Archive | Commentary

To: Business Editor The New York Times I appreciate your detailed reporting on Chinese unions and workers vs. Japanese employers, but I write to ask whether that use of your resources is the cause of your ignoring similar union stories here at home. For example, I can find no coverage in the Times of the […]

  In Cauca, Colombia is still at war.  You find trenches in every corner, tanks, Blackhawk helicopters and lots of soldiers.  Fighting takes place here almost every day and people have gotten used to it.  More than that, they are certain that on election day there will be attacks. But in spite of all that […]

  Judith Butler, ‘I Must Distance Myself from This Racist Complicity,’ 19 June 2010 As Berlin Queer and Trans Activists of Colour and Allies we welcome Judith Butler’s decision to turn down the Zivilcourage Prize awarded by Berlin Pride.  We are delighted that a renowned theorist has used her celebrity status to honour queer of […]

  In Oakland, California, an Israeli ship was blocked by protesters for the first time in history.  700-1,000 protesters blocked three different gates at 5:30 A.M. keeping dockworkers from unloading the Israeli cargo.  ILWU members refused to cross picketline — citing “health & safety” provisions of their contract.  Management demanded “instant arbitration.”  The arbitrator took […]

Four years ago, when the government of Evo Morales re-nationalized its hydrocarbon industry, the Brazilian media was spoiling for a fight.  After all, Petrobras, the Brazilian oil and gas company, had major interests there.  But President Lula Da Silva was calm.  “I haven’t had a fight with George W. Bush,” he told the press.  “Why […]

Scare the Gulf States into giving up their moola by manufacturing a specter of Iran under atomic mollas.  Positive growth outlook.  Risk-free investment.  Guaranteed returns. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published in Maktoob on 10 June 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  The text above is an […]

Despite a display of global arm-twisting, the Obama administration has fallen short in its latest effort to isolate Iran. It’s true the U.S. was able on June 8 to round up 12 of 15 votes in the United Nations Security Council to impose a fourth round of sanctions on the Islamic Republic.  Only Brazil and […]

  The government’s credibility and strategy were battered by the overwhelming victory of the student strike which had paralyzed the entire University of Puerto Rico system and surprised everyone with its legal and technological mastery, its willingness to resist the police, and its model of direct democracy which made the national political institution look bad. […]

“Indeed, we went through a very similar crisis during the decline of the Roman Empire. . . .” Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.   This cartoon was published in Cambios en Cuba on 5 June 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on June 17 about what he described as Russia’s “schizophrenic” Iran policy.  According to Gates — who started his career in government service during the 1960s as a Soviet analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency — then-Russian President (now Prime Minister) […]

The consumer price index fell again in May — 0.2 percent — as energy prices fell for the fourth consecutive month.  The overall index has now fallen at a 0.7 percent annualized rate since February.  The core CPI rose 0.1 percent in the month and at a 0.1 percent annualized rate over the last three. […]

  The death of José Saramago represents an irreparable loss for Portugal, for the Portuguese people, for Portuguese culture. José Saramago’s intellectual, artistic, human, and civic stature makes him a major figure in our history. His vast, remarkable, and unique literary work — which was recognized through the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 — […]

Things are really happening in Germany!  Like many others, I predicted that the federal government, an unhappy coalition of right-wing Christian Democrats led by Angela Merkel and her even more big-biz-friendly junior partners, the FDP (Free Democrats), would wait for a key election in the giant state of North-Rhine Westphalia on May 9th and then […]

The advantage of the new anti-immigrant law is that now we can do target practice using “live targets.” Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.   This cartoon was published in Cambios en Cuba on 12 June 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

The interview with Giovanni Arrighi below was conducted on 12 November 2005, at the “Kapitalismus Reloaded” international conference held in Berlin.  It is published in English here today to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Arrighi’s death. A. Fathollah-Nejad (AFN): Does the West have to fear China? G. Arrighi (GA): I don’t think so.  I mean […]

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

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

  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, […]