Archive | Commentary

While President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and the new President of Colombia, Manuel Santos, met in Santa Marta, Colombia, last Tuesday and agreed to normalize relations after a fierce diplomatic fight, there are no indications that such détente is in the cards for Venezuela and the United States.  Washington, it now appears, may not even […]

In 1857 Charles Dana invited Karl Marx to contribute to the New American Cyclopaedia.  Marx was the European political correspondent for the daily New York Tribune, of which Dana was the editor; Dana and George Ripley, his former mentor at the utopian colony of Brook Farm, were co-editors of the encyclopedia.  In due time Marx […]

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine joined with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and 7 other Palestinian factions to issue a joint statement in Damascus in opposition to the resumption of negotiations, direct or indirect, with Israel on August 15, 2010.  The joint statement, read at a […]

  “Someday coal’s gonna run out.  And we’re going to have to have jobs, we’re going to have to have energy, when that happens.  So, why not start now?” — Lorelei Scarbro, Coal River Mountain Wind Project Produced by the New York Times.  See, also, Tom Zeller, Jr., “A Battle in Mining Country Pits Coal […]

For some reason this question was never raised in a WSJ piece reporting on the expected reduction in spending by baby boomers who will be retiring over the next decade. Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).  He is the author of False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble […]

Adel Yaraghi is an Iranian filmmaker. | Print

I was at the dental clinic in my neighborhood today when power went out while the doctor was in the middle of operating on my teeth.  The guy had to stop and watch helplessly as I kept spitting blood everywhere. This summer has been plagued by power cuts all across the country for long hours, […]

  Van Royko is a photographer and filmmaker from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  See, also, Richard Levins, “How to Visit a Socialist Country” (Monthly Review, April 2010). | Print  

Capitalism, like the proverbial horse, kicks even when in decline.  Even as the current crisis hit it, it gave an ideological kick by attributing the crisis to “sub-prime” lending; and so well-directed was its kick that the whole world ended up calling it the “sub-prime crisis”. The idea, bought even in progressive circles, was that […]

(PU) Twelve Arab civilians, dressed in native garb and riddled with bullet wounds, caused a massive power outage in the nation’s capital today when they suddenly appeared on the Ellipse in Washington, DC.  Silent and unmoving, each held a large color photo of Bradley Manning, the Army Specialist charged with sending the whistleblower website WikiLeaks […]

As the driver of the “settlement” bulldozer removes the ground beneath his feet while blowing “two-state solution” soap bubbles, Mahmoud Abbas daydreams about a “sovereign Palestinian state.” Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 24 June 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  The text above […]

  Christa Salamandra.  A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria.  Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004.  x + 199 pp.  $21.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-21722-6; $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-34467-0. Christa Salamandra’s A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria is a thought-provoking analysis of one segment of the Syrian elite’s […]

Recent scenes of roadblocks, strikes, and even the dynamiting of a vice-minister’s home in the Bolivian department (administrative district) of Potosi, reminiscent of the days of previous neoliberal governments, have left many asking themselves what is really going on in the “new” Bolivia of indigenous President Evo Morales. Since July 29, the city of Potosi, […]

Uncle Sam: “This one can’t be left without health insurance.” Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.   This cartoon was first published in Granma.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 8 August 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  | Print

Like Gerald Caplan’s hostile “review” of our book, The Politics of Genocide, Adam Jones’s aggressive attack on our response to Caplan can be explained in significant part by Jones’s deep commitment to an establishment narrative on the Rwandan genocide that we believe to be false — one that misallocates the main responsibility for that still […]

  Hester Eisenstein.  Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World (Paradigm 2009).  xv, 293pp. The 20th century is often called the American century because of the US’s advance during that time to become the single greatest power in the world — economically, industrially and militarily.  The century’s story […]

The Consumer Price Index rose 0.3 percent in July, following three months of deflation.  Over the last two years since the peak in the CPI, prices have fallen 0.7 percent.  The rise in the overall rate of inflation was, in large part, due to a rebound in energy prices, which rose 2.6 percent in July. […]

To President Obama: “Sir, one Lady Justice is here, and she says that you promised her a job when you were a presidential candidate.” Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.   This cartoon was first published in Granma.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

  In the wake of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the public and the media have turned their attention to some of the subsidies provided through the tax code to BP, the corporation that leased the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling platform.1  The truth is that oil and gas companies have for […]