Archive | July, 2011

Argentinean singer Facundo Cabral, best known for his song “I’m Not from Here, Nor Am I from There,” was murdered this morning on his way to Guatemala’s La Aurora airport after a concert tour of that country. In his 2006 interview with Télam, Cabral said: “People often call me maestro, singer-songwriter, poet, troubadour, minstrel, and […]

  Excerpt: This case represents a yawning gap between the promise of principled exercise of power in a constitutional democracy, and the reality of the situation in Chattisgarh, where the Respondent, the State of Chattisgarh, claims that it has a constitutional sanction to perpetrate, indefinitely, a regime of gross violation of human rights in a […]

We’re now working on a new edition of our book, The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, and you can help us. We won’t be making dramatic changes — unfortunately, not that much has changed in the immigration debate since the book came out back in 2007.  The media repeat the same myths about immigration, […]

The Labor Department reported that the economy created just 18,000 jobs in June.  It also revised down the previous two months’ numbers, bringing the average rate of job growth over this period to 87,000 jobs a month.  The slow job growth led to another rise in the unemployment rate, which edged up to 9.2 percent. […]

There has been considerable discussion of basing the Social Security cost of living adjustment (COLA) on the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U) as a “painless” way of generating large budget savings.  This view reflects serious confusion about what the switch to the C-CPI-U involves.  (The switch would also lead to higher […]

  Workers of the Suez Canal Authority are continuing their three-week strike for better wages and working conditions.  Improvements have already been negotiated, but with implementation now twice delayed, the workers are calling for the resignation of Suez Canal Authority Chairman Ahmed Fadel. This video was released by Ahram Online on 6 July 2011.  Cf. […]

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.” — Bob Marley, “Redemption Song,” 1979 I’ve got it made.  I’m sixty-one years old and I’ve been retired for two and a half years.  I’ve got a pension, health insurance, and money in the bank.  I own my own home.  I’m debt free.  I’m a fortunate man, but it wasn’t […]

  NUMSA and other COSATU workers, ANC Youth League President Julius Malema, and members of the South African Communist Party gathered outside the United States Embassy in Pretoria, Gauteng to demonstrate against the NATO bombings of Libya.  “South Africa should not have voted for that resolution,” said Malema, referring to UN Security Council Resolution 1973 […]

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 1 July 2011.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

2 July 2011 To the final subject: the current situation.  To the Lebanese people, I say to them the following: don’t worry about civil strife.  Those who talk about civil strife in Lebanon actually want that to come about.  There will be no Sunni-Shiite strife and no civil war in Lebanon.  Everyone should be assured […]

Bernard-Henri Lévy, well known for his devotion to humanitarian military interventions, organized a conference to “stop the massacre” in Syria, “SOS Syrie,” in Paris on the fourth of July.  There is no doubt that BHL is eager to replicate his Libyan success in Syria.  Given the clear Russian opposition to any military intervention in Syria, […]

One of last month’s most interesting developments in Persian Gulf power politics played out not in the Middle East, but in Vienna, Paris, and Washington.  For these Western cities were the venues for an important series of exchanges that revealed much about the changing balance of power among the Middle East’s major oil producers, including […]

  Now that Swaziland is on the verge of far-reaching change, with the Tinkhundla system teetering on the brink of collapse, we are seeing a scramble by reactionary forces to try to take the initiative in the name of the pro-democracy movement and set the agenda for Swaziland’s future. These forces, which have received backing […]

COSATU has called on all workers to join the march organised by NUMSA to the Embassies of the US, Britain and France tomorrow, 6th July, 2011 starting at 10 am. The aim of the march is to protest the bombings led by the forces of imperialism as represented by the countries above against the people […]

Ron Paul’s Surprisingly Lucid Solution to the Debt Ceiling Impasse Representative Ron Paul has hit upon a remarkably creative way to deal with the impasse over the debt ceiling: have the Federal Reserve Board destroy the $1.6 trillion in government bonds it now holds.  While at first blush this idea may seem crazy, on more […]

Bassam Alkadi is President of the Syrian Women Observatory, Syria’s main women’s rights organization.  A relentless fighter for human rights in Syria, he has been fired from his job, arrested, jailed, and forbidden from traveling, but he continues to be driven by logic and not revenge.  He rejects dialogue for the sake of dialogue.  Instead, […]

The Thai election results are a slap in the face for the dictatorship.  They prove without any doubt that the majority of people have rejected the military, the Democrat Party, and the royalist elites.  Peua Thai, the party closely allied to the Red Shirt movement, has won a clear majority.  The result is all the […]

There is a pervasive view that growth under capitalism, though it may worsen poverty, even absolute poverty, to start with, eventually leads to a lowering of poverty.  The experience of the English Industrial Revolution is invoked in this context.  There has been a huge debate among economic historians about the impact of the Industrial Revolution […]

“@USBOATTOGAZA  Iceland Parliamentarian visits boat to show solidarity.  ‘Greece sold its economy to western banks and its politics to Israel.’” — Medea Benjamin, 2 July 2011 Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. Fulya Özerkan, “Gov’t Pressure on İHH Divides Group before Flotilla Decision” (Hürriyet Daily News, 16 June 2011); Semih İdiz, “Why the Mavi […]

  Much of the discussion surrounding the Greek crisis revolves around the probability and implications of a sovereign default and on whether the introduction of a national currency (which, for simplicity, we could call the new drachma) would help pull the Greek economy out of recession (see for example Manasse 2011 on this site).  Less […]