Archive | March, 2010

On Tuesday morning clashes erupted between Palestinian protesters and Israeli military and police forces across the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians hurled stones at police and burned tires and trash bins in several areas of East Jerusalem. Dozens of Palestinians were injured and many were detained.

“A country whose political culture is characterized by paranoia.”  What country would that be?  Israel, which has claimed victim status through seven decades of vicious land grab?  The United States, which has devastated Iraq pretending to look for imaginary weapons of mass destruction? No, argues neoconservative Michael Eisenstadt, staff analyst at the pro-Israel Washington Institute […]

The situation of violence in Aguán is a result of an unresolved structural problem in Honduras, an expression of the necessity for profound changes in this country so that the majority of its people may enjoy their human rights fully and effectively. Since the politico-economic-military coup d’état perpetrated on 28 June 2009 against the established […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

Establishment of the First Popular and Democratic National Constituent Assembly Manifesto Gathered in the city of La Esperanza, under the auspice of the sign of hope, women and men of 17 departments of the country met, coming face to face with Honduras again, to look at each other, debate, and reinforce through dialogue our knowledge, […]

On March 10, the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere held a hearing to chart the course of their agenda in the Western Hemisphere over the coming year. On March 12-15, the National Popular Resistance Front in Honduras (FNRP) held a national meeting to pave the way for a Honduran Constitutional Convention, even in […]

After the new Qatari administration announced that 250 employees in the widely read IslamOnline news website (IOL) would be laid off, hundreds of employees, editors, and journalists started an angry sit-in.  The situation escalated rapidly when the administration threatened to call state security to break the sit-in, but employees confirmed they will continue their open […]

Hundreds of thousands of Thai Red Shirt pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets of Bangkok and other cities over the weekend.  This was a show of force to prove the strength of the movement and to dispel any lies by the royalist government and the media that the Red Shirts are not representative of the […]

  “The times we live in reflect that in Latin America and the Caribbean the confrontation between historic forces is getting worse.” — Raul Castro On February 23, 2010, incarcerated Cuban Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after a prolonged hunger strike, despite the efforts of Cuban medical personnel to treat him and prevent the ending of […]

Sometimes headlines really do convey powerful messages.  That was certainly the case with an AFP story, which appeared late last week under the headline, “Saudis Deny Discussing Pressure on China over Iran with US.”   The story was prompted by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ visits to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last week. […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

It is intriguing to see how whoever the United States and Israel find interfering with their imperial or dispossession plans is quickly demonized and becomes a threat and target for that Real-Axis-of-Evil (RAE), and hence their NATO allies and, with less intensity, much of the rest of the “international community” (IC, meaning ruling elites, not […]

  Jana K. Lipman.  Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.  x + 325 pp.  $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-25539-5; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-520-25540-1. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to serve on a Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations panel with Jana K. Lipman. […]

  Two major lessons emerge from the first round of the regional elections The magnitude of abstention by millions of youth, workers, and the unemployed, who mostly wished to register their rejection of the political parties that have alternated in power and that are responsible for aggravating their conditions of life.   The vigor of […]

Frank Lumpkin.  Photo by People’s World. A few days ago Frank Lumpkin died, a true American hero.  I am still grateful that I was lucky enough to know not only him but his whole big fighting family! I was fresh out of Harvard, a red diaper New York radical in 1949, set on working in […]

  “It’s necessary to campaign on my record,” Nicolas Sarkozy had told UMP leaders in the regional elections, before prudently beating a retreat when polls revealed the darkening sky for the party.  Despite the same old cliché repeated by UMP spokespeople according to the dictate of the Élysée, the fact remains that voters clearly rejected […]

The Nahr al-Bared refugee camp still has not recovered from the devastating war in 2007 during which it was destroyed.  The Lebanese Army has been keeping a tight grip on the camp and the 20,000 displaced Palestinians who have returned so far.  The army’s siege seriously hampers the camp’s economic recovery, as access is restricted and the area has been declared a military zone.  A recent survey found that the army’s presence and measures are considered a difficulty by 98 per cent of Nahr al-Bared’s business owners.  The army meanwhile justifies its presence as necessary for the preservation of the safety of the people.

Jon Stewart: “The votes are officially in.  How did it go?” Reporters: “Bombs ripped through parts of Baghdad today”; “Insurgents bombed a polling station and lobbed grenades at voters. . . .”; “A rocket killed seven people”; “Dozens of explosions”; “Bombs and mortar attacks”; “Some counted as many as fifty in Baghdad alone. . . […]

  Gone are the days when US politicians could hardly tell where Brazil is on a world map.  The era when US diplomacy in Latin America distinguished itself by its “Big Stick” policy is over. It is no longer the era when a Brazilian Foreign Minister had to take shoes off to be searched at […]

  Zimbabwe’s land issue has generated unprecedented debates both within and outside the country.  The debates, which followed the dramatic occupations of white farms by rural peasants in the late 1990s, are generally polarised between those who support radical land reform and those who support market-orientated reforms.  The former stand accused of supporting Mugabe’s regime […]