When politicians vacation and little action is expected, the words German journalists use for such summer doldrums is “Saure-Gurken-Zeit” — “sour pickle time.” Since German often squeezes things together into what Mark Twain called “not words but panoramas,” it’s usually written with no break, “Sauregurkenzeit,” and may be derived from the time before the harvest […]
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News updates or analysis.
US Intervention Is Not Humanitarian and Will Not Protect the People of Iraq
Here we go again, the US is using a humanitarian catastrophe to implement imperialist objectives and pour petrol on fire. It is sickening to see Obama and the Western media shedding crocodile tears for the Iraqi people, after the US-led occupation pulverised Iraq as a society and killed a million of its people. It […]
Debate on Capitalism, Environmentalism, and “Environmental Catastrophism”
The Environment and Capitalism: Response to Ian Angusby Sam Gindin The most critical question confronting anyone concerned with the environmental crisis is the political one: how to build a social force able to do something about it. The most important division among social activists is not between those who think an environmental collapse is imminent […]
I See Palestine
In response to Roger Cohen, “Why Americans See Israel the Way They Do,” New York Times, August 3, 2014. . . . The bias of the cowboy-and-Indians movies I grew up on in the 1950s has long been exposed: swallowing up Native American land was the aim, and the myth of the dangerous savages who […]
In Shared Sorrow: Remembering ‘Comrade’ Nirmal da
This tribute to one of India’s finest radical economists first appeared in Analytical Monthly Review, May 2014. AMR, published from Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Nirmal Kumar Chandra (1936-2014), referred to by his dear friend, Ashok Mitra, in The Telegraph (April 4, 2014) as “The Compleat Economist”, was in […]
On Capital, Real Socialism, and Venezuela: An Interview with Michael A. Lebowitz
Gülden Özcan and Bora Erdağı: In some of the interviews you gave, you talked about your own everyday life experiences that led you to discover that Marx’s total critique of capitalism is an unfinished project. In this discovery, you emphasized elsewhere that your class background and political struggle you were involved in have played an […]
Across the Atlantic: A Month in the USA
What a trip! I had last visited my American home country three years earlier; some things hadn’t changed much, some things had. As ever, piled high, were many contrasts and contradictions. My first goal was my class reunion (the 65th!!!), partly in the Harvard Yard, sober and dignified even when filled with thousands of new […]
PFLP: Proposal for “Calm” Seeks New Chains on the Resistance
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine noted that despite what has been reported in news agencies regarding the words of President Abu Mazen and his claimed approval of the so-called Egyptian initiative, the Palestinian factions were not consulted regarding this initiative, no decisions were approved by any Palestinian institution, and this matter has […]
Once Again on “Environmental Catastrophism”: A Reply to Sam Gindin
Last year in Monthly Review, I debated Eddie Yuen, an anarchist who believes it is a mistake for radicals to focus on telling the truth about the global environmental crisis, because “awareness of climate crisis does not necessarily lead to increased political engagement.” Not only can such awareness lead to apathy, he wrote, but “environmental […]
Bhagat Singh: Eighty-Three Years On
Chaman Lal. Understanding Bhagat Singh. Delhi: Aakar, 2013. pp. 245. Left Traditions in South Asia Bhagat Singh is to South Asia what Che Guevara is to Latin America — a popular iconic figure who continues to inspire generations of youth in the subcontinent in their struggles against imperialism and the trajectory of national politics after […]
Barbie’s Gay-Pride Shocker!
“Get out! Get out of here and never come back!” shrieked an enraged Barbie, as she hurled a tiny bedroom slipper in my direction. The dainty missile careened off an itty-bitty bust of Ken, then shattered the frame that held a photo of Barbie’s best friend, Midge. “Take your Gay Pride and shove it!” Barbie’s […]
Political Parties, Left, Right, and Purely Satirical
During my month in my home country, the USA, things kept moving along on this eastern side of the Atlantic. I must try to catch up! In early June Europe had to digest results of the European Parliament elections — and choke down some pretty revolting clumps. Far-right groups took alarming leads in France and […]
Targeting Elbit Systems in the Month Against the Apartheid Wall
Surveillance. It’s in the headlines and on the tips of tongues. As technology offers new possibilities for connection, it also offers new means to keep tabs on people. Surveillance has become seemingly ubiquitous, from the NSA reading emails to drones in the skies. A nation that has for 66 years been ruling over an indigenous […]
The Desperate Choices Behind Child Migration
As someone who just returned from living and working in El Salvador, I’m still having a hard time adjusting to our mainstream media’s never-ending wave of know-nothing commentary on the subject of immigration. A case in point is the column penned by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat on Sunday, June 22nd. Douthat expresses alarm […]
Letter to Maradona
Unforgettable Friend: Every day I have the pleasure of following your program, on TeleSur, on the spectacular World Cup of football; thanks to your program I can see the extraordinary level of that universal sport. I do not think a proper education for young people in any country is possible without sports and, in the […]
The Baran-Marcuse Letters: “The Truth Is the Whole”
The issue that Paul Baran and my father Herbert Marcuse confronted in their correspondence1 was, I suspect, what was an ongoing and troublesome theme for them both, analytically and politically. It was a paradox that my father often formulated as: “You need new men and women to make a revolution, but you need a […]
A Response to FIFA’s “Setting the Record Straight”
On 10 June 2014 FIFA released a “Frequently Asked Questions” pamphlet “Setting the Record Straight” on what it purports to be some misconceptions about FIFA’s role and the socio-economic impact of the FIFA World Cup. The release of the pamphlet is significant as it is the first time that FIFA has been forced by […]
Maradona on World Cup 2014
“It will be a great World Cup, but you can’t bury people under cement!” — Diego Maradona Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. Follow Latuff on Twitter @LatuffCartoons. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). To follow the World Cup with Diego Armando Maradona and Víctor Hugo Morales, watch De Zurda on TeleSur […]
The Open Veins of Eduardo Galeano
In a recent Washington Post article entitled “Latin Americans Are Embracing Globalization and Their Former Colonial Masters,” written by a political science professor from the University of Colorado, the author begins with the following sentence: “Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano recently renounced his 1971 classic, Open Veins of Latin America, one of a few books admitted […]
A Restive Rank and File Fighting for — and Beginning to Win — New Teacher Union Leadership
It’s a hard time to be the leader of any union, but those elected by teachers are really on the firing line. Corporate-backed education reformers and their political allies want to weaken the collective voice of public school educators. Teacher union bargaining rights or contract protections have come under attack throughout the country. The two […]
