Archive | Commentary

Globo Sewer Network (Concise Map) Globo — Carrying Sewage from the USA to Brazil! Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  See, also, Farid Marjai, “Mr. Lula Goes to Tehran — Brazil’s Neocons React” (MRZine, 19 May 2010). | Print

  The May 28 arrest of U.S. attorney and Chicago native Peter Erlinder by the Paul Kagame dictatorship in Rwanda reveals much about this regime that is routinely sanitized in establishment U.S. and Western media coverage and intellectual life.  But if we use Erlinder’s arrest to call attention to some less-well-known facts, a much grimmer […]

Prior to the 2008 US presidential election, in an essay entitled “What the Future Has in Store for Iran,” I predicted that regardless of who is elected president, the US foreign policy toward Iran will be determined largely by Israel and its various lobby groups in the US, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee […]

  Anxiously waiting outside the court of the chief judicial magistrate Mohan Tiwari in Bhopal on 7 June, 36-yearold Raghu Jaidev and many other victims of the Bhopal catastrophe were crestfallen, some of them, outraged, upon hearing the verdict of the trial that had lasted 23 long years.  “Rich people always get away”, said Jaidev, […]

  A time bomb of interests on the debt, threatening to explode the edifice of Greek economy propped up by an IMF package. Gervasio Umpiérrez is a cartoonist based in Montevideo, Uruguay.  This cartoon was featured on the home page of Rebelión on 16 June 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | […]

  Peter Erlinder received “unconditional medical release” from the Rwandan court. Thursday, June 17, 2010 (Washington, DC) — Peter Erlinder, Professor of Law at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, MN and Lead Defense Counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was arrested in Kigali, Rwanda on May 28, 2010.  On […]

  [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad said in a June 12 television interview that the government has “no role” in the fight against “bad veiling” and social behaviors that are considered un-Islamic and immoral. “The government has nothing to do with it and doesn’t interfere in it.  We consider it insulting when a man and a […]

Abdallah Ahmed is an artist based in Cairo, Egypt.  He blogs at .  This cartoon was published in his blog on 17 May 2010 under a Creative Commons license. | Print

Obama the “Referee” calls a Brazilian-Iranian-Turkish goal (i.e. the nuclear swap agreement) against the pro-war team: “Offside!” Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published in the May/June 2010 issue of Idéias em Revista.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

Sunday, the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner wrote, “[T]he Trust Fund contains no actual assets.  The government bonds it holds are simply a form of IOU, a measure of how much money the government owes the system.  It says nothing about where the government will get the money to pay back those IOUs.” This is no […]

. . . But are the high interest rates that impose such a heavy burden on the budget inevitable?  What happened during the Second World War proves beyond a shadow of doubt that they are not.  In the war years from 1942 to 1945, the average annual deficit was 23 percent of Gross National Product, […]

  * * * Excerpt from Tony Bunyan, “Intensive Surveillance of ‘Violent Radicalisation’ Extended to Embrace Suspected ‘Radicals’ from across the Political Spectrum; Targets Include: ‘Extreme Right/Left, Islamist, Nationalist, Anti-Globalisation Etc’,” Statewatch: The document which the Council Conclusions are based is entitled: “Instrument for compiling data and information on violent radicalisation processes” (EU doc no: […]

We, the undersigned queer Arab organizations, are appalled by the US Social Forum’s decision to allow Stand with Us to utilize the event as a platform to pinkwash Israel’s crimes in the region. Stand with Us is cynically manipulating the struggle of queer people in the Middle East through its workshop entitled “LGBTQI Liberation in the Middle East”.

  “What is a plume?” Shakespeare may have asked rhetorically if he were writing the tragedy that is currently unfolding in the Gulf.  BP, it appears, will not definitively say.  The BP execs are too savvy to allow themselves to be pinned down to any one definition, especially since they know that we love a […]

The global Sixties began in Tokyo on June 15, 1960, with the death of Michiko Kanba, an undergraduate at Tokyo University.  On the night of her death she had joined a group of fellow university students at the front of a massive demonstration — 100,000 people deep — facing off against the National Diet Building. […]

  Translator’s note: “Regarding the present upsurge of worker action in China, liberals have used their discursive power in the overseas media to frame the strike wave as a tale of workers’ struggle for ‘independent unions,’ as if this were a repetition of Solidarnosc.  What do Chinese workers want?  What is the direction of the […]

Under the radar screen at the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (SE&D) last month, the US and China continued to discuss a bi-lateral investment treaty (BIT).  If the final negotiated text looks like the majority of US BITs it could threaten financial stability and economic growth in China. The US and China began negotiations toward […]

A version of this essay was delivered to the “Think outside the Bomb” event in Austin, TX, on June 14, 2010. If we are serious about the abolition of nuclear weapons, we have to place the abolition of the U.S. empire at the center of our politics. That means working toward a world free of […]

Don’t Let Enemies of Freedom Suppress the Truth about
Israel’s Attack on a Humanitarian Aid Ship!
All Out to the House of the Lord Church, 415 Atlantic Ave.
Thursday June 17, 7 pm
MAVI MARMARA SURVIVORS HAVE A RIGHT TO BE HEARD!

Two weeks ago Israeli naval commandos stormed a Turkish ship loaded with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza.  They murdered 9 unarmed passengers.  The oldest, Ibrahim Bilgen, was 61.  The youngest, Furkan Dogan, a U.S. citizen born in Troy, N.Y., was just 19.

Despite far fewer trains moving with fewer employees, the number of rail worker on-the-job fatalities has dramatically increased since the onset of the recession.  High profile fatalities — such as passenger train accident victims or soldiers killed in war — make headline news, while on-the-job deaths of working people usually go unnoticed.  Railroad Workers United […]