December 3, 2010 Dear President Obama, A week ago, I wrote you on this same subject but since I’ve not yet received a reply either personal or automated, I felt I should try again. As president of Veterans For Peace (VFP), a national organization of military veterans, I want to convey to you our serious […]
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Monthly Review Magazine
Vice President of Bolivia Makes WikiLeaks Cables Available on His Web Site
Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera: The empire, in the name of diplomacy, is committing third-class espionage — lamentable for a serious country, and lamentable and decadent for an empire. The reason [for making the WikiLeaks cables available] is to show the public the quality of an empire which — there’s no doubt about it […]
The Healthcare Is Too Damn High
“If you’re really worried about the deficits, then you should be really worried about health care costs.” Alan Barber is Domestic Communications Coordinator of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Cf. “The cuddly creature on the left sounds a lot like the US media, and the one on the right does a pretty good […]
Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line
Abstract: On May 29, 1871, the engineers of Newcastle, England went on strike for a nine-hour day. “Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line” draws on several narratives arising out of the strike and the lives of its participants to frame an investigation of the historical debate over shorter working time and its prime aspiration, disposable […]
Globalizing Homophobia
After September 11th, 2001, one of the liberal justifications for the military intervention against Afghanistan was the oppression of women, but also of gays, by the Taliban. People in Europe and the USA received with shock the news that same-sex couples were publicly executed in the Kabul Stadium by bringing down a wall upon them […]
Student Day in Iran
Reformist actions on Student Day in Iran, 7 December 2010 (16 Azar 1389). . . . The 16 Azar assembly of the Islamic Student Association, Tehran University and Tehran University of Medical Sciences Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan Islamic Azad University, Behbahan Amir Kabir University Amir Kabir University […]
Anti-Democratic Behavior of US and Canadian Governments Denounced by Their Own Citizens on Global Day for Climate Justice at UN Climate Change Conference
US and Canadian UN COP16 observers and climate justice activists will demonstrate against their governments’ position at the climate change conference by joining the Via Campesina and Espacio Mexicano marches and sit-ins throughout Cancun today, then gather at the Cancun Messe this afternoon at 4pm to deliver a specific message to US & Canadian […]
Waiting for Flying Saucers?
UAW President Bob King and his corporate partners at GM, Ford, and Chrysler-Fiat will blame the competition they’ve rigged on workers and relentlessly degrade them into believing they are worth less and less as profits rise. That’s not a guess, it’s the drill. History lessons must be revised before the profiteers of war and labor […]
Can We Be Feminist and Religious?
“We aim to show that religion does not have to be a dividing force between feminists.” A shorter version of the video may be viewed at <vimeo.com/16522936>. | Print
Nut-bag Letter to Jon Stewart from the Mad Peace Activist
Dear Mr. Stewart, Remember your “Rally to Restore Sanity” in DC last October? I’m sorry, but my sanity remains unrestored. In fact, I’ve been feeling increasingly deranged. It’s like I’m speeding down Life’s superhighway at 666 miles per hour, headed for Nut City, where I am due to give my inaugural speech as Mayor. At […]
Why Should Iran Trust President Obama?
In the run-up to a new round of nuclear talks between the P5+1 and Iran on Monday, Western commentators are re-hashing old arguments that the Islamic Republic is either too politically divided or too dependent on hostility toward the United States for its legitimacy to be seriously interested in a nuclear deal. From this perspective, […]
Letter to President Mahmoud Abbas
To His Excellency Mahmoud Abbas President of the Palestinian National Authority Mr. President, I have carefully read the letter of 24 November, by which Your Excellency asks Brazil to recognize the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. As Your Excellency knows, Brazil has historically advocated, particularly under my government, the achievement of the legitimate […]
Ex-offenders and the Labor Market
Executive Summary: We use Bureau of Justice Statistics data to estimate that, in 2008, the United States had between 12 and 14 million ex-offenders of working age. Because a prison record or felony conviction greatly lowers ex-offenders’ prospects in the labor market, we estimate that this large population lowered the total male employment rate that […]
Unquiet on the Western Front
On December 5th one or two hundred people left a movie theater in Berlin, mostly silent and deeply moved though the film they had seen was first released in 1930. This American-made epic had lost none of its extremely emotional appeal. It was All Quiet on the Western Front and the date of its showing […]
Abraham Serfaty
On November 18, I received the sad news: my Moroccan friend and teacher, Abraham Serfaty, passed away in Marrakesh, Morocco. Serfaty was a well-known Moroccan communist dissident and an anti-Zionist Jewish Arab. He died at the age of 83, after a long illness. My relationship with Abraham started four decades ago with a small book […]
Voter Participation in Egypt
Participate and Vote . . . . . . if you can break through the Central Security Forces. Doaa Eladl is a cartoonist in Cairo, Egypt. This cartoon was published by Al-Masry Al-Youm on 27 November 2010 under a Creative Commons license. Cf. “Opposition Protest Parliamentary Vote Rigging” (Ahram Online, 4 December 2010); “Poca participación […]
Korea: Still an Unknown War
Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: A History. New York: Modern Library, 2010. Cloth, $24.00, pp 288. Any time that a book appears by Bruce Cumings, one of our foremost scholars on Korea, it merits attention. His latest book, The Korean War, is particularly welcome given the recent sharp increase in tensions on the Korean Peninsula. […]
Latin American Lessons for the European Crisis: Interview with Michael A. Lebowitz
Michael A. Lebowitz will deliver the Fourth Annual Lecture in Memory of Nicos Poulantzas (“Building Socialism of the 21st Century: The Logic of the State”) on Wednesday, 8 December 2010, 7 PM, at the auditorium of the Goethe Institute (Omirou St. 14-16) in Athens, Greece. Mr. Lebowitz, is Marxism still relevant today? I ask […]
Fire in My Belly
wo * * * “When he died in 1992, David Wojnarowicz, artist and writer with AIDS, left a body of work about the disease that remains unrivaled for its power and beauty. On December 1, 2010, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC celebrated World AIDS Day by capitulating to the demands of […]
A Letter from Tel Aviv: The Right in Israel Is Playing with Fire
I am in Tel Aviv. 70 km away from the fires, I cannot even see the smoke cloud above the Haifa area, which is moving into the sea and may reach Cyprus before it comes to me. The pictures on my plasma TV are, however, very saddening. You see tens of thousands evacuated from […]
