Archive | Commentary

To endorse the statement below, please go to: www.petitiononline.com/NYCLAW2/petition.html. January 24, 2007 Despite overwhelming rejection of its policies in the November elections, the Bush administration has steadily escalated its war in the Middle East. This has meant not only ordering thousands more troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, but arming and financing Israel’s attacks on Lebanon […]

Evo Morales climbed into his presidential jeep, ducking a barrage of sticks, debris and insults thrown from members of right wing civic groups in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.  Cameramen and livid activists chased him until police filled the streets with tear gas.  Bolivia’s first indigenous president, a former coca grower and self-described anti-imperialist, was not welcome […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its January 2007 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. In an article entitled “Capital, Technology and Development,”1 Harry Magdoff, refuting the myth of bourgeois social science that capital and technology are the magic which will bring the […]

En su vehemente proceso al islam y al estatus de inferioridad legal y de sumisión de la mujer que prevalece en la mayoría de países musulmanes, Telima Nesreen, Ayaam Hirsi Ali y otras emancipadas de su credo religioso han evocado y evocan repetidas veces el nombre del autor de Cándido: “Permitidnos un Voltaire . . […]

A chain of events triggered by the passage of a new agrarian reform law, part of Bolivian president Evo Morales’ “agrarian revolution,” has brought to sharp relief the drive by the right-wing opposition to overthrow Morales’ government, even if it means pushing Bolivia into civil war. On November 28, in front of thousands of cheering […]

Au moins 15 personnes ont été blessées par balles mardi au Liban, où des affrontements ont éclaté entre les partisans du gouvernement et ceux de l’opposition, qui bloquaient les axes routiers avec des pneus brûlés. Dans ce climat de vive tension, l’opposition a appelé à poursuivre le mouvement de grève générale entamé le jour même […]

This year corporate employers are pushing government to take up “health reform,” largely because they see health care as a significant obstacle to profits.  Will health reform happen, and will it be an advance or a take-away for most working people? Take a look at California.  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed near-universal healthcare early in January. […]

L’opposition libanaise qui cherche à intensifier sa campagne destinée à faire chuter le gouvernement de Fouad Siniora, a appelé samedi à la grève générale à compter de mardi 23 janvier 2007. “L’opposition en appelle à sa base populaire pour permettre une intensification de son mouvement de protestation pacifique et démocratique et appelle les Libanais à […]

Recientemente, el presidente de Brasil, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, fue homenajeado por la revista Istoé, que lo eligió Brasileiro do Ano. Significativamente, la revista entregó otras distinciones: IstoÉ Dinheiro e IstoÉ Gente, que puestos en su propio contexto podrían significar dos premios redundantes. El texto de AFP, repetido por una docena de diarios del […]

When Colonel Harry Summers told a North Vietnamese counterpart in 1975 that “[y]ou know you never defeated us on the battlefield,” the reply was: “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.1 News stories surrounding the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq proclaimed the arrival of a long-promised “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA), a […]

With awards season now upon us, Leonardo DiCaprio seems poised for a walk down the red carpet at next month’s Academy Awards.  Having already garnered two Golden Globes nominations for best actor (one for his performance in The Departed and the other in Blood Diamond), an Oscar nod is likely to follow.  Many filmgoers who’ve […]

“We cannot admit rivals in the East or even the central parts of Africa . . . to a considerable extent, if not entirely, we must be prepared to apply a sort of Munro [sic] doctrine to much of Africa.” — Lord Carnarvon1 The original Monroe Doctrine initiated in 1824 prevented European interference in the […]

  G.M.S.: Here in Tucson, Arizona, 70 miles from the border, we are feeling the effects of President Bush’s deployment of National Guard troops at the U.S. border.  The first hundreds arrived last summer, and 2,500 are expected to be in our “Tucson Sector” by August.  Moreover, the Border Patrol is to grow from 12,400 […]

“Dignity Returns” is becoming a unique clothing label and logo in Thailand, a “workers’ brand” at a factory run and owned entirely by its 30 workers in Bangkok.  The Solidarity Factory in western Bangkok is an example for garment workers anywhere in the world.  Turning out T-shirts, headbands, kids’ clothes, in an operation without bosses, […]

  There’s a woman — some call her “Black Hawk Down” lady — who lives in a packed, squalid neighborhood in the middle of Mogadishu and runs a rather simple but grisly museum.  For under a dollar, visitors can view her prized possession, the mangled, mud-splattered nose of a US Black Hawk helicopter that was […]

The recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that paralyzed Swift and Company across the heartland of America were part of Endgame, a massive immigration enforcement operation launched by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003.  Ultimately, it promises to be the biggest police operation in U.S. history.  The stated objective of Endgame is […]

Así como en teología el mismo Cristo sirve para justificar la acumulación de capitales o para suprimir al prójimo en nombre del amor, así también la historia de los oprimidos sirve para crear mitos e ideoléxicos incuestionables, a la medida del poder de turno: el patriotismo, la libertad, la salvación del mundo,nuestro derecho de aplastar […]

When supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez rallied in the Teresa Carrena theatre in Caracas to celebrate their presidential election victory on December 15, 2006, “there were cheers in the back half of the theatre,” writes Michael Lebowitz, “but few in the high-priced seats.” This was not because Chávez spoke of going forward to socialism […]

Romanticized, demonized, celebrated, denounced — among activists in the United States and Canada, academia is all of these things. It is a gate-keeping institution that shapes and is shaped by relations of power and privilege. It is a site of intense struggle: those who are structurally excluded battle for access, while those who study there fight for affordable and relevant education, and those who work there demand dignity, respect, and living wages. It is a place both where people develop radical politics and transformative visions and where people seclude themselves in insular, disconnected ivory towers. These contradictions are stark. Yet radicals have tried to make use of the academy. Since the 1960s, in particular, graduate school has become an attractive pathway for many activists, but also often an isolating and depoliticizing one. This is still true today, as radicals active in a variety of movements are choosing to go to grad school.

Several weeks ago, with much media fanfare, the James Baker-Lee Hamilton Committee submitted to President George W. Bush its long-awaited, bipartisan report on the U.S. war in Iraq.  On balance, the report provided Bush with a face-saving strategy for pulling out all U.S. combat forces by the beginning of 2008.  The Baker-Hamilton report favors an […]