Archive | Commentary

  There is an embarrassing giddiness in the religious studies world today.  With our new mantra in hand — the new “salience” of religion — we, both scholars of religion and other self-appointed spokespersons for religion, feel licensed to instruct the world on the importance of religion.  We are suddenly relevant again.  Or so we […]

Executive Summary: In its first attempts to regulate carbon emissions, the U.S. government is undermining its own efforts by relying on deeply flawed economic models that lead to gross miscalculations of the impact of carbon on the climate and on the nation’s economic future. Agencies seeking to incorporate climate change considerations in rules and regulations […]

  Fyodor Savelyevich Khitruk, born on 1 Mary 1917, is a Russian animator.  This film was released by Soyuzmultfilm in 1973. | | Print  

The crisis persists.  Tens of millions remain unemployed or underemployed.  Millions are losing their homes this year adding to millions last year.  States and municipalities are cutting back on schools, hospitals, programs for disabled and the elderly, etc.  Business and political leaders stretch to keep the public away from blaming the system, capitalism. So we […]

Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa: I will not allow armed groups of any kind in Honduras. Jesse Freeston: With that, the president of Honduras, Pepe Lobo, moved these 2,000 soldiers into the region of Bajo Aguán, a biofuel farming zone in northern Honduras, where 3,500 campesinos, organized as the Unified Campesino Movement of Aguán, or MUCA, […]

I would like to welcome the honorable guests who have gathered here.  It is a pleasure for the Islamic Republic of Iran to be the host of the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament today.  I hope this occasion will be an opportunity to yield enduring and important results from your dialogues and discussions for the […]

  For years, right-wing groups have been beating the drums to roll back decent pensions and retirement benefits for American workers.  At the federal level, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, ranking member on the U.S. House Budget Committee, proposed a “Road Map” plan to privatize social security, cut payments, and slash Medicare benefits for all seniors. […]

Organized by a collective of civil society groups, social movements, progressive academics, social activists, and concerned citizens, the recently concluded Independent People’s Tribunal (IPT) on Land Acquisition, Resource Grab, and Operation Green Hunt in New Delhi offers a unique perspective into contemporary Indian reality.  While the national and international media talk profusely about the unprecedented […]

The Israeli government’s recent announcement of Army Order No. 1,650 was just the latest act of provocation in a series of calculated measures to derail any possible resumption of peace negotiations.  Under this new draconian measure, anyone who doesn’t have a “permit” to be in the West Bank is to be considered an “infiltrator” and […]

Iran’s UN ambassador Mohammad Khazaee calls on the United Nations Security Council and other UN bodies to oppose the US President’s nuclear policy and his threat against an NPT signatory which does not have nuclear weapons.  Below is a letter that Khazaee sent to UN Security Council President Yukio Takasu, UN General Assembly President Ali […]

  EA: You are one of the leading theorists trying to develop the notion of the public sphere.  In what ways has globalisation affected the public sphere?  Has the public sphere become more transnational? NF: Today, the flow of public political discourse does not respect borders, but is often transnational.  The result is a serious […]

The Dutch disease does not derive from abundant and cheap natural resources, but from the combination of low wages and high wage dispersion. The American government was about to declare China an exchange rate-manipulator country, but, since bilateral negotiations continue, the American Treasury decided to postpone the decision, probably because it expects China to yield […]

Do the teabaggers represent the vanguard of fascism in the United States?  Noam Chomsky seems to think so. As The Progressive recently reported, Chomsky is rather frightened by the people who apparently think Lipton is the name of a headwear designer rather than a brand of tea: “I’m just old enough to have heard a […]

  About one month after the beginning of the new Iranian calendar year (21 March 2010), and following the international recognition of Norouz by the United Nations General Assembly, Iran is facing new challenges.  Some of the challenges are domestic, while others emanate from Iran’s regional and international policies as well as international pressures put […]

Being a part of the tremendous coalition effort to pass a divestment bill at Berkeley was quite simply an ecstatic experience.  As my colleague Sydney Levy said, “The movement grew by an enormous leap today.” First, the vote itself: after the UC Berkeley Student Senate originally voted on March 18, by a margin of 16-4, […]

After the recent bloodshed on the streets of Bangkok, the army, the government, and the media, academics, and NGOs who have sided with the royalist elites, especially those who deceitfully call themselves “neutral,” are all trying to distort the major facts about what is happening in Thailand.  Together with the blanket censorship ordered by the […]

Throughout Venezuela’s record-breaking economic expansion, the government’s opponents — which includes most of the international media as well as Washington — were “crying, waiting, hoping,” as the rock and roll legend Buddy Holly once sang.  The “oil bust” had to be just around the corner, they prayed and wrote.  But for five and a half […]

  Norman G. Finkelstein: Israel would not be so up in arms about the Goldstone Report, would not be so upset by it, were it not for the fact that, yes, they are very vulnerable to the public opinion, and they know very well the limits beyond which it may not express itself against them, […]

For more than half a century Western political leaders and their corporate media have waged a disinformation war against socialist Cuba. Nor is there any sign that they are easing up. A recent example is the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an inmate who died in a Cuban prison in February 2010 after an 82-day hunger strike.

The events of September 11 laid the basis for the emergence of a vicious form of Islamophobia that facilitated the U.S. goals of empire building in the 21st century.  This form of Islamophobia focused on the enemy “out there” against which the U.S. supposedly had to go to war to protect itself, from Afghanistan to […]