Archive | Commentary

Traveling to both Venezuela and South Africa this past summer, through my work as an academic sociologist, I was able to observe firsthand two radically different approaches to “third world” development: a “redistributive approach” in Venezuela, and a set of basically neo-liberal economic policies in South Africa.  Although this was not a consciously designed research […]

Y el mito y la leyenda son en el fondo metáforas colectivas, o sea, maneras de expresión que la historia encuentra para revelarse a pesar del silencio obligatorio, y a pesar de la obligatoria mentira. El mito, por citarte un ejemplo, el mito de Túpac Amaru . . . verdad . . . es de […]

  Nearly 45 religious leaders from Christian and Muslim faith backgrounds met with the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Sept. 20, in an open discussion about the role religious communities can play in reversing the deepening crisis between Iran and the United States. This was the first face-to-face meeting between the Iranian leader and leaders from […]

  “We believe the production or use of nuclear weapons is immoral.” — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Hours after he spoke to the United Nations, the Iranian president made this clear, unequivocal statement to a group of us during a private meeting in New York.  The Mennonite Central Committee organized an extraordinary, private session for […]

The 1969 SDS convention in Chicago gave me a crushing headache, and I can’t have been the only one.  Like most (but by no means all) the SDSers that I knew, I left the convention hall with the anti-PLers, sure that nothing could be quite worse than being dragged back, not just into 1930s rhetoric […]

The minimum wage tragedy goes beyond the 15 million US workers now earning $5.15 per hour or $206 per forty-hour week before tax and other deductions.  It goes beyond the facts that $5.15 was already low when Congress set it in September, 1997, and that Congress has since kept it frozen at $ 5.15.  Meanwhile, […]

Over the last 25 years the reputation of Mao Zedong has been seriously undermined by ever more extreme estimates of the numbers of deaths he was supposedly responsible for. In his lifetime, Mao Zedong was hugely respected for the way that his socialist policies improved the welfare of the Chinese people, slashing the level of poverty and hunger in China and providing free health care and education. Mao’s theories also gave great inspiration to those fighting imperialism around the world. It is probably this factor that explains a great deal of the hostility towards him from the Right. This is a tendency that is likely to grow more acute with the apparent growth in strength of Maoist movements in India and Nepal in recent years, as well as the continuing influence of Maoist movements in other parts of the world

The Second International’s Marxism, proletarian-and-European-centered, shared with the dominant ideology of that period a linear view of history—a view according to which all societies had first to pass through a stage of capitalist development (a stage whose seeds were being planted by colonialism which, by that very fact, was “historically positive”) before being able to aspire to socialism. The idea that the “development” of some (the dominating centers) and the “underdevelopment” of others (the dominated peripheries) were as inseparable as the two faces of a single coin, both being immanent outcomes of capitalism’s worldwide expansion, was completely alien to it

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.   Its September 2006 issue features the following editorial. — ED. The land question, the fundamental failure of independent India, has again become one of the most debatable and controversial topics of the day.  Although the mass media and […]

  Madam President, Distinguished Heads of State and Government, Distinguished Heads of Delegation, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen I praise the merciful, all-knowing and almighty God for blessing me with another opportunity to address this Assembly on behalf of the great nation of Iran and to bring a number of issues to the attention of the […]

I was branded and factory-stamped into this world in 1959, a miniature Golem for American girlhood.  I was a plastic anorexic girl-on-the-go, long legs, diamond-pointy breasts, and blonde, blonde, blonde — designed to protect you kiddies from Communism.  Go to my website.  I’ve been a model, an astronaut, a doctor, lawyer, politician, nurse, princess, rock […]

SUBVENCIÓN • Las empresas quieren que los precios de los combustibles sean desregulados. • LA DESPEDIDA EN EL MINISTERIO • Carlos Villegas (izq.) estrecha la mano de Andrés Soliz, quien renunció a su cargo por discrepancias con algunas autoridades del Poder Ejecutivo. Las empresas petroleras que negocian con el Gobierno los nuevos contratos de operación […]

El siguiente es el texto de la renuncia que el Dr. Andrés Soliz Rada presentó al Sr. Presidente Evo Morales Ayma La Paz, 15 de septiembre de 2006 Señor: Don Evo Morales Ayma Presidente Constitucional de la República Presente. Ref.: Renuncia irrevocable Excelentísimo señor Presidente: El 17 de mayo pasado hice saber a su persona […]

  Prodded by Amnesty International (AI), the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Asian Human Rights Commission, Reporters Without Borders, and other international organizations, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo recently cobbled a group to look into the allegations of massive human rights violations — over 729 victims of extrajudicial killings, and 180 involuntary “disappearances,” by the latest count — during her […]

John Bellamy Foster NAKED IMPERIALISM: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance by John Bellamy FosterREAD EXCERPT BUY THIS BOOK Here are two opportunities to listen to John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review and the author of Naked Imperialism among many other publications. On Tuesday, 19 September 2006, C.S. Soong, the host of Against the […]

Coordinatrice des Campagnes civiles internationales pour la protection du peuple palestinien (CCIPPP), Nahla Chahal est chercheur à Paris.  Elle fut l’une des dirigeantes, dans les années 1970, de l’Organisation d’action communiste du Liban (OACL).  De retour du Liban, où elle a passé plus d’un mois pendant l’offensive israélienne, elle raconte et analyse ces événements. Quel […]

To the Government of India, Members of the Judiciary, and All Citizens, To build a truly democratic and plural India, we must collectively fight against laws and policies that abuse human rights and limit fundamental freedoms. This is why we, concerned Indian citizens and people of Indian origin, support the overturning of Section 377 of […]

Michael Lebowitz, Martha Harnecker y Luis Bonilla.  Credito: MIGUEL ACURERO Caracas.  A pesar de tener activo cinco meses, ayer viernes fue presentado oficialmente el Centro Internacional Miranda (CMI), que tendrá como objetivo determinar los aspectos ideológicos que enmarcarán el proceso de transformación del país hacia el modo del socialismo del siglo XXI, con la participación […]

  Caracas, 27 August 2006 Dear Friend, It is my great pleasure, on behalf of the Centro Internacional Miranda (CIM, Miranda International Centre), to contact you to tell you that the Centro Internacional Miranda now exists.  As a sympathizer with and an activist in the Bolivarian cause, we value your cooperation highly and we hope […]

“A critical component of the overall strategy is to contain expenditures within revenues and available financing, by prioritizing expenditures, controlling the wage and pensions bill, reducing subsidies on petroleum products, and expanding the participation of the private sector in the domestic market for petroleum products. . . . The authorities have recently increased prices of […]