Archive | Commentary

The Case-Shiller 20-City index rose by 0.8 percent in April, the first increase since last September.  Prices rose in 18 of the 20 cities, with only New York and Miami reporting price declines.  The biggest increases were in Washington, DC, where prices rose by 2.4 percent, San Francisco, with a 2.2 percent increase, and Dallas, […]

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 1 July 2009.  Honduran President Manuel Zelaya Rosales was overthrown by the US-backed military coup of 28 June 2009.  “During the six months of the […]

Israeli human-rights groups and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, have condemned a decision by Israel to expel four Palestinian politicians from East Jerusalem by the end of this week. The Israeli government revoked their residency rights in Jerusalem a few weeks ago, after claiming they were “in breach of trust” for belonging […]

In the film Guantanamera, the last by renowned Cuban director Tomás Gutierrez Alea, the Yoruba creation myth is presented as a metaphor for the difficulties of bringing about change.  In this myth, humans were at first immortal, but the result was that the old suffocated the young, and so death had to be created. Here […]

That seems to be the main point of Robert Samuelson’s column today.  It might be a bit easier with a bit more careful thought. For example, Samuelson tells readers that the debt burdens of major countries are rapidly approaching “financial and psychological limits” that prevent further fiscal stimulus.  He then cites the 92 percent debt […]

  “But we’re fucking losing this thing.” — Staff Sergeant Kennith Hicks This video was released by Brave New Films on 26 June 2010.  See, also, Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General” (Rolling Stone, 22 June 2010). | Print  

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah will come to Washington for a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday; there is little doubt that Iran will be a high-priority topic for discussion between the two leaders.  Notwithstanding the extraordinary importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, it is striking how relatively few meetings there are between American presidents and Saudi […]

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, set out last week what he called a “blueprint for a resolution to the conflict” with the Palestinians that demands most of the country’s large Palestinian minority be stripped of citizenship and relocated outside Israel’s future borders. Warning Israel faced growing diplomatic pressure for a full withdrawal to the […]

The merger would create an international union of one million metal workers and miners. The United Steelworkers (USW), which represents 850,000 workers in Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States, and the National Union of Miners and Metal Workers (SNTMMSRM), known as the Mineros, which represents 180,000 workers in Mexico, have announced plans to explore […]

The only kind of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations that Obama promotes: one that doesn’t fly, shackled as it is in the ball and chain of settlements. Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published in his blog on 2 May 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  The text above is […]

  This month, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed a resolution to tighten sanctions on Iran, imposing a ban on arms sales and expanding a freeze on assets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in response to the country’s uranium-enrichment activities, which Tehran says are for peaceful purposes but other countries contend are driven […]

  Caesarism.  Caesar, Napoleon I, Napoleon III, Cromwell, etc.  Compile a catalog of historical events which have culminated in a great “heroic” personality.  It may be said that caesarism is an expression of a situation in which the forces in struggle are balanced in a catastrophic way, that is, balanced in a way that continuation […]

Maziar Behrooz.  Rebels with a Cause: The Failure of the Left in Iran.  I.B. Tauris, 2000. The role of the left in the Iranian Revolution is complicated, what Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek would call the ‘vanishing mediator’ of the event.  The fact that at their peak Iranian Marxists commanded the loyalty of millions, and […]

The province of Alberta is well known as a climate-destroying behemoth.  The tar sands developments in the north of that province are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. Less well known are the ambitions of its neighbouring province, British Columbia.  It shares similar fossil fuel reserves and ambitions as Alberta. […]

  What the group around Khomeini succeeded in doing was to unite behind it a wide section of the middle class — both the traditional petty bourgeoisie based in the bazaar and many of the first generation of the new middle class — in a struggle to control the hierarchies of power.  The secret of […]

  Jayati Ghosh: It wasn’t an actual transfer of one trillion dollars.  It was a notional thing.  It was a credit line.  It was basically the European Central Bank telling private banks across the region: if you are indeed distressed, we will bail you out, we have a credit line ready for you.  Now, the […]

The text below is an excerpt from “Imperialism and the Gulf War,” which was first published as the “Review of the Month” of the April 1991 issue of Monthly Review (42.11).  While the exact character of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party state is certainly debatable (“lack of government corruption”? — only relatively so in comparison to […]

  Nevertheless, today we can and must admit that the analogy of Thermidor served to becloud rather than to clarify the question.  Thermidor in 1794 produced a shift of power from certain groups in the Convention to other groups, from one section of the victorious “people” to other strata.  Was Thermidor counterrevolutionary?  The answer to […]

Everyone is talking about China’s currency, it seems.  Amidst months of building tension, there is an apparent consensus among most economists, the financial press, and leading economic policy makers in the West that the renminbi is hugely undervalued, making China’s exports unfairly competitive.  The global imbalances created by such ‘mercantilist’ and ‘protectionist’ exchange rate strategies, […]

Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress like to argue that public concern over federal budget deficits makes it impossible to pass a new round of job-creating stimulus spending.  And corporate media like to echo these sentiments, despite there being little evidence that citizens are as concerned about these issues as inside-the-Beltway deficit hawks. In the […]