Archive | December, 2012

My friend and colleague of more than 25 years died today from pancreatic cancer.  If you never had the privilege of meeting and working with Jerry Tucker, it is truly a shame.  Rarely do we cross paths with someone who makes such a difference in our lives.  Jerry was such a man. I first heard […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. Raphael Ahren, “Morsi’s Warm Letter to Peres Sparks Anger and Denial in Egypt” (Times of Israel, 18 October 2012); “‘I came with a message of peace and I came to confirm that we are working for mutual trust and transparency and we are committed to all the agreements […]

The recent Stanford University report on drone strikes in Pakistan, Living Under Drones, raises the possibility that the US is intentionally using drones, not merely as hi-tech assassination devices, but also as weapons of state terror intended to subdue unruly regions and populations.  The appalling reality of drone warfare along the Afghanistan border closely resembles […]

With signs of a global economic downturn mounting, US aggression across the Middle East and North Africa ratchets up.  Once again, US imperialism stands poised to open the gates of Hell. According to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report released last week, the “risks for a serious global slowdown are alarmingly high.”  The report projects […]

  Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012), regarded by many as the top 20th century British historian, passed away October 1st, at the age of 95.  Hobsbawm joined the British Communist Party in 1936, the year he entered Cambridge University, and remained a life-long member.  In a life dedicated to historical scholarship and to draw attention to injustice […]

  Candlelit Vigil to Honor Martyrs of the Maspero Massacre Friday, 12th October 2012, 7:00 PM Union Square, Manhattan October 9, 2012 marked the one year anniversary of what has come to be known as the Maspero massacre, one of the numerous bloody attacks deliberately orchestrated and executed by counterrevolutionary forces under the direction of […]

Susan Sontag.  As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980.  Edited by David Rieff.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. I. David Rieff has played the last of Susan Sontag’s jokes upon the reader: to remain austerely cool, distant, and unsympathetic toward us even in “journals and notebooks.”  The barbed wire of […]

It has recently come to our attention that the Creative Time Summit has listed the Israeli Center for Digital Art (ICDA) as a major partner for this year’s summit.  After discovering this, we cannot in good faith participate in the 2012 Creative Time Summit in adherence to the call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) […]

What has Vitamin B to do with politics?  For the answer you must learn a little German, at least one key word.  “Beziehungen” — with a capital “B” — means connections, especially good connections.  It’s smart to have lots of “Vitamin B,” and not just the pharmacy kind! Now here’s a man whose pockets seem […]

In the celebrated section of The Wealth of Nations in which he discusses the advantages of the division of labor, Adam Smith advances the thesis that “common to all men” is a “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.”  Smith hedges on whether this “propensity” is a matter of original human nature […]

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Dr Issa Chaer is a member of the Syrian Social Club (based in England). Carlos Martinez: Thanks very much for agreeing to be interviewed.  You have been very active in spreading information about the Syria conflict.  Can you explain why you have chosen to give so much time and energy to this cause? Issa Chaer: […]

In 1949, Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman created Monthly Review.  In the same year, Paul Baran and I began to teach in the San Francisco Bay Area: Baran at Stanford, myself at UC Berkeley.  As the years unfolded, we worked together politically in the area with the same social aims and values.  Meanwhile, the two […]

After Judge Katherine Forrest, on Sept 12th, ruled part of the National Defense Authorization Act unconstitutional on its face in the case brought by Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, and Daniel Ellsberg, the Obama Department of Justice sought an end run around the ruling and proceeded directly to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.  Although Judge […]

The Occupy movement forced the issue of economic inequality into American political discourse. The most common diagnosis, which comes from mainstream economics, is that inequality has risen over the last 40 years because technical change, notably computers and the Internet, has favored highly-educated workers and left lower-skilled workers behind.  The cure is to increase education […]

As Muslims around the world protest their contemptuous treatment by the West, catalyzed by the provocative, racist American film Innocence of Muslims, the French media added fuel to the fire of by publishing offensive cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.  Left-wing alt-weekly Charlie Hebdo ran cartoons that depicted a naked, turbaned Muhammad in profoundly racist and […]

Popular momentum is building to ensure that any settlement coming out of upcoming Colombian government peace negotiations with insurgents promotes social justice. New prisoner resistance and recent documentation of abuses in Colombian prisons serve as reminders that, ideally, a peaceful and just Colombian society should promote prisoner rights.  Indeed, “Our people and a bit of […]

Introductionby Philip Rizk On September 9th, 2012, thousands of Egyptian teachers from all over the country demonstrated at the Parliament, blocking one of Cairo’s main streets.  “I can’t even feed my kids — how can I teach my students?” one of them yelled into the camera.  “This was not simply a protest for higher wages […]

Egypt’s march towards the future its millions demanded did not end with Mubarak leaving power — it only began. Mosireen, which is a play on the Arabic words for “Egypt” and “determined,” was founded in the wake of Mubarak’s fall by a group of film makers and activists who got together to create a collective […]

A small but moving episode marked the regular annual meeting of the German organization Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic 1936-1939 (Kämpfer und Freunde der Spanischen Republik 1936-1939).  It was the first such meeting without a single veteran; the last volunteer in Germany, Fritz Teppich, died last winter, and none of the tiny, decreasing […]