Archive | July, 2009

  I was 10 years old and every week my mother would buy Zan-e Rooz (Today’s Woman), Iran’s highest circulation women-oriented publication, from the neighborhood newsstand.  She always said that when I read a magazine I can speak better.  My sisters and I would wait for the magazine every Saturday, and I particularly enjoyed reading […]

By the way, do you know that you can get free “Free Iran” t-shirts, “donated by American Apparel, a company that supports liberty and open minded thinking by people worldwide”? Supporting all Iranian People and their freedom T-shirts were donated by American Apparel, a company that supports liberty and open minded thinking by people worldwide. […]

How would you tell the story of your movie Rachel? It is a cinematographic inquiry into the death of a young girl who was crushed by a military vehicle in a diseased country.  This young girl was American, the vehicle was an Israeli bulldozer, and the country is Palestine and Israel — a region whose […]

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) is well known for its mission to expose the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez as a threat to free speech “all over the continent.” These brave free speech warriors made a big deal this year about how they “dared” to hold a meeting in the Venezuelan capital, “defying” […]

Three weeks after the June 28 military coup that expelled Honduran President Mel Zelaya and claimed to overthrow his government, the country remains shaken by a profound and dynamic popular upsurge demanding Zelaya’s return and the restoration of democracy. The collapse on July 18 of the much-touted “negotiation dialogue” between Zelaya’s government delegation and representatives […]

The coup d’état in Honduras, promoted by the far right-wing of the United States –which in Central America was maintaining the structure set up by Bush – and backed by the Department of State, was evolving poorly on account of the energetic resistance by the people.The criminal venture, condemned unanimously by world opinion and international bodies, could not be sustained.
The memory of atrocities committed during recent decades by the tyrannies that United States organized, instructed and armed in our hemisphere was still fresh.

Testimony of Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., to the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, 24 June 2009, Washington Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee.  I’m Steffie Woolhandler.  I am a primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard.  I also co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program.  Our […]

17 July 2009 The ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation) today called for all its union members to oppose the coup in Honduras by focusing protests on the Honduran merchant fleet. The global union organisation, which represents 656 unions worldwide with four and a half million members, has made the call as its latest move to […]

On one hand, protests in support of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, on the 57th anniversary of the 30th of Tir (20 July 1952). Haft-e Tir Square, Tehran On the other hand, Parivash Fatemi, the widow of Hossein Fatemi, who served as Mohammad Mossadegh’s Foreign Minister and was the driving force behind his oil nationalization program, says that […]

Cuban Cartoonists’ Appeal to Their Colleagues in the World We have learned, thanks to the alternative Web site Rebelión, that, in the morning of Tuesday, the 30th of June, Honduran cartoonist and frequent contributor to this portal Allan McDonald was arrested and taken by force from his house, along with his 17-month-old daughter. The brutalities […]

Foreign Affairs Minister Celso Amorim yesterday phoned U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in New Delhi, India, to “express concern” about the slow pace and handling of the negotiations for the reinstatement of the democratic order in Honduras, the Brazilian Minister’s press office said. Amorim conveyed Brazil’s criticism to Hillary regarding the way […]

July 19, 2009 The talks are finished for now, with no resolution.  The coup regime in Honduras, which ousted President Zelaya exactly 3 weeks ago, has rejected the 7-point proposal put forth by designated mediator Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica.  Zelaya’s delegation in Costa Rica had earlier stated they had accepted the proposal, but […]

It is now a commonplace that we are experiencing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  The downward trajectory on a global level is similar to the 1930s, though in the United States — the epicenter of the crisis — there are indications that the rate of decline may be slowing.1  […]

Recently gay rights groups became seriously miffed when our new President’s own Justice Department released a legal brief upholding the Defense of Marriage Act by likening same-sex marriage to pedophilia and incest.  “What about our civil rights?” we huffed. This is a President, after all, whose life was profoundly shaped and guided by the civil […]

Play now: “I wanted to write a book that would be not just extolling the virtues of the unions but also would point out some of their difficulties and problems to give a kind of balanced view of them, I mean, not a negative view like a right-winger would give, but from a critical perspective.  […]

  From Nawal el Saadawi to Janet Afary Dear Janet, I am glad to see you’ve been reading my work since you were a graduate student.  Did you read my work in English or Persian?  (I write in Arabic.)  I very much enjoyed your book: Sexual Politics in Modern Iran.  Egypt, my country, and Iran […]

  Abstract In a seminal paper on Marxian business cycle theory Goodwin (1967) presented a model, which assumed that a higher wage share leads to lower investment and thus a general economic slowdown.  In contrast Kalecki (1971) was arguing that a higher wage share would have an expansionary effect because the consumption propensity out of […]

  A controversial facility at Ft. Benning, Ga. — formerly known as the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas — is still training Honduran officers despite claims by the Obama administration that it cut military ties to Honduras after its president was overthrown June 28, NCR has learned. A day after an SOA-trained army general […]

  “What do you have to say to the Iranian people?” “The Iranians are fucking assholes.  I hate them all.  They can go fuck themselves.” “What do you have to say to the Iranian people?” “I hate them.  I don’t like them.” “What do you think about Obama?” “Obama is a cooshi.” “What?” “He’s a […]

Marvin Perry, Frederick M. Schweitzer, eds.  Antisemitic Myths: A Historical and Contemporary Anthology.   Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.  xxiii + 352 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-34984-2; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-21950-3. This collection of ninety-some documents is the third major product of a long-term collaboration between historians Marvin Perry and Frederick Schweitzer.  It is intended […]