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Tinged with Fire
RICHARD WRIGHT: The Life and Times by Hazel RowleyBUY THIS BOOK The author Richard Wright, whose works were recently republished by the Library of America, was a hospital orderly making thirteen dollars a week when he first experienced what literary biographers would call an epiphany. It was in Chicago; the year was 1933. The unlikely […]
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Capital and Empire: An Interview with John Bellamy Foster
Q. 2007 is the 140th anniversary of the publication of Volume One of Marx’s Capital. In your opinion, what is its main contribution to understanding contemporary capitalism? Marx’s object in Capital was to explain capital as a social relation in the fullest dialectical sense and in the process to describe its law(s) of motion. I […]
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The Beginnings of a New Democratic Nepal?
John Mage of Monthly Review and Bernard D’Mello. deputy editor of Economic and Political Weekly (“EPW”) of Mumbai, India, visited Nepal in February, and trekked into Rolpa, the original base area of the revolutionary “people’s war.” The following account appears simultaneously on MRZine and in the current (March 17th) issue of EPW. Over the last […]
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Challenging Wal-Mart
Raising the minimum wage and increasing the level of social assistance is a component part of challenging the large, low-wage multinationals that make up the vast majority employers of the working poor. The largest of them all is Wal-Mart. For socialists, Wal-Mart is more than just a series of big retail stores that threaten our […]
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Comrades in Arms
IVAN’S WAR by Catherine MerridaleBUY THIS BOOK As civilians, we can never understand combat, or empathize with those who have seen it. Samuel Fuller, a World War Two infantryman who saw combat in France — and who later, as a Hollywood director, recalled his trauma in The Big Red One — said it was impossible […]
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Oh! What A Lovely War
I have been very puzzled by how many on the left and in the liberal media seem to imagine that the situation in Iraq and the Middle East is bad for the Imperialists. They are having a heyday with the so-called WOT. . . . It is going very well for them . . […]
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All Roads Lead to Checkpoints
All roads may have once led to Rome, but, for the Palestinian people, all roads lead to checkpoints. The latest checkpoint to block the Palestinians is not manned by Israel but the ostensible mediator of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Quartet (which is composed of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United […]
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Uprising against the “War on Terror”: The Danger of US Foreign Policy to International Security
For those among us who hoped that 2007 would be a more orderly year in world politics, the current trends have been frustrating. Over the past few weeks, the Bush administration has pursued the escalation of two major international crises. The first major crisis is taking place in Somalia, where the Ethiopian Army and its […]
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Ammunition against the Empire
Need a crash course on the present state of the world? Want to untangle the terminology, separate the victims from the victimizers, understand the dynamics of unilateralism, and deduce what can be done about it all? I’d like to introduce you to a small literary arsenal. A good place to begin is the book […]
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Uses of History: Rang De Basanti and Lage Raho Munnabhai
The present being a product of the past, our attempt to understand history is a part of our endeavor to understand ourselves and shape our world today. However, it is also true that often our understanding of the present determines the way we look at history. So, when it is popular imagination that is involved […]
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Half-hearted Condolences
Hard to tell which is more upsetting: Hrant Dink’s “unsurprisingly shocking” murder, or the hypocrisies uttered by government officials in his wake. Once words of condolences and condemnation are quickly dispensed with — in a monotone reminiscent of a computerized voice telling a caller that “the number you have dialed is not in service” […]
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Voltaire and Islam [Voltaire y el islam]
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 . . […]
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Somalia: A History of US Interventions
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 […]
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Chávez Calls for United Socialist Party of Venezuela: Rank-and-file Committees to Be Building Blocks for New Organization
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 […]
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An “Islamic Civil War”
The war that Western powers — primarily US, Israel and Britain — began against the Islamic world after September 11, 2001 is about to enter a new more dangerous phase as their early plans for “changing the map of the Middle East” have begun to unravel with unintended consequences. Codenamed “the war against terror,” the […]
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The Freedom House Files
“Freedom House is an independent non-governmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world.” — Freedom House Freedom House is a small but influential organization based in Washington and New York with more than 120 offices around the world and an annual budget of US$19 million.1 Calling itself “America’s oldest human rights group,” […]
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Interview with Heinz Dieterich: “In Venezuela, Conditions for Building Socialism of the 21st Century Have Been Created” [Entrevista a Heinz Dieterich “En Venezuela se han creado condiciones para construir el Socialismo del Siglo XXI”]
P. Profesor Dieterich, ¿Usted inventó el concepto “Socialismo del Siglo XXI”? R. Sí. Lo elaboré a partir de 1996. Fue publicado junto con la teoría correspondiente en forma de libro, a partir del 2000 en México, Ecuador, Argentina, Centroamérica, Brasil, Venezuela y, fuera de América Latina, en España, Alemania, la República Popular de China, Rusia […]
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Kuwasi at 60
Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers. Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge. We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]
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Leftwing German Actor Reaches 100 Years
Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers. Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge. We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]
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The Death Penalty in a Poshlust Culture of Victims
Annual Fundraising AppealFriends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers. Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge. We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]