March 1, 2007
Our friends Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, editors of the Socialist Register, have recently published Coming to Terms with Nature: Socialist Register, 2007 (Monthly Review Press, 2006), which includes contributions by a distinguished group of analysts addressing crucial environmental issues—dealing with everything from "fossil capitalism" to eco-localism
March 1, 2007
Any reader of Israel Studies's recent issue on the "Americanization of Israel" would be likely to conclude that the most important aspect of U.S.-Israel relations was cultural and religious exchange.* U.S. commodification of Israeli consumption is a key focus here, as is the impact of U.S. religious trends on Israeli religious practices. Though politics does feature in the issue, its place is largely restricted to the influence of the United States on the Israeli party political system and to the ideological convergence between Christian fundamentalism and the Likud Party. The informing conception of the issue, then, seems to be the endeavor to pinpoint those aspects of Israel that have been "Americanized" in recent years. Contributors are thus preoccupied with determining how specific U.S. forms and norms have migrated to and been translated into Israeli culture and society
March 1, 2007
Imperialism is the system by which a dominant power is able to control the trade, investment, labor, and natural resources of other peoples. It takes different forms in different stages of capitalist development and has elements in common with the imperium of ancient empires. I want to lay out these structural elements, contrast them with the mainstream economists' view of exchange regulated by free market principles, and then discuss the specific form imperialism takes in our own time. Any essay on this subject written from the left must acknowledge the influence of the writing of Harry Magdoff and on this occasion his influence is highlighted
March 1, 2007
Rank-and-file rebellions began rumbling in the coalfields from Pittsburgh and down the Ohio River after 1964, when dissident miners first challenged incumbents in international and district United Mine Workers (UMW) elections. Concern and anger also seethed through the coalfields of southern West Virginia during those years, particularly over black lung, a painful and often-fatal occupational disease. Doctors Isadore E. Buff and Donald Rasmussen helped spark those rumblings with speeches in union halls, schools, and churches
March 1, 2007
I have always lived in the long shadow of race. Johnstown, Pittsburgh, Portland, Miami Beach, in every city racist remarks and racist actions were commonplace. You didn't have to look for them; they were hard to escape. And on our road trips, no matter where we went or for how few days, it was not at all unusual for a white person to offer a racist comment. It is almost as if there is an understanding among whites that they are all fellow conspirators in the race war
March 1, 2007
The part of the story that is well known is that, at the age of twenty and freshly graduated from the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Annie Sullivan traveled to Tuscumbia, Alabama to become the teacher to the blind wild child Helen Keller. Through persistence, patience, and tough love Sullivan finally broke through to where Keller connected words and objects and entered the realm of language. Inseparable until death, anticapitalist and antiwar Sullivan and self-identified socialist Keller worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the issues facing blind people. Yet, the image and legacy of Keller greatly overshadows that of her teacher. Despite Keller's attempt to direct attention to Sullivan in her book, Teacher, Sullivan's pre-Keller life remains largely shrouded
February 12, 2007
Monthly Review Press is publishing an exceptionally strong collection of new books in 2007. However, like most small presses the modest budgets we can devote to the promotion of these books scarcely allow us to be heard above the din created by the massive promotional campaigns of the large corporate publishing firms, which are, of course, mere arms of much greater media conglomerates. We are therefore hoping successfully to promote these new books mainly by word of mouth with the help of MR readers and friends. In this space last month we referred to Michael D. Yates's new book, Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate, which is now available. Two other new releases are Jean Bricmont's Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War (translated from the French by Diana Johnstone), and The Socialist Register, 2007: Coming to Terms with Nature, edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys. Bricmont's book seeks to reintroduce the critique of imperialism to the global discussion on human rights, while the new Socialist Register addresses the emerging eco-socialist critique of capitalism
February 1, 2007
I would like to begin my analysis of what I am calling here "the ecology of destruction" by referring to Gillo Pontecorvo's 1969 film Burn!. Pontecorvo's epic film can be seen as a political and ecological allegory intended for our time. It is set in the early nineteenth century on an imaginary Caribbean island called "Burn." Burn is a Portuguese slave colony with a sugar production monoculture dependent on the export of sugar as a cash crop to the world economy. In the opening scene we are informed that the island got its name from the fact that the only way that the original Portuguese colonizers were able to vanquish the indigenous population was by setting fire to the entire island and killing everyone on it, after which slaves were imported from Africa to cut the newly planted sugar cane.
February 1, 2007
In the 2006 presidential election campaign in Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), leader of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT or Workers' Party), was interviewed at length on July 11, 2006, by the Financial Times (which also interviewed Lula's main rightist challenger Geraldo Alckmin). The interview touched on many topics but mainly concentrated on Lula's adherence in his first term of office to the global neoliberal policies of monopoly-finance capital, particularly repayment of debt and "fiscal responsibility." At two points in the interview the Financial Times bluntly asked whether Lula was looking toward a "radical change in the model," i.e., whether he and his Workers' Party intended to break with financial capital and neoliberalism in his second term of office. Lula gave them the answer they wanted: "There is no radical change in the model....What we need now, in economics and in politics, is to strengthen Brazil's internal and external security."
February 1, 2007
These articles were written five months before the first round of presidential elections in Brazil, on October 1, 2006. The second round, on October 29, saw Lula reelected with 58.3 million votes (60.78 percent of all valid votes), beating Geraldo Alckmin, the candidate for the Partido Social Democrata Brasileiro (PSDB), the party of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula's predecessor in office. Lula won this second four-year mandate after a campaign revolving around ethical issues and allegations of corruption against government officials and high-ranking members of his Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT)—allegations from opposition parties, right and left. The campaign included the pathetic episode of PT officials trying to buy information on candidates from the PSDB in the State of São Paulo (economically and politically speaking, one of the most important states in the union, with a strong oppositional streak), and a concerted nationwide media campaign for Alckmin on a scale never before seen in Brazil
