Archive | Commentary

Author and analyst Hooman Majd traveled to Iran last month and has published an initial report from his travels, “Postcard from Tehran,” in ForeignPolicy.com.  Hooman makes a number of important points in his article, which largely reinforce our analysis of Iranian politics since the Islamic Republic’s June 12, 2009 presidential election and of U.S/Western policy […]

  “So today we’re announcing the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration. . . . We’ll protect areas that are vital to tourism, the environment, and our national security.” — Barack Obama, 31 March 2010 “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills.  They are technologically very advanced.  […]

  In support of the students of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) on strike against the $100 million budget cuts, elimination of tuition wavers, privatization, etc. . . . ¡Que vivan los estudiantes! Note: The indefinite strike declared on the Río Piedras campus is on its 15th day today.  The one declared in the Mayagüez […]

Uncle Sam: If I hear that you are processing nuclear fuel, I’m gonna go upside your head, with three atomic bombs. Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was published by Cambios en Cuba on 6 May 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  | | Print

With Venezuela’s economy having contracted last year (as did the vast majority of economies in the Western Hemisphere), the economy suffering from electricity shortages, and the value of domestic currency having recently fallen sharply in the parallel market, stories of Venezuela’s economic ruin are again making headlines. The Washington Post, in a news article that […]

  New Slogan Federal Government: So that drugs won’t get to your children . . . WE ARE KILLING THEM FOR YOU. José Hernández is a Mexican cartoonist.  This cartoon — drawn on 23 March 2010 in response to Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs, especially the deaths of Juárezyouth and Monterrey Tec students as its […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

  Wages: the president calls for rationality while workers foresee an indefinite strike. President Evo Morales stuck to the 5% wage increase, ruling out a possibility of revision.  Meanwhile, the Bolivian Workers’ Center (COB) and manufacturing workers will discuss today the possibility of launching an indefinite general strike and street blockade to demand a higher […]

  BP is a London-based oil company with the worst safety and environmental record of any oil company operating in America.  In just the last few years, BP has pled guilty to two crimes and paid over $730 million in fines and settlements to the US government, state governments, and civil lawsuit judgments for environmental […]

Barack Obama was the top recipient of BP contributions in the 2008 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.  The Mineral Management Service’s “categorical exclusion” of BP’s Deepwater Horizon lease from environmental impact analysis, under the watch of Ken Salazar’s Interior Department, was first reported by the Washington Post yesterday.  The White House […]

“Our struggle is not over.  Look for new partisans!” Director: Olga Egorova (Tsaplya); Assistant Directors: Vladan Jeremić, Rena Rädle, Dmitry Vilensky; Script and Stage Design: Vladan Jeremić, Tsaplya, Rena Rädle, Dmitry Vilensky; Music: Mikhail Krutik; Camera and Lighting: Artem Ignatov; Costume Design: Natalya Pershina (Gluklya); Choreography: Nina Gasteva; Editing and Post-Production: Tsaplya and Dmitry Vilensky. […]

  The following statement by Wallace Shawn and Deborah Eisenberg was delivered outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on May 3, 2010 where supporters of Fahad Hashmi have been gathering since last October to bear witness to the inhumane conditions of Fahad’s detention and to call for an end to the US […]

Job interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, a labor tribunal has revealed. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet’s refusal to approve his appointment as an imam in a case that has lifted the […]

In 1968, Safiya Bukhari witnessed an NYPD officer harassing a Black Panther for selling the organization’s newspaper on a Harlem street corner.  The young pre-med student felt compelled to intervene in defense of the Panther’s First Amendment right; she ended up handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police car.  The War Before traces […]

The political conflicts and street battles in Greece today foretell what is coming to many countries including the US.  The struggles are basically over what the government spends on and who pays the taxes.  In today’s class-divided societies, classes differ over what governments should do and who should pay the taxes.  Governments in such societies […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist.  This cartoon was published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 5 May 2010.  See, also, “Gulf Oil Spill — New Spill Calculation — Exxon Valdez Surpassed Today” (SkyTruth, 1 May 2010). | | Print

As we follow the NPT Review Conference in New York and the enormous salience of the Iranian nuclear issue there, it is useful to consider some recent observations about the Iranian case by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s former Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei.  Baradei was in the Boston area last week, where, among other things, […]

Under Egyptian law, people found guilty of inciting or organizing demonstrations without permission face jail terms of up to one year and hefty fines.  However, hundreds have gathered in downtown Cairo to protest against Egypt’s high unemployment rate and the government’s failure to increase the national minimum wage.  Workers’ groups say the government’s eagerness to […]

Excerpt: Three nations in the Middle East dominate any present-day discussion of nuclear weapons, yet only one is subjected to an unprecedented degree of international scrutiny.  Two have nuclear weapons; the third does not.  Yet it is the third nation that is widely considered the threat to world peace and the target of ever increasing […]