Archive | July, 2008

The Olympics will very soon begin in China. Some days ago I wrote about our baseball team. I said that our athletes were put through a very hard test and that if something went wrong they were not the ones who deserved the harshest criticisms. I recognized their quality and patriotism. They felt depressed after the criticisms that came from Cuba.

Obama has founded his campaign and become attractive to the American voters in large part on the basis of his position on the Iraq war.  He opposed it publicly since 2002.  He has called it a “dumb” war.  He voted against the “surge.”  He has called for a withdrawal over 16 months of all combat […]

  Frances Hasso.  Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan.  Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East Series. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005.  ix + 231 pp.  Bibliography, index.  $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8156-3087-6. Frances Hasso makes abundantly clear what her book, Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan, […]

This month the Bush administration finally blinked. After years of bluster about “staying the course” and “not rewarding evildoers by talking to them,” a shift in White House declarations indicated that failure is forcing even this President to adjust. First, about Iraq: Three months ago Bush was promising an imminent “Status of Forces Agreement” that […]

Senator McCain recently proposed opening up environmentally sensitive offshore zones to oil drilling in response to the recent jump in oil and gas prices.  He argues that increased offshore production will reduce dependence on foreign oil, in addition to lowering gas prices. However, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects that Senator McCain’s proposal would have […]

  Penelope Rosemont, Dreams & Everyday Life: André Breton, Surrealism, Rebel Worker, sds & the Seven Cities of Cibola, Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, Chicago, 2008, ISBN 978-0-88286-234-2 Despite an era made for modern-day state and corporate Metternichs there are stirrings, movement, growing discontent.  In the words of Buffalo Springfield’s song, “There’s something happening here.  […]

I have been delaying writing about the ICC Chief Prosecutor’s public application for an arrest warrant against President Bashir until that application is public.  As it is still not available, let me comment on the press conference.  In the absence of law and evidence, we have the theatrics. I sat in Luis Moreno Ocampo’s press […]

“The main actor of the Iranian Revolution was really the crowd.  One American sociologist has described it as ‘the largest protest event in world history’ . . . in fact it had more mass participation than any other major political crisis or revolution.  What is striking about the Iranian crowd is that it’s very, very […]

  Awash in oil, yet its people, for the most part, are destitute.  Nigeria discovered “liquid gold” half a century ago and today is the world’s eighth largest oil exporter.  But the country is plagued by corruption, inefficiency, underdevelopment, and an uprising in its Niger Delta — the area where most of its oil reserves […]

So far, Bush’s plan to maintain a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq has been stymied by resistance from the Iraqi government.  Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawal of American troops has evidently been joined by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Bush has mentioned a “time horizon,” and John McCain has waffled.  Yet Obama favors leaving […]

Returning to school after winter break, Austin Garrido found that Uloop, an online marketplace for college students, had cut his hourly pay.  Elsewhere on the University of California-Polytechnic’s campus in Pomona, his co-worker Sarah Doolittle also discovered a light paycheck. Unhappy about $8 an hour and shrunken bonuses from the Craigslist-type outfit, the two posted […]

He returned from his trip to Europe on Friday. He was away for only four days. Flying west, he arrived at Caracas at 11 at night, at sunrise in Madrid, the point of departure. The call from Venezuela came in early on Saturday. I was told he wanted to speak to me over the phone that day. I replied that I could speak to him at 1:45 in the afternoon.

A Critical Mass bicyclist was attacked by police in Times Square on Friday, 25 July 2008. | | Print

عقاید نئوکانتی زلف بر باد ترنج بگو بگو گیس یا علی ساربان چنانت دوست می‌دارم آه، که این‌طو جبر جغرافيا من از دل دیازپام ۱۰ (سه راه آذری) تریاک را به بازدمت پز اى كاش رو سر بنه به بالین مرغ شیدا طلوع من شيرين آرامش با دیازپام ده (فیلمی از سامان سالور) TICKETS GO […]

Blood and Oil: The Middle East in World War I Part 1: Surprise Attack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuRoWA-t2B0 Part 2: Military Disaster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG-bj-G5me4 Part 3: The Dardanelles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCFVyEWsh5Q Part 4: Suez Advance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbDS3yqQ3a0 Part 5: Gallipoli https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Kl8hLOIvk Part 6: Iraq Expedition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4bUWGBbKr8 Part 7: Caucasus Front https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SudftJJvKuo Part 8: Iraq Revisited https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iUcIg28TYs Part 9: Desert War https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kC5BvoyYmc Part […]

  Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, proposes that Iran sue the U.S. in the World Court to enjoin it against threats to attack Iran. Part 1: The Libya Precedent “We filed papers with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, on behalf of Libya against the US and […]

More celebrated abroad than in his own country, Youssef Chahine tried every film genre, from historical epic to musical comedy.  The Egyptian director, who died on Sunday, 27 July 2008 in Cairo, received the lifetime achievement award on the fiftieth anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival in 1997. His last film Chaos, released in 2007, […]

Fatima Hassan, is a prominent South African human rights lawyer who was part of a South African Human Rights Delegation that in early July visited Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.   The delegation undertook the mission in order to: “support those, Palestinian and Israeli, working daily, by non-violent means, to bring an end to the […]

I attended the big rally with Obama in Berlin Thursday evening, not as a press representative but as one of the crowd.  And what a giant crowd it was!  The news reports counted “over 200,000,” but, to someone sandwiched in so tight I could hardly lift my hand to scratch my itching nose, much less […]

  On the occasion of US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin, Christine Buchholz, a member of the Left Party executive board, comments: Many hopes are tied to Barack Obama, since George W. Bush is the most unpopular American President ever, and Obama promises to improve the social situation and bring the Iraq […]