December 1, 2006
Important bloated men squat on the facts
�thinking they can hide them with their weight:
�men who think their power like King Canute
�ordering the sea to behave, can abolish
�the eons slow inexorable rise of mountains,
�the branching and dying of species, wind
�and water that will grind the Himalayas to dust
December 1, 2006
Fires crackle in the brittle trees
�bled dry by drought, the grass,
�bleached straw on the dusty hills
�where rain no longer falls
�in what used to be its season
November 1, 2006
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez's extraordinary speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations in September drew worldwide media attention not simply because he referred to the current occupant of the White House as "the devil" for his nefarious actions as the leader of world imperialism, but also because of his scarcely less heretical praise of MR and MR Press author Noam Chomsky for his book Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance. As the foremost dissident intellectual in the United States, Chomsky is generally ostracized by the dominant U.S. media system, treated as a ghost-like or even non-existent figure. The establishment was thus caught off guard when Chávez's comments suddenly catapulted Hegemony or Survival into the bestseller list, along with another recent Chomsky book, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda. The speed with which orders for Chomsky's books piled up in bookstores and Internet distributors across the nation demonstrated beyond any doubt that people are hungry for serious radical critiques of U.S. imperialism but seldom know where to look—since all such dissident views are deemed off limits by the ruling media-propaganda system
�November 1, 2006
In a series of articles in Monthly Review and in Monthly Review Press books during the 1970s and 1980s, Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy proposed that the general economic tendency of mature capitalism is toward stagnation. A shortage of profitable investment opportunities is the primary cause of this tendency. Less investment in the productive economy (the "real economy") means lower future growth. Marx wrote about the possibility of this very phenomenon
�November 1, 2006
"The law is a mask that the state puts on when it wants to commit some indecency upon the oppressed." I put these words into the mouth of a character in my play "Haymarket: Whose Name the Few Still Say with Tears." Jean-Claude Paye has once again done us a service by showing how those words can come true. In theory, the bourgeois democratic state, as defined in the American constitution, was to operate under two basic principles. The first of these was separation of powers. Legislative and executive action would be held to a standard of legality by the action of unelected and therefore presumably independent judges. The second principle, elaborated more fully in the Bill of Rights, is that certain invasions of individual personal liberty are forbidden, and that the judges will provide a remedy against those who commit such invasions
�November 1, 2006
The function of criminal law has been altered within the context of the anti-terrorist struggle. Normally, criminal law treats prosecuted persons as individuals. The criminalization of terrorist organizations and the criminalization of participation in or support for such organizations create offenses of collective responsibility. The object is to attack actual or potential organizations. It is no longer just the act of committing a crime or even the intention of doing so that is prosecuted. Merely belonging to a group that is considered terrorist by the government is sufficient for punishment
�November 1, 2006
"I feel like a bad person."
�"I feel like a snail without a shell whose heart has been stepped on."
�These feelings were jotted down in Spanish by my second graders during the four weeks of standardized tests required by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The educational policy was instituted on the heels of the September 11 attacks by President George Bush, backed by both Democrats and Republicans. My students are required to take tests in Standard English, though half have yet to make the transition from Spanish to a second language in my immersion classroom
�November 1, 2006
Margot Pepper And Her 2005 Second Grade Class At Rosa Parks Elementary School In Berkeley, California
�November 1, 2006
The signs point to the fact that the symbol of the Cuban revolution is reaching the end of his road. Even if it does not formally mark the definitive end of almost fifty years of undisputed leadership at the helm of the island republic, Fidel Castro's handing over of power to brother Raul in late July is surely a precursor to what will happen sooner rather than later
�November 1, 2006
In December 2005, anti-liberalization and antiglobalization protest groups around the globe gathered in Hong Kong where the Sixth World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference was being held. Farmers' groups that were part of the Hong Kong gathering took the position that agricultural trade rules should be impartial to all World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries and not determined by a handful of agriculture-exporting countries. What suddenly prompted these farmers to come together in this way over the issues of food sovereignty and the expansion of farmers' rights?
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