Over the last quarter century—and especially since the beginning of Israel’s latest genocidal incursion into Palestine in October 2023—the term “settler colonialism” has proliferated in academic and popular discourse. In February’s “Review of the Month,” John Bellamy Foster connects readers to thinkers from around the globe and across time to illustrate the phenomenon of settler colonialism as a dimension of imperialism, and thus capitalism, driven by a rapacious extractivism that threatens the whole of humanity. | more…
As the atrocities visited by Israel upon the Palestinian people continue to multiply, this month’s “Notes from the Editors is a forceful condemnation of not only the Zionist entity, but the entire U.S.-led neoliberal world order. Israel’s relentless pursuit of genocide in Palestine “has destroyed any pretense of a commitment to universal human rights on the part of the West,” undeniably revealing “imperialism and settler colonialism in their most brutal forms” as the entire world watches. | more…
While Israel’s horrific assaults on the people of Gaza continue, the voices against the U.S. support for the Zionist state grow ever-louder. This spring, the fight spilled onto college campuses. In this month’s “Notes,” MR editors take the long view, starting with the Free Speech Movement over half a century ago. | more…
Over six months into to Israel’s atrocity-filled assault on Gaza, Laurence Shoup digs deep to reveal a rarely discussed—but enormously influential—force within the Israel Lobby: the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR, he writes, is more than just Wall Street’s think tank; it is an elite network of Zionist politicians and donors who comprise a significant part of the Israel lobby and the continuing U.S. commitment to funding Israel’s genocidal actions in Palestine. | more…
As Israel continues its atrocities in Gaza, the editors examine the nature of exterminism and its relation to what threatens to become a permanent Nakba. The explicit aim, they contend, of Zionism’s settler colonial project is nothing less than the extermination—in the classical sense of the term—of the entire Palestinian population. | more…
At the time of writing in late November 2023, Israel has continued its merciless assault on Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands at horrifying rates, as it also condones Israeli settler terrorism against Palestinians living in the West Bank. | more…
In this review of Linda Dittmar’s Tracing Homelands, Paul Buhle writes, “History may yet hold hope when hope is otherwise lacking when we reject the stalemate that only leads to despair.” | more…
This month, the editors discuss the U.S. threat of a “new Opium War against China” found in the pages of the Air Force’s Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs. In addition, MR affirms its solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against genocide. | more…
Originally a storytelling project of JVP-NYC, A Land With A People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism, is a collection of personal stories, history, poetry, and art which elevates rarely heard Palestinian and Jewish voices. | more…
According to renowned Marxist economist Samir Amin, the recent Arab Spring uprisings comprise an integral part of a massive “second awakening” of the Global South. From the self-immolation in December 2010 of a Tunisian street vendor, to the consequent outcries in Cairo’s Tahrir Square against poverty and corruption, to the ongoing upheavals across the Middle East and Northern Africa, the Arab world is shaping what may become of Western imperialism—an already tottering and overextended system.
The Reawakening of the Arab World—an updated and expanded version of Amin’s The People’s Spring, first published in 2012 by Pambazuka Press—examines the complex interplay of nations regarding the Arab Spring and its continuing, turbulent seasons. Beginning with Amin’s compelling interpretation of the 2011 popular Arab explosions, the book is comprised of five chapters—including a new chapter analyzing U.S. geo-strategy. Samir Amin sees the United States, in an increasingly multi-polar world, as a victim of overreach, caught in its own web of attempts to contain the challenge of China, while confronting the staying power of nations such as Syria and Iran. The growing, deeply-felt need of the Arab people for independent, popular democracy is the cause of their awakening, says Amin. It this awakening to democracy that the United States fears most, since real self-government by independent nations would necessarily mean the end of U.S. empire, and the economic liberalism that has kept it in place. The way forward for the Arab world, Amin argues, is to take on, not just Western imperialism, but also capitalism itself. | more…
When in March 2012, Barack Obama paused briefly from approving orders for drone killings of Pakistani and Yemeni villagers, in order to reassure the attendees at the annual gala of the AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) that, “when there are efforts to boycott or divest from Israel, we will stand against them,” the real target of his declaration was elsewhere: the myriad grassroots organizers across the world who have made the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns unignorable. Their mounting influence has provoked efforts to declare them anti-Semitic or illegal from London to Long Beach. In fact, the series of victories across the University of California system has so annoyed its managers that they have hauled in the Caesar of domestic repression, Janet Napolitano, to deal with campus activists. Obama’s declaration of support for Israeli colonialism had a simple message to those many activists: back down, because Washington will not. | more…
