Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its November 2009 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. We last commented on events in Nepal in our May editorial, following the attempt of the ceremonial president to exercise royal authority by “countermanding” the decision of the […]
Subjects Archives: Movements
The “Just Something” Rule
I read volume 1 of Marx’s Capital while working on a production line in a food factory. I don’t mean I read it during my tea breaks, I read it while “working” on the line. I had an injury and was doing a ‘quality control’ job which entailed sitting next to a conveyor watching […]
Freedom Dance Party
Saturday, November 14th, from 7 to 11 PM @ the Martin Luther King, Jr. Labor Center for 1199 SEIU 310 W. 43rd Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues, Manhattan, NYC Dance performance by the Het Heru Healing Dancers and special surprise guests. Admission: $20 Food and beverages will be sold All proceeds go to […]
Good Cop, Bad Cop Strategy? Clinton Appoints Former Embassy Hostage as Point Person on Iran
When the Iranian Revolution exploded on the world scene three decades ago, John Limbert was a greenhorn diplomat assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. After that station was taken over by revolutionary students, he spent 14 months as a political hostage in the building that came to be known as the “Nest of Spies.” […]
Philadelphia Strikers and the Media
In Philadelphia, thousands of striking SEPTA transportation workers and members of the Transport Workers Union Local 234 are facing persistent attacks by politicians and the media. NPR’s initial coverage of the strike seemed largely aimed at inciting tension between commuters and the striking workers. It even gave credence to Mayor Michael Nutter’s absurd criticism: […]
Interview with Baburam Bhattarai: Transition to New Democratic Republic in Nepal
Dr. Baburam Bhattarai is a leading figure of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist. WPRM: Thank you for meeting with us today. In your article in The Worker #4 ‘The Political Economy of the People’s War’ you write that “the transformation of one social system into another, or the destruction of the old by the […]
Honduras’ Most Prominent Human Rights Expert Calls on Obama Administration to Denounce “Grave Human Rights Violations”
Too Late to Have Free Elections This Month, She Says from Washington Washington, D.C. — Bertha Oliva, the head of Honduras’ most well-known and respected human rights organization, called on the Obama administration to denounce the “grave human right violations” in Honduras. “How can it be that the United States government is silent while Hondurans […]
Statement of Keith Hall, Commissioner, Bureau of Labor Statistics, before the Joint Economic Committee, United States Congress
Madam Chair and Members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the employment and unemployment data we released this morning. In October, the unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent, the highest rate since April 1983, and nonfarm payroll employment declined by 190,000. Since the start of the recession, payroll employment has fallen […]
Gaza in Suspension
Ilana Feldman. Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917-1967. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. xii + 324 pp. 84.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8223-4222-9; 23.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-4240-3. Governance at some level is collectively and discursively conducted in the sense that the whole of society has a share in the making of its […]
The Economic Crisis: How It Impacts African-Americans and Labor
Lecture delivered at the Economic and Black Labor Forum, the Philadelphia Community Institute for Africana Studies, 22 October 22 2009 The present Great Recession is the latest and largest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s. During the Great Depression over half of all African-American men were unemployed. The present Great […]
Agreement to Restore Zelaya, If Honored, Will Be a Victory for Democracy in the Hemisphere, CEPR Co-Director Says
Washington, D.C. — News of a deal that would effectively end the coup d’etat in Honduras and restore democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya to office would be a “victory for democracy in the hemisphere” resulting from the continued resistance of the Honduran people and pressure from Latin American governments, Center for Economic and Policy Research […]
The FBI Raid and Shooting Death of Imam Luqman
It is with deep sadness and concern that we announce the shooting death of Imam Luqman A. Abdullah, of Masjid Al-Haqq (Detroit, MI). Imam Luqman was a representative of the Detroit Muslim community to the “National Ummah” and the general assembly (Shura) of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). The Federal Bureau of […]
Gathering Rage Revisited
In 1992, I was a thwarted, guilt-ridden and depressed revolutionary, living underground with my lesbian partner and two-year old daughter in St. Louis. I was part of a tiny group that had gone underground at the beginning of the 1980s, responding to the collapse of the mass movements after the end of the Vietnam […]
Why the Health Insurance Excise Tax Is a Bad Idea
Twenty years ago, 60,000 workers from New York City to Maine rallied against healthcare cost-shifting at the telecom giant then known as NYNEX (since “rebranded” as Verizon). NYNEX was a very profitable, multinational company seeking to capitalize on a demoralizing decade of lost strikes, contract givebacks and widespread unionbusting. At a time when many […]
Death Squads and Democracy
Why would Philippine judges hamper a human rights investigation into a killing field where many human remains are found in Davao, victims allegedly of the infamous death squad? Why would the members of the Commission on Human Rights be charged themselves? Human Rights Watch says local authorities are obstructing the course of justice and […]
Troy Labor Council Resolution for a National March on Washington for Peace, Jobs and Healthcare Justice
Whereas: The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, attacks on Pakistan, military aid to Colombia, Israel and many of the countries that use US aid for repression of indigenous and popular movements, are making the people of the US and the world less safe. And Whereas: These wars and military aid are bankrupting the people of the […]
Open Letter to All Those Concerned about the Labor Movement
Note to New York Times Readers In his November 18th article “Some Organizers Protest Their Union’s Tactics,” the New York Times‘ Steven Greenhouse cites a couple of sentences from this letter and links to it. While it is good to see the New York Times examine important debates within the U.S. labor movement, for […]
Shopping at WalMart for Seeds of Revolt
The cashier was a WalMart supervisor, a black man in his 30s, crisp in the company’s blue tee-shirt uniform. While he served the customer ahead of me, he did double duty by instructing a clerk next to him, a black woman in her 20s. “You must take your break no later than two hours after […]
Total Revolution or Nuthin’
(Darkened stage. Jaunty whistling and cell-phone texting is heard, along with the footsteps of Converse sneakers on a dusty, small-town road. Suddenly, the screech of heavy tires, then a sickening thud and a groan. Lights up on the original American Gothic couple, sitting on the porch of their dilapidated house, up the hill from the […]
The Young Honduran Revolution
“What I want to know more than anything is how they began to be activists.” — Johannes Wilm Johannes Wilm is a revolutionary socialist activist, anthropologist, computer geek, trade unionist. . . . In this 90-minute documentary, Johannes Wilm interviews young Honduran activists against the coup, especially activists of such organizations as the Revolutionary […]
