Archive | Commentary

“If an oil well is too far beneath the sea to be plugged when something goes wrong, it’s too deep to be drilled in the first place.” — Bob Herbert, June 1, 2010 Imagine “the Associated Producers, Rationally Regulating Their Interchange with Nature” Amidst mass capital-imposed structural unemployment and ever-escalating environmental collapse, the ongoing epic […]

TeleSur Communiqué TeleSur demands, in the strongest terms, the immediate release of its collaborator David Segarra, captured after the Israeli military attack and massacre on a humanitarian fleet headed for Gaza. We exhort the civil and military authorities of Israel to safeguard his physical safety and all his rights. With other colleagues, David Segarra joined […]

Craig Murray at a rally in London, 31 May 2010 A word on the legal position, which is very plain.  To attack a foreign flagged vessel in international waters is illegal.  It is not piracy, as the Israeli vessels carried a military commission.  It is rather an act of illegal warfare. Because the incident took […]

Over the weekend much of Germany went temporarily berserk when one of its own, little black-haired high school senior Lena, performing in Oslo, won the Grand Prix in the huge annual Eurovision song contest.  It was Germany’s first win since 1982, when another young lady won out with her plaintive call for “A Little Peace.” […]

Dear Friends, In the wake of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla tragedy, we once again feel the need to raise our voices as rabbis in the Jewish community. According to press reports, we now know that 10 to 15 people have been killed and many more have been injured when Israeli Navy Seals boarded a boat […]

International Solidarity Movement 31 May 2010, Free Gaza Movement Israel Murders at Least 10 Unarmed Civilians on Aid Flotilla to Gaza, Dozens Injured (Cyprus, June 1, 2010, 6:30AM local) — Under darkness of night, Israeli commandos from at least 14 warships and military helicopters boarded the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began shooting.  According […]

30 May 2010 — According to Turkish news sources (CNN Turk, Hürriyet, Milliyet, NTV, and many others), Israeli soldiers stormed the Turkish Free Gaza ship Mavi Marmara belonging to İnsani Yardım Vakfı (Humanitarian Aid Foundation), killing at least 2 and wounding over 30 on board.  The Turkish government has set up a crisis room while […]

We protest in the strongest terms the use of force by the Israeli Defense Forces against the civilians from many countries who want to transport humanitarian assistance to the people in Gaza, and among whom there are women and children, which, according to the initial information available, resulted in the death of 2 persons and […]

A mass rally has been held in Um el-Fahem today in condemnation of the Israeli pirate attack on the freedom flotilla.  Former Mayor of Um el-Fahem Raed Salah was on board the Mavi Marmara during the attack, in which nearly 20 activists are said to have been killed by the IDF. For more information, visit […]

I can almost swear this is the first time I hear the Muslim Brothers chanting publicly, “Down with Mubarak!” Nyahahaha . . . the cowards.  During the evening Palestine protest in Ramses, whenever the Socialists chanted “Down with Mubarak,” followed by young MBs, you can see in the video MB organizers waving “No,” trying to […]

President Obama’s already diminishing chances to “steamroll” the Iran-Turkey-Brazil Joint Declaration by ramming new sanctions against the Islamic Republic through the United Nations Security Council during the next few weeks got even smaller this morning, when Israeli naval commandos stormed Turkish-flagged ships in international waters off Gaza, killing at least 16 people in the process. […]

  Christopher Candland.  Labor, Democratization and Development in India and Pakistan.  London: Routledge, 2007.  216 pages. This book, by Christopher Candland, sets out to provide a documented analytical and empirical study of the linkages between organized labor, development, and democratization in India and Pakistan from the colonial period till date.  It attempts to explain why […]

  Update “Israel Attacks Turkish Free Gaza Ship: 16 Killed, According to Israeli Army Radio.” For more information, visit <www.ihh.org.tr>, <www.witnessgaza.com>, and <www.freegaza.org>. | Print  

The Thai NGO Coordinating committee (NGO-COD) issued a statement on 20th May 2010 about the violence in Bangkok.  The statement blamed both the government and the UDD Red Shirts for the deaths.  This is despite the fact that the UDD protestors were unarmed and the government used tanks, snipers and weapons of war against the […]

When the Republican Gingrich devolution took over Congress in 1995, it stripped the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) of all its funding and left it a shell with no experts to advise committees and members of Congress.  Whereupon Congress was plunged into a dark age regarding decisions about trillions of national security, offshore oil […]

“We will not allow any country to interfere in our domestic affairs.”(But see who’s swimming in the fishbowl that is the “Arab world.” . . .) Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon, first published by Al Jazeera, illustrates an interview with Bahady by eHasakeh (16 March 2010); it is reproduced here for non-profit […]

How do you break through the twelve-year blockade of silence that has kept five Cuban political prisoners invisible to the American public?  How can art transcend U.S. prison walls and present the truth about these men, locked up in five distant prisons scattered across the United States, to a Los Angeles community?  On May 22nd […]

Rock! 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 28 May 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

Professor Peter Erlinder, noted criminal defense lawyer and past president of the National Lawyers Guild, was arrested Friday morning in Rwanda for “genocide ideology.”  Erlinder’s representation of high-profile defendants before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has incurred the wrath of government officials, who have charged him with “negation of the Tutsi genocide” for […]

The current turmoil in financial markets around the world is another illustration of the damage that can be done by a bloated and politically powerful financial sector, combined with finance ministers and central bankers who identify with this sector and have their own right-wing policy agenda. Welcome to Europe, which has become the epicenter of […]