Archive | April, 2010

  Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture, Palestine Center, Washington, D.C., 29 April 2010 It is a great honor to be here at the Palestine Center to give the Sharabi Memorial Lecture.  I would like to thank Yousef Munnayer, the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund, for inviting me, and all of you for coming out […]

Crushing Afghanistan into NATO Territory Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist.  This animation was published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 7 September 2009.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

  Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 while at the same time sending more troops to the Afghanistan War.  What has become of the promise of “change”? I am one of the few who are not disillusioned, because I had no expectations.  I had written about Obama’s positions and prospects even before […]

  What you need to earn every month to buy a house, in euros: 10634 What you actually earn every month, in euros: 1063 How many years it will take to pay off the mortgage: 106 How many times a month you will be able to go out to dinner . . . To see […]

The government will fall or the people will rise.  Thousands have already arrived in Kathmandu, occupying the private schools shut down by Maoist students last week.  500,000 villagers are expected to join the workers and students in the city.  The Nepal Army is on alert, the People’s Liberation Army is, too.  The people are coming […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

Pity poor Angela!  The rock is Greece and its economic woes.  The hard place is North Rhine-Westphalia, where an extremely crucial election is due on May 9th — very soon but not soon enough!  And Chancellor Merkel is caught directly in the middle! Europe and the world have been waiting for Germany to commit itself […]

The much-ballyhooed Tea Party “movement” that has arisen to absurdly accuse the corporate and imperial Barack Obama administration with “socialism,” “favoring the poor,” and other “radical leftist” crimes claims to be a decentralized, independent, “grassroots,” and popular/populist uprising against concentrated power.  Contrary to that claim, Part 1 of our report presented recent polling data showing […]

I was immensely saddened to hear of Fred Halliday‘s untimely passage.  I knew Fred since 1978 when through a New Left Review friend, Robin Blackburn, I met him at his London home on my way to revolutionary Iran, temporarily forfeiting my US education for the sake of the greater cause.  Fred was putting the final touches on his seminal book on Iran, Iran: Dictatorship and Development, which had the distinct flaw of depicting the Shah’s regime as “strong,” rather belatedly adding a final chapter to account for the unexpected whirlwind “populist” revolution that did not lend itself easily to Fred’s conventional Marxian class analysis.

As I have noted previously, Latvia has experienced the worst two-year economic downturn on record, losing more than 25 percent of GDP.  It is projected to shrink further during the first half of this year, before beginning a slow recovery, in which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that it will not reach even its […]

In a democratic society, when there is a deep crisis, it is customary for the government to dissolve parliament and call elections in order for the people to decide.  This happened in Britain and France after mass strikes and demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s. After mass Yellow Shirt protests against the government in Bangkok […]

  Were you arrested at IAC demonstration on April 15, 2000 in Washington, D.C.? $14 Million Suit Won against Illegal Arrests $18,000 to each arrestee — IF you file before May 17, 2010! Spread the Word! Ten years ago this month, the International Action Center initiated a major demonstration focused on the Prison Industrial Complex. […]

On Tuesday April 27, Fahad Hashmi took a government plea bargain.  He pleaded guilty to 1 count of conspiracy for allowing an acquaintance to store waterproof socks, ponchos, and raincoats in his apartment.  The government dropped the other 3 charges.  Fahad made this decision after having served 3 long years in solitary confinement and one […]

“Finally, light at the end of the tunnel!” Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist.  This cartoon was published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 24 March 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

  Abstract: China’s integration into the global economy, while rapid, has been managed as part of a wider liberalization process.  The structural changes in the rural economy arising from these twin processes have led to widening intra-rural inequalities.  To address these, the central leadership has, in Polanyian manner, moved to counter some of the adverse […]

The Census Bureau reported on Monday that the vacancy rate edged up to 11.0 percent of all housing units in the first quarter of 2010, slightly above the year-round average of 10.9 percent for 2009.  The data showed a slight decline of 0.1 percentage points in the vacancy rate for ownership units compared with the […]

Yet again, business leaders, politicians, academics, and media are blowing smoke around Greece’s efforts to cope with “national debt” problems.  Something far more important for the world than this small country’s financial travails is at stake.  Indeed, what is at stake affects us all.  What is happening in Greece parallels developments everywhere; only details and […]

Pro-democracy Red Shirt leaders believed an armed military crackdown was due at 4 am Bangkok time, 27th April.  Tense situation earlier.  But so far at 14:00 no sign of an attack. No Pasaran! Watch this video from 10th April 2010 (Prachatai).  This is how Abhisit’s military-backed government tries to stay in power: tanks against unarmed […]

Click on the link below to watch the video of “Born Free”: www.miauk.com Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, known as M.I.A., is a British artist, rapper, and activist of Tamil Sri Lankan origin, currently based in Brooklyn.  Her father Arul Pragasam (aka Arular), a graduate of the Peoples’ Friendship University, helped found the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of […]

today, in a free clinic near the mean streets in the city of angels 6000 hardscrabble members of Marx’s always unpopular reserve army of unemployed, and their blank-faced children lined up uncomfortably outside of the Los Angeles Sports Arena to get their yellow wristbands their once-in-a-million ticket to see in the flesh a dentist, a […]