Archive | Commentary

  The climate policy debate has largely shifted from science to economics.  There is a well-developed consensus, at least in broad outlines, about the physical science of climate change and its likely implications.  That consensus is embodied in massive general circulation models (GCMs) that provide detailed projections of average temperatures, precipitation, weather patterns, and sea-level […]

  Torin Monahan, Rodolfo D. Torres, eds.  Schools under Surveillance: Cultures of Control in Public Education.  Critical Issues in Crime and Society Series.  New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010.  vi + 264 pp.  $72.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8135-4679-7; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8135-4680-3. In the fall of 2009, Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, was caught […]

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 […]

  New York — The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) demands the immediate release of its former president, Professor Peter Erlinder, whom Rwandan Police arrested early today on charges of “genocide ideology.”  He had traveled to Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, on May 23, to join the defense team of Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.  Erlinder is […]

The vote to send another $60B of taxpayers’ money to pay for Obama’s AfPak occupation was 67-28-5.  But almost all the no votes were conservative Republicans.  Only two Democrats, Feingold (WI) and Wyden (OR), voted against.  Three Republicans and Lincoln (AR) and McCaskill (MO) did not vote. To their shame, the other 15 Dems and […]

  After the Second World War, from which the Allied forces emerged victorious, the government of the United States sought to make the most of its military victory.  It structured the Assembly of the United Nations to be led by a Security Council composed of the seven most powerful countries, with veto power over decisions […]

The imposition of a Jewish state on Palestine in 1948 created a colossal contingent of refugees (currently estimated by the UN to be over 4.5 million).  The Palestinian families who were not simply killed by Zionist terrorist groups like Irgun and Haganah had to flee to neighboring countries such as Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, where […]

The Case-Shiller 20-City index showed a decline for the sixth consecutive month in March, as 13 of the 20 cities reported a drop in prices.  The drop in the seasonally unadjusted index was 0.5 percent, bringing the annual rate of decline over the last quarter to 6.8 percent.  (The unadjusted index is preferred in the […]

  Today is the 21st day since the arrest of Ameer Makhoul at his home in Haifa, Israel, under the cover of darkness, by the International Crimes Investigation Unit and General Security Service (GSS or Shabak) officers.  The arrest was conducted in a brutal and terrifying manner.  Our house was raided, its contents ransacked, and […]

D. Raghunandan: [Media reports of] Pakistan tend to be overdetermined, or overwhelmed, by the issues of terrorism and extremism.  Professor Aijaz Ahmad . . . recently spent some time in Pakistan, and we thought this offers a good opportunity to look at other aspects of life in Pakistan.  Aijaz, what do you think Indians and […]

Uncle Sam: “Just a little more to the right!” Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was among those exhibited at the International Press Center in Havana, Cuba in March 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

Brazilian President Lula, Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan, and their foreign ministers have been too polite in their characterization of President Obama’s role in the nuclear deal they mediated with Iran last week.  For we now have documentary evidence that President Obama’s Secretary of State and his White House spokesman are simply not telling the truth […]

A leading human rights activist from Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority was charged yesterday with the most serious security offences on Israel’s statute book, including espionage. Prosecutors indicted Ameer Makhoul, the head of Ittijah, an umbrella organization for Arab human rights groups in Israel, with spying on security facilities on behalf of Hizbollah after an alleged […]

Prabir Purkayastha: You have written a lot about electricity in South Africa particularly, and you also talked about how this concept of services being priced so the cost of service is recovered is actually starting a complete ideological change in the way infrastructure services are delivered.  So what do you think is the real crisis?   […]

  Trailer Interview with Peter Mettler Why did you make Petropolis? There are a lot of paths that led to this, going back already 20 years.  I’ve always been interested in the way we humans have the ability to create technology out of our given natural environments.  My impression is that the technologies we develop […]

  In April 2010 more than 35,000 people from 140 countries gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivia and developed the historic Cochabamba People’s Accord, a consensus-based document reflecting substantive solutions to the climate crisis.  We, the undersigned organizations, both participated in and/or supported this historic process. Reflecting the voices of global civil society and the agreements reached […]

Despite talk of a moratorium, the Interior Department’s Minerals and Management Service is still granting waivers from environmental review for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, including wells in very deep water.  Until last month, most of us never thought about the risk that one of those huge offshore rigs would explode in flames […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  See, also, Carlos Latuff, “Iran Is a THREAT to Peace.” | Print

  Abstract: Few would dispute that sovereign defaults entail significant economic costs, including, most notably, important output losses.  However, most of the evidence supporting this conventional wisdom, based on annual observations, suffers from serious measurement and identification problems.  To address these drawbacks, we examine the impact of default on growth by looking at quarterly data […]

“The sheen of Maoist political ideology seems to be wearing off . . . do we have an instance where Maoists have stopped mining operations in affected areas or have taken up the cause of the tribals for higher wages or better living and working conditions for them?  If they have done so sometimes, the […]