for Iraqi people, peace loving people throughout the world are appalled by the current Iran-US standoff and its resemblance to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.  The hawks, headed by Dick Cheney in Washington, are now shamelessly calling for […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its November 2007 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. Now that the global counter-revolutionary assault of the last decades has visibly begun to ebb, the time may be near when an account can be rendered of the […]

On December 10th, 2003, the leftist newsweekly Jungle World published a pamphlet by the French journalists Caroline Fourest and Fiammetta Venner, which contained a defensive claim which would go on to have a great career: with their assertion that the term “Islamophobia” was coined in the year 1979 by Iranian mullahs in order to denounce […]

In recent days, the already tenuous political situation in Pakistan has made a turn toward the worse.  Musharraf’s government clamped down first on the judiciary and other opponents in the government in the first days after his declaration of martial law.  More recently, those same forces have prevented even the liberal bourgeois opposition represented by […]

Everything Americans do requires transportation because our individualized homes, like our jobs and shopping locations, are all considerable distances from one another except in our largest, densest cities.  The private automobile rules.  Everything we buy in a store got there by truck.  Two-thirds of US oil consumption goes for transportation, most of that for private […]

Un an après la dernière guerre au Liban, le parti Hezbollah reste un mystère.  Pour la première fois, son leader, Hassan Nasrallah, a accepté la présence de caméras occidentales au sein de l’organisation et répond, sous haute surveillance, aux questions les plus délicates.  En retraçant l’histoire de ce mouvement, ce documentaire exceptionnel donne les clés […]

A new dimension of immense importance is being added to the contradictions of US policy in Iraq and the Middle East at large.  Turkey, a staunch US ally for over half a century and a NATO member, is threatening to militarily intervene in Northern Iraq, i.e. Iraqi Kurdistan.  A resolution was passed by the Turkish […]

A juzgar por los documentos que nos quedan, Tucídides (460-396 a. C.) fue el primer filósofo de la historia que descubrió el poder como un fenómeno humano y no como una virtud que conferían los cielos o los demonios.  También fue conciente del valor principal del dinero para vencer en cualquier guerra.  Podemos agregar otra: […]

  Richard York and Brett Clark’s cogent essay “Gender and Mathematical Ability: The Toll of Biological Determinism” (MR, November 2007) brings to mind the extreme complexities and biases entangled in separating genetic from environmental factors.  I suggest the following example to illustrate the point. Suppose we are confronted with the hypothesis that there exists a […]

  This meeting, after thorough discussion of all aspects of the situation arising from the imposition of State of Emergency by the Chief of the Army Staff, resolves as follows: We strongly condemn the imposition of State of Emergency, promulgation of Provisional Constitution Order (PCO), suspension of fundamental rights and the dismantling of the entire […]