Archive | September, 2009

BAHAWALPUR, 22 September 2009 (IRIN) — Fears have been raised of a possible increase in food insecurity in Pakistan if a deal to lease out 202,342.8 hectares of farmland to Saudi Arabia goes ahead. Talks are reportedly under way between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to finalize an agreement.  The land, to be acquired in all […]

The Honduran police began, on Tuesday morning, repressive actions against the hundreds of people who have gathered around the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, where the legitimate president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, resides, having made a surprise return to his country on Monday. Adriana Sívori, TeleSUR correspondent in Honduras, said that the military forces are located […]

  Come one, come all Down to the hall We’re gonna make noise We’re gonna bust balls We’re gonna disrupt We’re gonna jump in the fray I got a list of all the things that we’re supposed to say We’re gonna get real rowdy Have a barrel of fun But we’re the USA, so by […]

  Laurent Dubois.  Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.  384 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-01304-9; $20.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-674-01826-6. Laurent Dubois’s Avengers of the New World builds on a body of Caribbean scholarship that has been torn between trying to place Haiti’s independence from France […]

September 21, 2009 Washington, D.C. — President Manuel Zelaya’s reported return to Honduras would be a significant move and could force an end to the political crisis that followed the June 28 coup d’etat, Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said today. “This could be the moment of truth for […]

Today I would have liked to speak about the extraordinary “Paz sin Fronteras” (Peace without Borders) Concert held at the José Martí Revolution Square 24 hours ago, but the stubborn reality forces me to write about a danger that threatens not just peace but the survival of our species.

On the 19th September this year, the 3rd anniversary of the military coup that wrecked Thai democracy, two demonstrations took place.  They sum up the two faces of Thailand. One demonstration, by tens of thousands of Red Shirts in Bangkok, was organised in order to continue the demand for full democracy.  It was a peaceful […]

  While supporters of Troy Davis, including Bob Barr and Pope Benedict, were overjoyed that the US Supreme Court ordered the Georgia district court last month to determine “whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes petitioner’s [Davis’s] innocence,” the ruling may still bode ill. Newly-appointed Sonia Sotomayor […]

به یاد پرویز مشکاتیان تمنا Parviz Meshkatian, an Iranian musician and composer, died of a heart attack in Tehran on 21 September 2009.  He was 54 years old.

  The Obama administration’s decision to scrap the Bush era anti-missile defense plans in Eastern Europe was actually expected.  Nonetheless, this was a very pragmatic move on the part of Washington.  However, the immediate talk and plans for a different American-led “stronger, smarter, and swifter” anti-missile strategy was not helpful.  I will reserve judgment on […]

  Travis L. Frampton.  Spinoza and the Rise of Historical Criticism of the Bible.  London: Continuum International Publishing Group, Limited, 2006.  262 pp.  $150.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-567-02593-7. Brayton Polka.  Between Philosophy and Religion, Vol. I: Spinoza, the Bible, and Modernity.  Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006.  276 pp.  $80.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7391-1601-2. Brayton Polka.  Between Philosophy and […]

Howard Zinn makes a call to attend the People’s Summit in Pittsburgh and protest the G20, 20-25 September 2009. “The idea of the People’s Summit, one which can declare to the deciders of society, we don’t like your policies, and here’s what we think should happen.  The People’s Summit should have an agenda and say, […]

  Gervasio Umpiérrez is a cartoonist based in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Lack of health insurance now more lethal. A new study estimates that nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance.  That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002. The new study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” appears […]

Umut Özkırımlı, Spyros A. Sofos.  Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.  viii + 220 pp.  $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-70052-8. Tormented by History by Umut Özkırımlı and Spyros A. Sofos provides a comparative approach to Turkish and Greek nationalisms from the late nineteenth century to the present.  The […]

The stars are aligning for a winnable and worthwhile fight on U.S. policy in Afghanistan in the next several weeks: stopping the Obama Administration from sending more troops. It should be winnable, because the public is against sending more troops, the overwhelming majority of Democrats are against sending more troops, key Democrats in Congress have […]

  Literary critic Terry Eagleton discusses his new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, which argues that “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens “buy their rejection of religion on the cheap.”  He believes that, in these controversies, politics has been an unacknowledged elephant in the room. Nathan Schneider: Rather […]

Iraqi trade unionists participated in a panel of Middle Eastern unionists at a reception held at the USWA headquarters on 16 September 2009 during the 2009 Pittsburgh AFL-CIO convention.  The trade unionists from Iraq who spoke were Falah Alwan, President of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq, and Rasim Hussain Abdullah Al-Awady […]

It started with a Single Payer caucus at 8 in the morning where Mark Dudzic, Rose Ann DeMoro, and others brought us up to date on how they saw the day unfolding. The two-resolution agreement was holding up.  The resolutions would be discussed after the Obama speech.  The general sentiment of the meeting was that […]

No subject arouses the passion of our labor officialdom more than “raiding.”  In his blustery maiden address as president of the AFL-CIO, Rich Trumka won thunderous applause last Wednesday by announcing that anyone daring to “raid an AFL-CIO union will find 1,000 organizers coming to the rescue of that union.” In trade unions that too […]