Archive | Commentary

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 […]

We have argued that the Obama Administration’s approach to Iran sanctions is, truly, a “dead end” policy and that the only way out of this dead end “is to get serious about nuclear diplomacy with Iran — first of all, by reaching agreement on a plan to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).”  Although the […]

The United States and China seem to have reached an agreement with regard to the exchange rate between their two currencies.  The agreement is that the U.S. government will stop yelling about it, and China will do whatever it wants to do, which will probably include some modest rise in the renminbi some time in […]

  EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI Soldiers Health Professionals Victims Assisted United States 10,000 550 871 Cuba 0 1,504 227,143 Source: Comparative figures of contribution to health in Haiti, as of 23 March 2010, based on Emily J. Kirk and John Kirk, “Cuban Medical Aid to Haiti” (CounterPunch, 1 April 2010) / Emily J. Kirk and John […]

Was there a golden age of the film soundtrack?  One might reach for Ennio Morricone (at least until the late 1980s) or the ’70s and ’80s records Popul Vuh made for Werner Herzog’s most memorable films, Aguirre, Nosferatu and Cobra Verde.  Even if much of the concept has gone out of ‘conceptual’ film-making and the […]

Testimony before the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity Hearing on “Recently Announced Revisions to the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP),” 14 April 2010 Thank you, Chairwoman Waters, for giving me the opportunity to present my views to the subcommittee on the success of the Homeowner Affordability Modification Program (HAMP) and prospects for the recently […]

  Listen to the Interview: Flynt Leverett: I think that the Nuclear Posture Review that came out earlier this week needs to be seen as a very imperfect and, in some important respects, very badly flawed product of an effort which originally had, I think, a very positive intention, namely, an intention on the part […]

The Consumer Price Index rose 0.1 percent in March.  Inflation stands at 0.9 percent annualized since December.  With the hourly wage of production workers falling by 0.2 cents over the month, the real wage has fallen at a 2 percent annualized rate, and remained flat over the last three months. Core prices remained unchanged in […]

The National Front of Popular Resistance alerts the Honduran population and the international community to the grave danger that menaces the lives of over 3,000 peasant families of the United Peasant Movement of Aguán (MUCA), against whom a major military and political operation is being executed with the aim of evicting them from the lands […]

In the midst of its Nuclear Security Summit and in the wake of President Obama’s bilateral meeting with China’s President Hu yesterday, the Obama Administration is vigorously spinning the U.S. and Western media that it has won Chinese support for new sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear activities.  To say the least, this […]

Just how dangerous is the World Bank and its neo-conservative president, Robert Zoellick, to South Africa and the global climate? Notwithstanding South Africa’s existing $75 billion foreign debt, last Thursday the bank added a $3.75bn loan to Eskom for the primary purpose of building the world’s fourth-largest coal-fired power plant, at Medupi, which will spew […]

Here, amid the glittering ruins of globalized gentrification’s gilded age, a kind of glocal tenants’ movement is taking shape, at once locally rooted and globally connected. On April 6, 2008, a gathering of global dimensions was afoot on the steps of New York’s City Hall.  You may have missed it at the time.  You may […]