Subjects Archives: Inequality

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Below is the editorial in its June 2015 issue. — Ed. The essence of “free market” ideology is exposed clearly when the health of the human body is at issue.  When outcomes are determined on the basis of […]

  May 5, 2015 BALTIMORE — The Baltimore police department has much to answer for: the events of the last few weeks have drawn our attention to this, from the callous murder of Freddie Gray to the hundreds of people arrested protesting his murder who were then held for an unconstitutional length of time (47 […]

Shortly before the websites of the Affordable Care Act went live, Senator Harry Reid called the law “a step in the right direction” (Las Vegas Sun, Aug. 10, 2013).  That meant, he said, a step toward improved Medicare for everyone.  Is the Affordable Care Act (ACA), often branded Obamacare, a step in the right direction […]

You want to know why I’m nuts, Doctor?  I’m part of the lunatic left, that’s why. My delusions of intellectual grandeur are great enough to make me believe that I can actually comprehend the bombings, the embargoes, the torture — all wrought by the good old US of A — while everybody else goes shopping.  […]

Click here to download (for free for a limited time) the Socialism and Democracy special issue “The Roots of Mass Incarceration: Locking Up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor.” Introduction by Dequi Kioni-Sadiki On Friday, March 20th, 2015 at the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center in Harlem, the journal of […]

  Translator’s Note: David Ravelo, arrested on September 14, 2010 and imprisoned in La Picota Prison in Bogota, is serving an 18-year sentence.  Appeals have failed, although Colombia’s Supreme Court has been considering his case.  His words below attest to a lifetime of, as he puts it, defending human rights.  Beginning in the late 1980s […]

Support Our Comrades Saïd Bouamama and Saïdou (Z.E.P.)! by Young Communists, Lille Section On 20 January 2015, our comrades Saïdou, of the band Z.E.P. (Zone d’Expression Populaire), and Saïd Bouamama, a sociologist and militant communist based in Lille, are summoned to appear before the Court of First Instance of Paris, charged with “public insult” and […]

More than 100 years after the birth of cinema, it sometimes feels like every story has been told.  But the best films of 2014 dared to break out of their genres, explore new ways of filmmaking, and inspire viewers.  Some of them even provided tools for popular understanding of our current political moment.  This year, […]

  Introduction This article, titled “A Chapter of Russian Reaction,” translated into English here for the first time, was written in German by longtime homosexual activist Kurt Hiller (1885-1972) from London and published in the Swiss gay journal Der Kreis in 1946.  Hiller had been active in Germany’s first homosexual-rights organization, the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee (Scientific […]

  The haze of political chaos in America surrounding the Ferguson protests, the Torture Report, and the “relaxing” of US-Cuba relations has been broken by a media spectacle almost too ridiculous to comprehend.  A hacker group called the “Guardians of Peace” conducted a “cyber attack” on Sony Pictures Entertainment, leaking emails, documents, presentations, and information […]

On December 10, International Human Rights Day, federal Magistrate Matt Whitworth sentenced me to three months in prison for having crossed the line at a military base that wages drone warfare.  The punishment for our attempt to speak on behalf of trapped and desperate people, abroad, will be an opportunity to speak with people trapped […]

Many Venezuelans think that fracking — the dangerous extraction of oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing of sedimentary rocks — is a conspiracy on the part of the United States to drive them into ruin.  That is not the case, but it is an understandable error, in part because of the US’s long history of […]

Prisoners in Colombia have recently gained new visibility.  Prisoner protest actions are one factor.  Another is discussion at the Havana peace talks of prisoners as victims of armed conflict.  November 2014 marks the two-year anniversary of talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government. Beginning on October 20, hunger strikes […]

Our country did not hesitate one minute in responding to the request made by international bodies for support to the struggle against the brutal [ebola] epidemic which has erupted in West Africa.… This is what our country has always done, without exception. The government had already given pertinent instructions to immediately mobilize and reinforce medical personnel offering their services in this region on the African continent. A rapid response was likewise given to the United Nations request, as has always been done when requests for cooperation have been made.

I. The Piketty Argument Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-first Century embodies an immense amount of empirical research into the distribution of wealth and income across the population for a number of advanced capitalist countries going back for over two centuries.  In particular Piketty has made extensive use of tax data for the first […]

  On Monday, October 6th, ISIS forces entered the autonomous Kurdish canton of Kobanê in Western Kurdistan (North Syria) following a siege which began on September 15th.  Defending Kobanê are the skilled but ill-equipped People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), who are up against The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), […]

  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 […]

“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 […]

  As you may know, Larry Rohter of the New York Times spun this story as if it were a “God That Failed” episode.  So, here it is in English, for the record. — Ed. In 1998, I interviewed the writer Rachel de Queiroz (1910-2003), and she confessed to me that she felt “mortal antipathy” […]

On March 10th, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine hung a banner on Barnard Hall. The banner was placed after members of C-SJP went through the required bureaucratic channels and processes in order to give voice and presence to our week-long events as part of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), a global period of action and awareness-raising that has been occurring throughout the world for the past ten years.