Archive | Commentary

  What is Samandal?  Samandal is about comics, a trilingual publication dedicated to comics from the region and abroad that comes out quarterly in Arabic, English, and French.  All the comics in Samandal are published under a Creative Commons license.  And how does Creative Commons change commons?  To answer that, we need to look at […]

“If Katy Perry read Marx, her music would probably sound something like this.” Video by bphillis.  To the tune of “I Kissed a Girl.” | Print

  The global crisis has led some to question the dollar’s place as the dominant currency.  This column discusses three camps in the literature: those advocating a new synthetic global currency, those arguing that a new reserve currency will emerge, and those suggesting a return to sharing the role.  It concludes that talk of the […]

  On 17 January 1961 Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic first and only elected prime minister of Congo, was brutally murdered.  The circumstances of his death remain a mystery, the identity of his killers unknown. In 1956 Lumumba was a post office clerk; four years later he would be prime minister.  In between he had been […]

  Slavoj Žižek.  Living in the End Times.  Verso, 2010. Reading Žižek has always been as challenging as it is enjoyable, an experience of pleasure and pain that seems at times an intellectual correlate to the operation of objet petit a (little object a).  The concept of objet petit a has been a constant in […]

In a discussion of trade imbalances the Washington Post told readers that: “it was that risk — of a collapse in the value of the dollar and of U.S. government securities — that kept many economists up at night.”  Actually, competent economists were not terribly worried about this nearly impossible scenario. China and other countries […]

  January 2010: “There are rare moments when you feel like you’re living in a world without any borders.  Without anyone to rule over you.  One cannot help but to cherish these moments and wish them upon others.  On the road to Shemshak from Tehran, the CD player played a tune from a movie soundtrack […]

My condolences to the people of Lebanon. Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  See, also, Abigail Fielding-Smith, “Women Mourn Loss of Enigmatic Shiite Cleric: Ayatollah Fadlallah Both Supported Women’s Rights and Inspired Militant Groups” (GlobalPost, 7 July 2010). | Print

One thing should be made clear about the situation in the Eurozone economies that is not clear at all if we rely on most of the news reports.  This is not a situation where countries face a “dilemma” because they have overspent and piled up too much public debt.  They do not face “tough choices” […]

Boycott from Within is a group of Israeli citizens that supports the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).  The AIC sat down with Israeli activist Ofer Neiman to discuss the Boycott from Within movement, its goals, and what impact he thinks it will have on ending the Israeli occupation. Produced by the Alternative […]

Protest against torture and police brutality, galvanized by the murder of Khaled Said, Lazoghly Square, Cairo, Egypt, 13 June 2010. Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian socialist, journalist, and photographer.  Visit his blog: .  The photographs above were first published on his blog and Flickr under a Creative Commons license. | Print

If I could think of any tactfully discreet and diplomatically clear way to describe the outcome of the 15th Extraordinary Session of the IGAD Assembly of Heads of State and Government on Somalia without compromising the essence of my message, I would simply choose that approach.  Therefore, going crude is the appropriate way: As a […]

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides relates how Pericles, in the fifth century BC, imposed economic sanctions against the city of Megara, which had allied itself with Sparta.  Athens prohibited trade with this city state and sent a message: if Megara did not break its alliance with Sparta, it would be punished.  Megara […]

  David Stasavage, Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and Great Britain, 1688-1789.  xii + 210 pp.  Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.  Tables, figures, notes, appendix, bibliography, and index.  $60.00 U.S. (cl).  ISBN 0-521-80967-3. In 1989, Douglass North and Barry Weingast published an article in the Journal of […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  This picture was originally drawn for Dromos. | Print

A poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

In the last five years, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has gone from being a media darling to generating more bad press for itself than any other labor organization.  Some of SEIU’s negative publicity is a product of right-wing union bashing.  But a huge amount is self-inflicted — the result of conflicts with other […]

  A tale of politicians, seats, and struggles in a parliament far, far away. . . . Script, Design, and Animation by Zach Cohen.  This video is his final project at the Shenkar School of Engineering and Design in Israel.  Click here to view other works by Cohen. | Print  

Pharaoh Mubarak, resting himself on the emergency law, says: “No, not enough.” The Egyptian people, oppressed by the burden of the emergency law,” says: “Enough.” Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 4 July 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  The text above is an […]

The Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the United States, Yousef Al-Otaiba, is in the news for comments he made yesterday at the Aspen Ideas Festival — comments in which he apparently expressed some measure of support for a U.S. military attack on Iranian nuclear targets.  We have known Yousef since before his […]