Last April, former Le Monde diplomatique director Ignacio Ramonet published (in Mémoire des Luttes) a text entitled “Libya, the Just and the Unjust.” The war had been started a few weeks earlier, inaugurated by French aircraft which had the honor of dropping the first bombs on Tripoli. On March 19, “a wave of pride […]
Subjects Archives: Marxism
Occupy Boston: Day One
My interpretation of the previous two days as a participant and journalist in Occupy Boston does not reflect the views of other members of the “99 percent” movement, or Occupy Boston as a whole. The $64 trillion dollar question, “When will Americans hit the streets like people in other countries?” has been answered. Over […]
Real Class Warfare: The Great 1934 Longshore Strike in Portland
“Real Class Warfare: The Great 1934 Longshore Strike in Portland” Presentation by Michael Munk Tuesday, October 11 7:30 pm Rialto Poolroom and Bar 529 SW 4th Ave, Portland Free and open to the public Must be 21 or over. On May 9, 1934, thousands of longshoremen along the West Coast walked off the job, […]
Class Warfare Indeed
Over the last two decades or more, Republicans have been denouncing as “class warfare” any attempt at criticizing and restraining their mean one-sided system of capitalist financial expropriation. The moneyed class in this country has been doing class warfare on our heads and on those who came before us for more than two centuries. But […]
The Women of OccupyWallStreet
“What this is about for me most is exercising our long-sleeping democracy muscle.” — Marina from Brooklyn Video by Naomi Less. Music by Glenn Grossman. For more information, e.g. <anonops.blogspot.com>; <occupywallst.org>. | Print
Remembering and Representing: Vietnam, East Germany, and Daphne Berdahl
Daphne Berdahl. On the Social Life of Postsocialism: Memory, Consumption, Germany. Edited by Matti Bunzl. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. xx + 166 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-35434-1; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-22170-4. On the Social Life of Postsocialism; Memory, Consumption, Germany is a posthumous collection of Daphne Berdahl’s essays, written over the course of […]
Al Jazeera and U.S. Foreign Policy: What WikiLeaks’ U.S. Embassy Cables Reveal about U.S. Pressure and Propaganda
“Al Jazeera is a vital component to the USG’s strategy in communicating with the Arab world.” — Joseph E. LeBaron, U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, November 6, 2008 “Al Jazeera Board Chairman Hamed bin Thamer Al Thani has proven open to creative uses of Al Jazeera’s airwaves by the USG beyond straightforward interviews.” — Joseph E. […]
UN Troops in Haiti Accused of Sexual Assault
The video is profoundly disturbing. It shows four men, identified as Uruguayan troops from the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), apparently raping an 18-year old Haitian youth. Two of them have the victim pinned down on a mattress, with his hands twisted high up his back so that he cannot move. Perhaps the most unnerving […]
The Morality of the Other Side in the Class War
The Washington Post and Robert Samuelson did their part in publicly passing along the marching orders from the rich and powerful to Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Board. The word from these folks is “No Inflation!” If that means millions more people will suffer unemployment for a few more years, that’s a price that […]
NATO’s Rebel Forces
At its peak, the 26 of July Movement had some 300 fighters, ill fed and poorly armed, bitten by mosquitoes and accompanied by the rain. Against them, Gen. Fulgencio Batista mobilized an army, a navy, an air force, a coast guard, and the Rural Guard, aside from a network of spies and irregular bands […]
The Master Class
“. . . and they won’t stop till we all become slaves grateful to be able at least to eat, twice a day.” Juan Kalvellido is a Spanish cartoonist. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print
Hidden by the Debt Ceiling “Crisis”: A Double Looting of the State and the Working Class
The political posturing around the debt ceiling “crisis” was mostly a distraction from the hard issues. The hardest of those — underlying US economic decline — keeps resurfacing to display costs, pains, and injustices that threaten to dissolve society. Its causes — two long-term trends over the last 30 years — help also to explain […]
Sense and Nonsense in the Balanced Budget Debate: A Socialist Response
The Republicans have successfully changed the main emphasis of the economic debate from job creation to deficit control. Why the urgency for balanced budgets? After all, this anemic “recovery” has set itself apart from all previous post-war turnarounds precisely by its manifest failure to generate jobs. Economic growth needs to considerably exceed 3% per […]
From Economic to Social Crisis: Deficits, Debt, and a Little Class History
Throughout its history, capitalism never succeeded in preventing recurring economic cycles or crises. However, they were usually contained within the system. Economic crises usually did not become social crises; the system itself was usually not called into question. Transition to a different system was then an idea kept away from public discussion, a project kept […]
Justice for Palestine: A Call to Action from Indigenous and Women of Color Feminists
Between June 14 and June 23, 2011, a delegation of 11 scholars, activists, and artists visited occupied Palestine. As indigenous and women of color feminists involved in multiple social justice struggles, we sought to affirm our association with the growing international movement for a free Palestine. We wanted to see for ourselves the conditions under […]
An Interview with Bassam Alkadi, President of the Syrian Women Observatory
Bassam Alkadi is President of the Syrian Women Observatory, Syria’s main women’s rights organization. A relentless fighter for human rights in Syria, he has been fired from his job, arrested, jailed, and forbidden from traveling, but he continues to be driven by logic and not revenge. He rejects dialogue for the sake of dialogue. Instead, […]
Libya’s Fighting Women
“I liked training and defending my country, and now I’m training women from all ages to use weapons.” — Fatima Masoud 30 June 2011 30 June 2011 Cf. Waniss Otman and Erling Karlberg, “The Growing Role of Women in Libyan Society” (The Libyan Economy: Economic Diversification and International Repositioning, Springer, 2007). | Print
Hugo Chávez Addresses the Nation
Havana, Cuba, 30 June 2011 Now, in this new moment of difficulties, especially since Fidel Castro himself, the very man of the Moncada Barracks, of Granma, and of Sierra Maestra, the eternal giant, came to tell me the hard news of cancer, I began to ask my Lord Jesus, the God of my parents, […]
Activists in Israel Reject Die Linke’s Equation of BDS and One-State Solution with Anti-Semitism
The German left-wing party Die Linke issued a shocking statement on 7 June 2011, stating that “We will not participate in initiatives on the Middle East conflict which call for a one-state solution for Palestine and Israel, or for boycotts against Israeli products, or even in this year’s Gaza Flotilla trip.” This position is particularly […]
Second Class Citizens: Gender, Energy and Climate Change in South Africa
Excerpt: Forty percent of South Africa’s 48 million people are poor, and more than half of poor people are female. Official unemployment figures hover at around 25%, but since this statistics does not count those who have given up looking for work, real unemployment may be double this. South Africa is, by world standards, […]
