Archive | Commentary

1. The Cost of the Occupation to Israeli Society The majority of Israel’s anti-occupation movement, unfortunately, does not focus on the rights of Palestinians to live free, but on the damage that the occupation causes to Israeli society (Sternhell, 2009). The arguments that the occupation is a major investment of resources that could be useful […]

Hossein Derakhshan, known as the “blogfather” of the Persian-language blogosphere, has been in prison since he was arrested on 1 November 2008, shortly after his return to Iran, his homeland.  Salman, a writer for the Web site Kamtarin, conducted an interview with Ozra Kiarashpour, the mother of Hossein Derakhshan, about her son’s situation. Hello, Ms. […]

Michael A. Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative (Monthly Review Press, 2010), 191 pp. Alan Maass, The Case for Socialism (Haymarket Books, 2010), 173 pp. Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (Verso, 2010), xviii, 394 pp. The economic crisis beginning in 2007 punctured the dominance of neo-liberal ideology, without completely overturning it.  To accomplish that, and force […]

Jean Bricmont is professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, Belgium, and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal.  He is the author of Humanitarian Imperialism and co-author, with Alan Sokal, of Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science.  He has written critically about ‘humanitarian interventionism’ since the Kosovo war in 1999.  In […]

  “When there are no social movements bringing the masses of working people together in battle against the owning class and their allies, those whose lives have been turned upside down by economic crisis and those who find that their former privileges as white persons are threatened find easy scapegoats in ‘illegal aliens,’ in racial […]

  I’d like to add some reflections on the notion of “state racism” to our meeting’s agenda.  These reflections run against a widespread interpretation of measures that our government has recently taken, from the law on the veil to the expulsions of the Roma.  This interpretation detects an opportunism that is exploiting racism and xenophobia […]

The stereotypical union battles of the past were fought by burly working-class heroes, on the picket line and the proverbial “shop floor.”  Think of tough-looking guys, wearing scally caps (and wielding baseball bats, when necessary), while marching through the streets of the San Francisco in 1934.  Their enemies were many — the long-shore bosses and […]

Terry Eagleton has joined the rush of those on the left to offer opinions on ethics in a recent lop-sided work called Trouble with Strangers.1  His argument is as straightforward as it is expected in these days of his recovered role as a part-time theologian of the Roman Catholic left: both Christian theology and socialism […]

Angela Merkel always seems to smile when she faces a camera.  Only once in a while does an unnoticed camera show her looking tired, if not worn and slightly haggard. Things are not all going her way.  More and more people are moving in Germany, mostly in the wrong direction, at least for Merkel.  In […]

Margot Badran is one of the most widely known scholars of Islamic feminism.  A historian by training, she has authored many books including: Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences(Oneworld Press, Oxford, 2009); Feminism beyond East and West: New Gender Talk and Practice in Global Islam (New Delhi: Global Media Publications, 2007);as co-editor, Opening the […]

The mass media remains, in the 21st century, one of the most powerful forces blocking social and economic progress.  It is because of the mass media that tens of millions of Americans are convinced that budget deficits are more important than the lives ruined by unemployment, or that Social Security won’t be there for them […]

Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 20 September 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  See, also, “2 Election Officials Missing, Thousands Complaints Filed in Afghan Polls” (Xinhua, 21 September 2010). | Print

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused of leaking military secrets to the public.  This week, his supporters are holding rallies in 21 cities, seeking Manning’s release from military custody.  Manning is in the brig for allegedly disclosing a classified video depicting U.S. troops shooting civilians from an Apache helicopter in Iraq in July 2007.  The […]

As he has every year since becoming President of the Islamic Republic, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is coming to New York this week to attend the United Nations General Assembly.  Several important U.S. media outlets have either already conducted (MSNBC, ABC) or will conduct (PBS’ Charlie Rose and CNN’s Larry King) interviews with Ahmadinejad in connection with […]

The ruling center-right coalition (of the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, the Liberal Party, and the Christian Democrats) wins re-election (49.3%), a first in Swedish history, albeit three seats short of an absolute majority; and the far-right Sweden Democrats (5.7%) gain seats, also for the first time.  Both the Moderate Party (up 3.9%) and the […]

Over the course of the past week, several stories have appeared in the U.S. media that seemed to celebrate, without an iota of sarcasm or self-criticism, the bright and happy futures of 33 coal miners who have been trapped underground in the San Jose mine, in utterly unbearable conditions, for six weeks — and who […]

  Among those who signed the books of condolences, leaving diverse expressions of love and respect, are students of the Latin American School of Medicine who are from the United States, the youth that the Reverend Lucius Walker, leader of Pastors for Peace, brought to Cuba. At the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos […]

U.S. progressives have expressed a great deal of concern about the effects of anti-immigrant hysteria in the general population, from criminal attacks on immigrants to vicious legislation like Arizona’s SB 1070.  But instead of just condemning the hysteria, maybe we need to ask ourselves what we’ve been doing to counter it. Not very much, according […]

The sky has been overcast for decades.  Since 1973 the income, working conditions, and life prospects of common people in the United States have been ground down.  In 2008 the storm arrived.  A huge recession poured down sheets of unemployment, took away health care from four million more people, and pushed the carrot of retirement […]

The new regulations on banks’ capital requirements known as Basel 3, made known to the public in mid-September, are a major institutional boost to the monopolistic position of the largest banks.1  In the new framework the capital that banks must hold against lending activities has been raised from a ratio of 2%, established by Basel […]