NEW DEPARTURES IN MARXIAN THEORY by Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff BUY THIS BOOK Being a Marxist requires considerable gumption — especially in the United States. Those who take Marxism seriously in a hostile intellectual and political environment are only too aware of this struggle. At worst, interest in Marxism is perceived […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
Alliance of Hope: Read and Hear Tariq Ali’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN by Tariq AliBUY THIS BOOK The Pirates of the Caribbean identified by Tariq Ali in his slender volume titled the same are Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and of course, Fidel Castro, the “Old Man,” of Cuba. These three men and the movements they lead, according to Ali, […]
We Are All Prophets Now: Responsibilities and Risks in the Prophetic Voice
Sermon delivered August 5, 2007, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. It may be the fate of humans always to believe that we live at the most important time in history, that our moment is the decisive moment. But even factoring in this tendency toward collective self-centeredness, it is difficult to ignore that today we face […]
Paraguay: A Laboratory for Latin America’s New Militarism
Two soldiers in Paraguay stand in front of a camera. One of them holds an automatic weapon. John Lennon’s “Imagine” plays in the background. This Orwellian juxtaposition of war and peace is from a new video posted online by US soldiers stationed in Paraguay. The video footage and other military activity in this heart of […]
New Element Discovered: Capitalisium
A public university sociology department has recently announced the discovery of the most toxic element yet known to social science. This new element has been named Capitalisium (Cp). Capitalisium is a very volatile, dynamic, and toxic element, containing 1 positron, 1 neutron, and 1 huge electron along with boards of electrons, various vice electrons, […]
Empire and Its Fixers
Ayub Nuri, a Kurdish man from Halabja, was a fixer for the Western media in Iraq (he is now based in New York City, having received a scholarship from Columbia).1 A fixer, in the words of Nuri, is “a journalist’s interpreter, guide, source finder and occasional lifesaver.”2 Local fixers, more or less, shape what foreign […]
Rutgers-Venezuela
Rutgers Students Visit Hugo Chavez Jason Bellifemini is one of the Rutgers students who recently visited Venezuela and co-authored “Traveling Rutgers University Students Share Their Views on Developments in Venezuela” (MRZine, 4 June 2007). Bellifemini has put together an interactive Web site, with many photo albums, to share his and other Rutgers students’ experience […]
The Lithographer’s Tale
A workingman and his wife are slow-dancing in the kitchen of their tenement apartment, with a portable Victrola beating time at 78 revolutions per minute. The man stares over his partner’s shoulder at nothing in particular, while his partner, her head inclined, closes her eyes. Neither one is smiling. If the coal merchant’s calendar behind […]
Community Protests Human Rights Violations against Transpeople in California Prisons
Join the silent protest at the courthouse, make calls to Attorney General Jerry Brown and Federal Receiver Robert Sillen to support a transgender woman rape survivor. When: 8:00am – 9:30am Monday July 30th, 2007. Where: Civic Center Courthouse, 400 McAllister Street @ Polk St, San Francisco. Clothing: Wear RED, as Alexis has chosen the […]
Iraq Wins Its First Asian Cup Victory, Scenes of Jubilation in Baghdad [L’Irak remporte sa première Coupe d’Asie, scènes de liesse à Bagdad]
L’Irak a créé la surprise, dimanche 29 juillet, en battant l’Arabie Saoudite 1-0 en finale de la Coupe d’Asie de football, à Djakarta. Le capitaine de l’équipe, Younis Mahmoud, a inscrit le but de la victoire à la 71e minute pour offrir à l’Irak un succès inespéré. C’est la première fois que l’Irak, véritable sensation […]
Profit without End: Capitalism Is Just Getting Started
Debates concerning the “Socialism of the 21st Century” are experiencing an upswing at the moment. However, this century will initially be rather one of capitalism than socialism. Not because there is once more an economic recovery. Prosperity and crisis alternate constantly in capitalism, but behind this up-and-down process are tendencies towards an extension and further […]
Fighting with Audacity, Intelligence, and Realism
Achievements of the Cuban Revolution are well known to Monthly Review readers. What is striking about Raúl Castro Ruz’s address on 26 July 2007 (an excerpt from which is reproduced below), on the occasion of Cuba’s National Day of Rebellion, is not his tribute to them but his candid assessment of the “errors which […]
Raul Castro: Open to Dialogue with Next American President [Raul Castro se dit ouvert au dialogue avec le futur président américain]
Le chef de l’Etat cubain par intérim, Raul Castro, s’est dit ouvert au dialogue avec le futur président des Etats-Unis, afin de pacifier les relations entre les deux pays, lors d’un discours à Camagüey, à l’occasion de la fête nationale cubaine, jeudi 26 juillet. La future administration américaine “devra décider si elle maintient la politique […]
Oaxaca: A Call for International Solidarity
Oaxaca, 20 July 2007 — The struggle between the popular movement of rebellion and the government’s actions to totally crush it is at a critical point. I believe the situation is extremely dangerous for many oaxaqueños. Five days ago the governments (Oaxaca State and Mexican Federal — fully backed by the United States, I’m […]
The Prophecy of Bolívar: US Interventions in Latin America [La Profecía de Bolívar: Intervenciones de EEUU en Latinoamérica]
“Estados Unidos parece destinado a plagar la América de miserias en nombre de la libertad”. Con esta profética frase de Simón Bolívar en 1826, el Libertador hizo la crónica anunciada de una historia de intervenciones, militares y políticas, disfrazadas unas y en forma abierta otras, con las cuales el gigante del norte impuso su dominio […]
LaborFest 2007: A Moveable Feast
LaborFest, held each July to honor the aspirations and struggles of working people, is a moveable feast that ranges across the San Francisco area and back and forth in time. Why San Francisco? San Francisco is union country and it is working people who established LaborFest and have hosted it for the past 14 years. […]
Apartheid Americana
Two of my friends were just beaten and arrested by Brooklyn police. My friends, Michael Tarif Warren and Evelyn Warren, are African-American attorneys whose work consists, in part, of defending victims of police violence. I want to tell you about how police punched and humiliated these good people on the corner of Vanderbilt and Atlantic, […]
The Putin Charisma
Vladimir Putin has not been getting good press in the United States or even Western Europe in the last year or so. He has been charged with being authoritarian, with attempting to recreate Russia‘s imperial control over its neighbors, and with reviving Cold War obstructionism in the United Nations. So it is with some surprise […]
Containing Russia: Back to the Future?
“Containing Russia: Back to the Future?” by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov was published on the Web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation on 19 July 2007. The account of Lavrov’s conflict with the journal Foreign Affairs, which follows his essay, was published on the same Web […]
Privatizing the Leviathan Immigration State
The post-911 immigration regime originates in 2003 when immigration control shifted from the Department of Justice to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Immigration and Naturalization Service was abolished March 2003, and its functions were transferred into the newly created DHS, in a merger of some 180,000 employees from 22 different agencies. […]
