Dependency Theory in 2006. When Samir Amin speaks, I listen. He here he is talking about the salience of Dependency Theory (for my Arabic readers, read the book on Dependency Theory by `Abdul-Khaliq `Abdullah, my friend and colleague of UAE University in Al-`Ayn): "In my belief, all this is true, even if names and forms have changed, especially in the matter of the relationship between the Center and the Periphery, and to which I had devoted my special attention in most of my early studies. And I still do, even in different ways. This concept is still in existence as it was in the past. And for a simple reason: that the polarization that was in existence, is still in existence at the global level, and linked to the logic of capitalist accumulation itself, and to its core of existence. There was a Center (or "muhit" (zone) call it what you wish) and peripheries during the first phase of the appearance of capitalism five centuries ago, and this will remain in the future as long as there is capitalism and capitalist accumulation. But this is not to say that the form of the order and the content of the Center and the substance of the monopolies on which these privileges of the centers are based as far as their relationships with the "zone" are concerned..." (thanks Amer). I like what he says about Arab communists: that they are in alliance with US occupation in Iraq, in alliance with Syrian regime in Syria, and in Lebanon they make a transition to Americanized liberalism, he says. (If you want a succinct early review of Dependency Theory, read the piece by Ronald Chilcote in Latin American Perspectives in 1973, I think.)