Category: Monthly Review Press /

Law & Disorder radio: from Michael Tigar & the decline of democracy to the Chicago 7 at Caroline’s Comedy Club

February 20, 2024

Next year Monthly Review Press will publish Tigar's memoir, Sensing Injustice: A Lawyer's Life in the Battle for Change. But for now, he discusses, with Smith and Boghosian, the bipartisan decline of democracy and rule of law, Amy Coney Barrett, the presidential election... If you hang on toward the end, you'll hear an old recording, in the wake of the newly released The Trial of the Chicago 7, of William Kunstler, a lead attorney for the seven, performing a routine about the trial at Caroline's Comedy Club...

New! “Venezuela, the Present as Struggle: Voices from the Bolivarian Revolution”

February 20, 2024

Venezuela has been the stuff of frontpage news extravaganzas, especially since the death of Hugo Chávez. With predictable bias, mainstream media focus on violent clashes between opposition and government, coup attempts, hyperinflation, U.S. sanctions, and massive immigration. What is less known, however, is the story of what the Venezuelan people—especially the Chavista masses—do and think in these times of social emergency. This revolutionary grassroots movement still aspires to the communal path to socialism that Chávez refined in his last years. Venezuela, the Present as Struggle is an eloquent testament to their lives...

Gerald Horne on The Critical Hour: US Jails Privatizing Inmate Health Care See (Even) Higher Death Rates

February 20, 2024

For months now, we've read news stories of how people inside prisons are "sitting ducks" for COVID-19. In fact, incarcerated people across the country are dying at increasing rates in detention facilities where masks are often nonexistent and social distancing impossible. Although most of these prisons are government-run, around 10% are owned privately by corporations, which intensively put profits before the humanity it cages. Dr. Gerald Horne, author, most recently, of The Dawning of the Apocalypse joins hosts Wilmer Leon and Garland Nixon on Radio Sputnuk's The Critical Hour to discuss a Reuters article reporting that "jails with health care overseen by private companies incur higher death rates on average than those with care handled by government agencies...."

Preventing the next disease from escaping: CounterPunch reviews “Dead Epidemiologists”

February 20, 2024

Covid-19 comes from the primary forest, from bat caves. In a world without industrial agriculture encroaching on that forest, in a world without the corporatization of a wild-food industry, Covid-19 would probably never have left those caves. As it becomes endemic, it may become unstoppable. But not so the next pestilence. If we revamp our food production system now, maybe the pathogens lurking in primeval forest viral reservoirs will stay there...

Vijay Prashad via Democracy Now!–on the U.N. World Food Programme winning the Nobel Peace Prize

February 20, 2024

Vijay Prashad, Executive Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, has also written several books, most recently, Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations. He appears on the Friday, Oct. 9 edition of Democracy Now! to discuss with host Amy Goodman the breaking news that the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the U.N. World Food Programme. "I couldn't be happier... This hunger pandemic is paralyzing perhaps 2.7 billion people," says Prashad. "What could only make me happier, Amy, is if, next year, the Cuban doctors win the Nobel Peace Prize..."

Gerald Horne and Aisha Cort on Black Internationalism, Communism, and Cuban History

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne, historian and author of many books, most recently, The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, talks to Luna Olavarria Gallegos and Aisha Cort, hosts of Havana-based Belly of The Beast Cuba about Black radical traditions in respect to Cuba and the United States...

Gerald Horne Traces the Long History of White Supremacy, via WORT FM’s “A Public Affair”

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne, historian and prolific author, talks with Allen Ruff, host of A Public Affair on radio WORT-FM, Madison, WI, about Horne's most recent book, The Dawning of the Apocalypse. Dr. Horne retells the bloodthirsty story of the invasion of the Americas; how “whiteness” morphed into “white supremacy,” and how “genocide and mass enslavement is somehow a step forward for humanity.” He also offers examples of how colonial history manifests in the present day, including the Founding Father worship of the hit musical Hamilton and the growing popularity of QAnon conspiracies....

Snappy, absorbing, illuminative account of a life on the American & Irish Left: Logos reviews Sheehan’s “Navigating the Zeitgeist”

February 20, 2024

Helena Sheehan is a well-known and well-established presence on the Irish Left, an activist-academic with a strong form in meditative Marxist thought as well more accessible political commentary. As she shows in her new memoir, Navigating the Zeitgeist, it would be almost too obvious to say she led an interesting' life, moving from post-war suburbia and a brief period as a nun, to communism and Irish republicanism; she narrates each of these stages of her life in a fast-moving and engaging (but not always problem-free) style....

Gerald Horne presides at “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda” by Ishmael Reed

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne, historian and prolific author--most recently, of The Dawning of the Apocalypse--appears in this Powerhouse Arena launch for the publication of The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, a play written by poet, essayist, and playwright Ishmael Reed. Originally produced at the Nuyorican Poets Café, The Haunting dismantles the phenomenon of Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Broadway hit musical, Hamilton. Reed uses the musical’s crimes against history to insist on a radical, cleareyed look at our past...

Competing with Nature: COVID-19 as a Capitalist Virus: Spectre interviews Rob Wallace

February 20, 2024

RW: As far as Trump getting COVID-19, I think it’s a spectacle and palace intrigue – it serves as a distraction. The very fact that he contracted it is at the same time stupefying, astonishing, and yet utterly predictable....