Archive | Commentary

In Brazil, as in the United States, most people do not vote for a president on the basis of foreign policy issues.  Yet sometimes the result matters for the rest of the world — as when President George W. Bush was declared the winner of the 2000 election, and subsequently started two destructive, costly, and […]

Who was on the aircraft firing the missile?  Nobody. Who got killed?  A nobody. Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 11 October 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi […]

John Schmitt: My view on immigration and how to deal with the labor market challenges is to focus on the labor market rather than to focus on the immigration issue itself.  I think, if we have good, effective national labor standards that guarantee workers at the bottom have the basic minimum wage, they have the […]

  Nargess Moballeghi: Two revolutions in two parts of the world for two different reasons. . . .  The Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro overthrowing Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini overthrowing the Shah twenty years later.  Though ideologically they couldn’t have been further apart, they have a […]

Laal dedicates this song to the diversity, plurality, and all the colours of Islam. “When the Taliban attacked the shrines of Rahman Baba, Data Sahib, and Abdullah Ghazi Shah, slaughtering hundreds who had gathered for alms or to pray, Laal felt obligated to not only defend the progressive aspects of sufi thought but to discover […]

Imagine a world ravaged by a plague, and suppose that the year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine is awarded to researchers whose whole career is based on the assumption that plagues are impossible.  The world would have been outraged.  That is precisely how we should feel about yesterday’s announcement of the recipients of the 2010 Nobel […]

US workers suffered a major rise in unemployment from its level in 2008 (5.8 %) to its level in the second quarter of 2010 (9.7 %).  By comparison, French unemployment rose from 7.4 % in 2008 to 9.2 % in the second quarter of 2010.  These data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show […]

This week Israel’s security forces practiced the putting down of mass demonstrations and protests among Israel’s Arab citizens and their imprisonment in a large detention camp to be established at Golani Junction in Galilee.  The exercise was based on a scenario of the riots being provoked by implementation of Avigdor Lieberman’s plan for “an exchange […]

What does the USA have in common with China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea?  You would hardly guess, but the European Parliament stated loud and all too clear on October 2nd: those are the countries which put lots of people to death.  In a long, detailed resolution, approved almost unanimously by 574 members […]

  Michael Lebowitz.  The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development.  New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010. It is probably fair to say that revolutionary socialism does not come naturally to everyone.  Some of the young and curious pick up a grimy, twenty-page manifesto in a second-hand bookstore and never look back, but for myself it was […]

  Overlooked in the recent rise of the Tea Party and the Republican Right is the way these groups have learned how to grow and thrive on the failures of capitalism.  The Democrats, in contrast, remain tied to its successes.  With capitalism performing particularly poorly at present, it is no wonder that the Right is […]

  Sandy Pope is the president of Teamsters Local 805.  Her supporters are now engaged in a nationwide petition drive to gather 40,000 signatures from dues-paying Teamster members by 3 December 2010, so she can challenge Jimmy Hoffa in the Teamster General President election to be held in October 2011.  This interview was broadcast by […]

Recent economic turmoil has led state and local governments to seek new paths to offset budget shortfalls.  Among other things, one widely discussed policy option is state employee pension reforms.  These proposals seek to cut pension benefits, and, moreover, to increase the retirement age.  State and local government employees generally are able to access full […]

  Guido Mantega, the Brazilian Finance Minister, said recently that Brazil is in the middle of a currency war.  His preoccupation with exchange rate appreciation is not directed to global imbalances, in general, or China, in particular.  A more depreciated currency provides protection for domestic production and makes domestic goods and services cheaper for foreigners. […]

There are three obvious problems with the Allahabad High Court judgment on the Babri Masjid issue.  Each of them in isolation is potentially damaging for the Constitutional fabric of the country; together they can cause irreparable harm. The first is the obliteration of the distinction between “fact” and “faith”, which represents a serious retrogression to […]

  Report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003 Excerpt (Footnotes Omitted): Several incidents listed in this report, if investigated and judicially proven, point to circumstances and facts from […]

“Viva the Revolution of 1964 — 45-Caliber Serra”; “Vote Srra”; “Death to the Left”; “Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property: With God and Serra”; “Vote for SΣrra”; “Prison for Women Who Abort”; “Pro-coup Media for Serra” Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  See, […]

With a shovel in hand, Secretary General of Hezbollah Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah appeared on television screens, planting and watering a small tree outside his home in the southern suburbs of Beirut. His message to the whole world was save the environment: go green.

The European tour of Wen Jiabao is taking place while the conflict between the US and China over the yuan/dollar exchange rate is getting worse.  At the same time, a similar if less noisy clash exists between China and the Eurozone countries.  Last but not least, tensions have also arisen in the Sino-Japanese relations following […]

On October 6, Charlie Rose broadcast an interview with Stuart Levey, Undersecretary of the Treasury for Financial and Terrorism Intelligence (can be viewed here: www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11231).  Levey is widely considered the principal architect of U.S. sanctions policy, particularly with respect to Iran, under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.  It is worth recalling […]