Category: Monthly Review Press /

Read another excerpt from Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid on LINKS

Read another excerpt from Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid on LINKS

February 20, 2024

JOE'S FIRST IMPRESSION of Ruth was that she and her intellectual friends at the University of the Witwatersrand were "just too big for their boots." It was 1946, Joe was just returning from the army and the Second World War, and Ruth was in the midst of her social science studies at the university. They were both engaged in political protests and actions through the Communist Party of South Africa,already committed militants and engaged intellectuals, each looking toward a life of struggle for justice and equality.

Arun Gupta on Coachella and The Taming of the American Crowd in Truthout

Arun Gupta on Coachella and The Taming of the American Crowd in Truthout

February 20, 2024

Now in its 15th year, Coachella is the highest-grossing festival in the world. For the region it's a quarter-billion-dollar revenue generator, which outstrips Jamaica's GDP on an annual basis. Tickets run up to $800, luxury Safari tents top out at $6,500, and everything costs: parking, water, showers, even charging phones. The dominant tribe is money-flush youth with the will to endure three sleepless days of being mashed in a delicious sound taco of Indie rock. But Coachella is also the modern incarnation of medieval carnivals that revealed "another way of life that stood in stark contrast to the austerity and fixed hierarchy of the official order," notes Al Sandine in The Taming of the American Crowd.

Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya reviewed on Between the Lines

Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya reviewed on Between the Lines

February 20, 2024

In his book Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya, Horace Campbell argues that Nato is "the instrument through which the capitalist class of North America and Europe seeks to impose its political will on the rest of the world, however warped by the increasingly outmoded neoliberal form of capitalism". Within the peace and justice movement, the author argued that although Muammar al-Gaddafi should be opposed, "it was equally necessary to oppose the NATO intervention" (p. 10). For the author, Nicolas Sarkozy was the champion of the "uprisings" but at the end it has not paid off politically for him. Although colonialism has formally ended some decades ago, France is still considered the gendarme of Europe in Africa.

The Economic War Against Cuba reviewed on Marxism-Leninism Today

February 20, 2024

If it weren't bad enough that the U.S. has imposed an illegal embargo against Cuba for over 50 years, it has also tried to prevent those interested in learning about this embargo (more accurately termed a blockade because the U.S. aggressively enforces it against third countries to stop them from trading with the island) from reading Salim Lamrani's new book, The Economic War Against Cuba. Thus, according to Opera Mundi, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Office Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) the government agency tasked with enforcing the blockade against Cuba seized the funds a British NGO, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, attempted to wire to purchase 100 copies of this book from Monthly Review Press.

America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth reviewed on Critical-Theory.com

America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth reviewed on Critical-Theory.com

February 20, 2024

Giroux offers a compelling primer for the chaos that neoliberalism has wrought on our youth and education system. Giroux writes with passion that borders on poetic. And, unlike a lot of critical theory, the book is intelligible and easy to read. It would make a welcome addition any OWS-style people's library or intro-level college class.

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