Archive | Commentary

  As the representatives from the European Union, the IMF, and the Greek government are trying to flesh out how Greece can use the EU’s and the IMF’s funding to remedy its fiscal position, the main question hovering above their negotiations is whether Greece can and should follow Estonia’s example in massively cutting public spending. […]

Mark A. Lause.  Race and Radicalism in the Union Army.  Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009. In the decades following the U.S. Civil War there was a rash of monument building.  Plaques were sunk into ground still littered with shards of weaponry and human beings; statues appeared on the landscape like mute and […]

April 21, 2010, New York — In response to a government motion today asking for jurors in the case of Fahad Hashmi to be anonymous and kept under extra security, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement: The case against Fahad Hashmi in itself raises many red flags related to the violation of […]

Armed soldiers are again threatening to use lethal force against peaceful pro-democracy Red Shirts who are camped on the road at Rajprasong.  They have surrounded the protest site.  The nearby luxury hotels have been told to evacuate all guests.  A small group of fascist royalists is also cooperating with the soldiers by trying to incite […]

Cf. See, also, Andrew Fischer, “On China” (MRZine, 29 March 2010). Andrew Fischer is Senior Lecturer at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.  This PowerPoint file was presented at the IDEAs Conference on “Reforming the Financial System: Proposals, Constraints and New Directions,” Muttukadu, Chennai, India, 25-27 January 2010; it is reproduced […]

The right-wing Tea Party “movement” has recently grabbed attention in the dominant media again.  On Tax Day last April, it garnered headlines by rolling out its standard high-decibel complaints against “big government,” deficits, taxes, and the supposed “radical” agenda of “Obama, Pelosi, and Reid” and the rest of the Democratic Party.  As usual, the Tea […]

The ongoing political crisis in Thailand has been capturing headlines for some time now, and now even appears to be heading towards some kind of climax.  This political instability reflects more than the resistance of the existing establishment to the increasingly vociferous demands of those who have been marginalised from most of the benefits.  It […]

Palestinians are in Israel today because they managed to survive the depopulation of 1948, the year the Jewish state was founded (Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel’s population).  Ironically, while Benny Morris’ scholarship suggests that the mere existence of these Palestinians in Israel — and millions more in the occupied territories — irks him, Israel’s […]

Thank you.  Thank you for the invitation, and, as we don’t have much time, let me go straight to some of the main points supporting this motion “Europe is failing its Muslims.”   Let me start by saying that we are living in a difficult situation.  If you listen to what is said in the European […]

Jesse Freeston: In Part 1, we described the landmark deal negotiated by the campesinos of the lower Aguán, despite the ongoing militarization of their communities.  Land conflicts in the Aguán region are not new.  Regular occupations by landless peasants in Aguán and elsewhere in Honduras during the 1970s forced the military dictatorship to enact land […]

Unfortunately, I shall not be able to be with you.   Something has come up that prevents me from traveling. But I’d like to be, in some way, part of this meeting of yours, this meeting of mine, since I have no choice but to do the little that I can rather than the much that […]

Only tyrants stay in power by sending tanks on to the streets.  So why won’t Abhisit call an immediate election?  Answer: he knows he would lose. Soldiers stand under a sign saying “We Won’t Use Violence.”  The guns are obviously for eating noodles. Abhisit says these people are terrorists! Keeping the streets safe from democracy. […]

My first thought upon reading the Chicago Council’s report “Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy” is that the title is misleading.  This report is not about engaging religious communities abroad — one hears little if at all from such communities — nor does it say anything particularly new.  There is, […]

  Two former soldiers from the Army unit responsible for the Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” incident have written an open letter of “Reconciliation and Responsibility” to those injured in the July 2007 attack, in which US forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees.  […]

  Having tried to use the witch cord that erases the stretch of thirty-three blocks and tuning in the voice which woodenly stated that the talk box was “disconnected” My mother, religiously girdled in her god, slipped on some love, and laid on my bell like a truck, blew through my door warm wind from […]

Another Kind of Volcano: Part 1 “It’s a pity that there is no active volcano in Israel.” “Why?” “To discharge a cloud of ashes in its airspace.” “And then?” “The country would be subjected to a total aerial blockade.” “You mean, like Gaza?” “Not at all.  The blockade of Gaza is comprehensive, by air, by […]

  By one swift, decisive act, it has paralyzed Europe’s airline industries for almost a week, delayed 64 thousand flights (and counting), affecting millions of travellers, reminding a whole continent that geography and distance still exist, while lessening the airlines’ carbon footprint by an amount equal to the annual output of several smaller states combined, […]

Tonight you celebrate the independence day of the state of Israel.  I do not. You probably believe that the Jews deserve a state, that the Holocaust survivors and their children had a right to a safe home of their own, and that the Land of Israel is the natural and legitimate place to fulfill the […]

“In California, the kids write Occupy Everything on the walls.  Demand Nothing, they write. . . .  We are kept alive, vaccinated, some even plump, yes, but we feel our surplus status.  Excess.  Excessive.  This excessiveness animates our underlying dissatisfaction. . . .  That is the crisis, a lost faith in an inhabitable future, that […]

New Orleans’ Black and transgender community members and advocates complain of rampant and systemic harassment and discrimination from the city’s police force, including sexual violence and arrest without cause.  Activists hope that public outrage at recent revelations of widespread police violence and corruption offer an opportunity to make changes in police behavior and practice. On […]