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Where Are Iran’s Working Women?
See, also, Hajir Palaschi, “Interview with Shahla Lahiji on Women’s Presence in the Labor Market: No Vocation Must Be Prohibited for Women,” Trans. Yoshie Furuhashi, MRZine, 18 February 2008. The Iranian Revolution and its aftermath have generated many debates, one of which pertains to the effects on women’s labor force participation and employment patterns. For […]
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How Should Venezuela Face the Coming Recession?
How Should Venezuela Face the Coming Recession? Presently much of the industrialized world is in a severe economic recession. The United States, Europe, and Japan are definitely in one and other important countries such as China are close to being in one. So far most South American countries have not entered into a recession. […]
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We Are at the Beginning of a Long, Profound, Painful Process of Change
Statement by James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen, jr., Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin and Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute, before the Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, Hearings on the Conduct of Monetary Policy, February 26, 2009. Mr. Chairman and […]
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Resisting a Police State: The Importance of Dr. Binayak Sen
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its February 2009 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. We have lost twice over from the late November terror attacks in Mumbai. We must add to the anguish of the loved ones of the poor people who […]
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Who’s Telling the Truth About Iran’s Nuclear Program?
Since February 2003, Iran’s nuclear program has undergone what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) itself admits to be the most intrusive inspection in its entire history. After thousands of hours of inspections by some of the most experienced IAEA experts, the Agency has verified time and again that (1) there is no evidence […]
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Tehran Has No More Pomegranates
Directed by Massoud Bakhshi, Tehran Has No More Pomegranates, a feature-length experimental documentary made over the span of five years, tells the story of Iran’s encounter with modernity and its social and political changes through a comic and ironic narrative about the transformation of its capital, Tehran, from a small village to a huge […]
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The Global Collapse: a Non-orthodox View
This is the longer version of an essay by the author released by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on 6 February 2009. Week after week, we see the global economy contracting at a pace worse than predicted by the gloomiest analysts. We are now, it is clear, in no ordinary recession but are headed for […]
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Muslim Pilgrimage to Manzanar
In April 2008, the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) led a group of over 100 Southern California Muslims on an educational trip to Manzanar, the first Japanese internment camp established during World War II. Along with Southland Muslims, some 1,500 people from California and beyond attended the […]
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Charles Darwin: Reluctant Revolutionary
In 1846, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The German Ideology, the first mature statement of what became known as historical materialism. This passage was on the second page: We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature […]
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Darwin versus Intelligent Design
One of the most important books that influenced Darwin, by his own account, was John Herschel’s A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831). Herschel was one of the leading British scientists of the age, known for his work in astronomy, geography, and scientific method. Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy provided […]
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Socialism and the Peasantry
One of the greatest insights of Karl Marx was his perception of the capitalist system as a self-acting, self-driven and “spontaneous” order. Far from being a malleable system, where intervention by the State could be used for bringing about basic changes in the mode of its functioning, in which case of course the need to […]
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Zimbabwe Ten Years On: Results and Prospects
After a decade of political polarization and international standoff, the debate on Zimbabwe has finally been opened up to a wider reading public, thanks to Mahmood Mamdani’s “Lessons of Zimbabwe,” appearing in the London Review of Books (04/12/2008). Renowned scholars, within and without Africa, have broken their silence and have taken public positions. The […]
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A Voice of Peace in Sderot: Interview with Nomika Zion
Sderot is a small city about 1km away from the Gaza border, well known because it has suffered many hits from the Qassam rockets that the Gaza resistance has been launching on and off for about 8 years. When we think of residents living under the threat of missiles, hiding in bunkers, it’s quite […]
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The Crisis of Global Capitalism and the Environment: Interview with John Bellamy Foster, Editor of Monthly Review and Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon, for Eleftherotypia (Greece)
CP: After twenty-five years of sporadic growth and extreme polarization of income and life conditions around the world, actually existing neoliberalism seems to be on the verge of collapse. Where do you situate the current crisis in the history of the development of global capitalism? JBF: Neoliberalism has clearly collapsed. But as Fred Magdoff […]
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France: LCR Dissolves Itself to Form NPA
The Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) will soon be no more. On Thursday, 5 February, its activists will vote for its self-dissolution to create the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA). Some seven hundred delegates are expected at a four-day conference, 5-8 February, in la Plaine-Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), to launch the new party of Olivier Besancenot. The death certificate […]
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Israel Is Preventing Repair of the Electrical, Water, and Sewage Systems in Gaza
Despite Promises to Facilitate Humanitarian Aid, Policy of Deliberate Obstruction Continues Even after the Ceasefire: The amount of industrial diesel Israel has permitted to enter Gaza is just 64% of the total needed to operate the power station. Since the fighting ended, Israel has totally obstructed the transfer of vital spare parts needed to […]
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Iceland Gets New Government
The Geir Haarde government of Iceland became the first in the world to fall in the wake of the financial meltdown. Now, Iceland has a provisional coalition government, headed by the world’s first lesbian prime minister, Johanna Sigurdardottit of the Social Democratic Alliance. Left-Green Movement Chairman Steingrimur J. Sigfusson is reportedly now appointed Minister of […]
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MST: 25 Years of Stubbornness
In January 1984, mass movements began to rise again in Brazil. The working class was reorganizing, accumulating organic forces. Underground parties, such as the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), etc., were already in the streets. We had won only a partial amnesty, but a majority of exiles had returned. […]
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My Six-year-old Son Should Get a Job: What Is Wrong with the Present Global Economic Order?
I have a six-year-old son. His name is Jin-Gyu. He lives off me, yet he is quite capable of making a living. I pay for his lodging, food, education, and health care. But millions of children of his age already have jobs. Daniel Defoe figured out in the 18th century that children are able to […]
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Canadian Supreme Court to Rule If Farmworkers Are Human Beings . . . or “Disposable Tools”
Human rights, including the right of workers to form trade unions, to strike, and to bargain collectively with employers, are universal and indivisible rights which inhere in all human beings by virtue of their humanity. The Liberal Party government of the Canadian province of Ontario, however, is challenging this notion by calling on the Supreme […]