Archive | Commentary

Local 2627, DC 37, AFSCME interviews labor leader Houzan Mahmoud. This interview was conducted on March 5, 2007, at an event sponsored by the Center for Study of Working Class Life and cosponsored by U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW).  Houzan Mahmoud is the international representative of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in […]

In the jargon of military recruiters, “influencers” is the term used to refer to the family members, close friends, and peers of those young women and men who are considering enlistment in the U.S. armed forces.  It’s the circle of people in the daily home, school, work, religious, and social life of the potential inductee […]

The Egyptian writer and novelist Nawal El Saadawi well known both in the Arab world and internationally is facing a political and religious campaign mounted against her by the authorities of Al-Azhar.  Basing themselves on a play written by her entitled “God Resigns at the Summit Meeting” published during the month of January 2007 in […]

When people think of militant political action in the United States, their thoughts usually turn to cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and New York.  The South and the Pacific Northwest probably don’t immediately spring to mind.  This is despite the rich legacy of militant labor protest in the filed, woods, and apple orchards of the […]

The American mind is a turbulent canister of contradictions: A blood-splotched Guantanamo prison cell floating delicately on a lotus pond, An unkempt bedroom strewn with silk undergarments Where truth sits in comfortable exile, A victim of extraordinary rendition stuffed into the drawer of an adolescent’s bed Covered in locomotive quilting from Pottery Barn Kids, A […]

John Mage of Monthly Review and Bernard D’Mello. deputy editor of Economic and Political Weekly (“EPW”) of Mumbai, India, visited Nepal in February, and trekked into Rolpa, the original base area of the revolutionary “people’s war.”  The following account appears simultaneously on MRZine and in the current (March 17th) issue of EPW. Over the last […]

John Mage of Monthly Review, and Bernard D’Mello, deputy editor, Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai, spoke to Comrade Nabina, senior battalion commander, fifth division, People’s Liberation Army, Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) on February 7, 2007 at the main cantonment site at Dahaban of Nuwagaon in Rolpa district, in mid-west Nepal.  What were the main […]

Raising the minimum wage and increasing the level of social assistance is a component part of challenging the large, low-wage multinationals that make up the vast majority employers of the working poor.  The largest of them all is Wal-Mart. For socialists, Wal-Mart is more than just a series of big retail stores that threaten our […]

It is now accepted across a wide spectrum of political thinking that the period of neoliberalism has sharpened income inequalities.  This has occurred along a number of dimensions.  The capitalist class has seen an increase in wealth from an increasing concentration of assets, a rapid run-up in asset prices, and corporate profits restored to historically […]

In the years preceding and immediately following the Second World War, the trade union movement served to transform work and life for industrial workers and their communities by creating the means to bargain for better wages and working conditions.  Now, in the first decade of the 21st century, North American hotel workers are engaged in […]

His foot, that is.  After four years of conducting an illegal war in Iraq, which has killed almost one million people, maimed, wounded and dislocated millions more, tortured countless thousands, and in general brutalized and destroyed a once sovereign, secular country, wreaking havoc and disgrace in the world for his own country, the military’s top […]

  Opening March 30 Quad Cinema 34 W. 13th St., New York filmmaker will be present Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings Opening April 6 Laemmle Music Hall 3 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills filmmaker will be present Friday and Saturday evenings Click on the still to watch the trailer of Sacco and Vanzetti. A documentary […]

We DO have a chance to reverse this in committee, but we urgently need to make phone calls TODAY. The Supplemental Appropriations bill is scheduled to be marked up in full committee Thursday at 9 am. The list of Members of the full Appropriations committee is given below.  If your Congressional representative is not on […]

On Saturday, March 17, 2007, my mom, son, ex-wife, and I will be joining the March on the Pentagon.  Cindy Sheehan will be there.  I’m wondering if other MR people will be there, too.  If so, would you like to march together, and perhaps even socialize before or after the protest? The organizers advise us […]

IVAN’S WAR by Catherine MerridaleBUY THIS BOOK As civilians, we can never understand combat, or empathize with those who have seen it.  Samuel Fuller, a World War Two infantryman who saw combat in France — and who later, as a Hollywood director, recalled his trauma in The Big Red One — said it was impossible […]

JASMINE AND STARS: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran by Fatemeh KeshavarzBUY THIS BOOK Fatemeh Keshavarz, author of Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran, on how literature can be used to create or destroy stereotypes. Q: How did Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran come to be? A: You […]

  I have been very puzzled by how many on the left and in the liberal media seem to imagine that the situation in Iraq and the Middle East is bad for the Imperialists.  They are having a heyday with the so-called WOT. . . . It is going very well for them . . […]

7 March 2007 On 10 March 2007 in Baghdad a stillborn regional conference will convene in which the Iraqi people will again be absent, their resistance not represented.  Instead, a defeated US occupation will continue attempting to write the fate of the Iraqi people, conspiring with an undemocratic Security Council, as well as neighbouring and […]

  Tune in to Out-FM this Monday the 12th of March at 11:00 AM on Pacifica Radio WBAI at 99.5 FM and at www.wbai.org. Brad Taylor hosts a discussion with CUNY- Staten Island Professor Saadia Toor and Kourosh Shemirani of Qiam (Queer Iranian Alliance) stemming from the discussion event hosted by Professor Toor at CUNY’s […]

Folks often ask, rather cynically, where are the students protesting the war?  Well, the answer is that they are there — on their campuses and in the dorms — organizing speakers, rallies, and teach-ins.  The fact that folks off campus do not hear about these events does not mean that they aren’t happening.  What it […]