Archive | Commentary

See, also, “Police Violence Marks Tekel Workers’ Protest in Turkey” (Hürriyet Daily News, 1 April 2010); “26 Mayıs’ta AKP’ye genel grevi gösterelim” (Sendika.org, 1 April 2010); “Planned Tekel Protest Barred by Police” (Today’s Zaman, 2 April 2010); “More Pepper Gas for Turkey’s Tekel Workers on Second day” (Hürriyet Daily News, 2 April 2010); Tolga Korkut, […]

Tuesday, April 6 at 5:00 to 7:00 pm at the Riverside Church, Room 9T 490 Riverside Drive (between 120th Street and 122nd Street) entrance at Claremont Ave. & 121st Street The James Earl Chaney Foundation, the Social Justice Ministry of the Riverside Church, and the National Coalition for Prisoners of Political Conscience, invite you to […]

The absence of US-Iranian rapprochement will perpetuate the new Middle Eastern Cold War, imposing costs on the United States, Iran and other regional and international players.  However, in strategic terms, the heaviest costs of continued US-Iranian estrangement are likely to be borne by the United States.  In particular, lack of productive relations with Tehran will […]

Prabhat Patnaik: I think there is an important difference, it seems to me, between the situation in the case of the advanced capitalist countries, or even the case of Japan, on the one hand, and in the case of countries like India and possibly even China at the moment.  In the case of the advanced […]

The antiwar movement is all but dead and buried.  Turnout at the March 20th, 7th year anniversary of the Iraq invasion in Washington D.C. was pitiful, estimated at approximately ten thousand.  To make matters worse, approval of the war in Afghanistan has not fallen, but slightly increased in the last few months as U.S. marines […]

  Jeff Halper: We’re one of the leading — I would say, modestly — peace and human rights organizations in Israel.  We started about thirteen years ago.  I’ve been involved for forty years in the Israeli peace movement.  During the Oslo peace process, during the 90s, the Israeli peace movement also, like other Israelis, invested […]

Mortgage applications are running below the depressed levels of 2009. The Case-Shiller index showed house prices continuing to rise at a modest pace in January, with the 20-city index rising by 0.3 percent.  Over the last quarter, the index has risen at a 3.2 percent annual rate.  The index is almost flat over the last […]

The crisis facing the eurozone looks at first sight as German efficiency clashing with Portuguese, Irish, Greek and Spanish sloppiness.  But in many respects Germany has performed worse than the “peripheral” countries in the last decade.  The largest economy of the eurozone has been marked by slow growth, poor domestic demand, weak investment, high unemployment, […]

  What is the characteristic of the Latin American Left today? 20 years ago, when the Berlin Wall fell, there was no revolution foreseeable on the horizon.  However, it didn’t take long before a process began to emerge in Latin America with Hugo Chávez.  We have gone on to form governments with anti-neoliberal programs, though […]

Estimates of Iran’s subsidies vary widely.  The figure that I see most often quoted is $100 billion per year, which is a huge sum considering the fact that Iran’s GDP is less than $400 billion.  I have used a figure of $50 billion in a previous post, which maybe an underestimate.  My back-of-the-envelope calculations below […]

In today’s column, our Statue of Liberty once again gasses up her torch to answer two timely letters: Dear Green Lady, I am a gay soldier, trying to have safe sex at an air force base in Nevada.  It is really rough here with that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy and all.  Also I got […]

When it comes to scamming workers in the name of “JOBS,” big multinational corporations have few peers.  Case in point: GlobalFoundries, the chip fab company set up by AMD, now majority-owned by Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC). GlobalFoundries has already hit up New York State taxpayers for a cool 1.2 billion to build […]

March 23, 2010 Dear President Timmons: We write to you as concerned faculty members of the University of Regina, to urge you to withdraw our university immediately from participation in the “Project Hero” scholarship program.  This program, which waives tuition and course fees, and provides $1,000 per year to “dependents of Canadian Forces personnel deceased […]

Michael Warschawski: Before speaking about the crisis, one has to understand the special relationship between the United States and Israel.  Between these two states there is a strategic alliance, which is something extremely solid, very central to the US Middle East policy and very essential to Israel.  This strategic alliance is not in crisis.  In […]

Lowkey (born Kareem Dennis, 23 May 1986) is a British musician, poet, playwright, and political activist of English and Iraqi descent.  Check out Lowkey’s MySpace page: .  For bookings, email . | | Print

It is amazing that I am now at last again on South African soil, since my previous trip here was in December.   I am at home in my soul in a way that is unique for my travels.   I am breathing in the salty air from the Indian Ocean, feeling the hot rays of the […]

  In 2008, an estimated 49 million Americans, or 16% of the total U.S. population, lived in a family household that contained at least two adult generations or a grandparent and at least one other generation.  In 1980, this figure was just 28 million, or 12% of the population.   This 33% increase since 1980 […]

  Andrew Fischer: The Chinese oversaving, I think, is a false argument.  If you say it’s because of Chinese oversaving, what you’re basically implying is that Chinese households save a lot of money because their consumption is being repressed because of industrial policies in China that take money away from households and direct it toward […]

One of the striking features of the recent period has been the diffusion of manufacturing and service activities from the countries of the core to the periphery.  The logic of competitive striving for the export market among the many “labour reserve” economies in the periphery leads to the accumulation of ever-growing reserves and a constraint […]

  Neo-Liberalism, Secularism, and the Future of the Left in India A Day-long Conference Thursday, April 1, 2010, 10 am — 7:30 pm Heyman Center for the Humanities, Second Floor Common Room Keynote speaker: Sitaram Yechury Additional Speakers: Prabhat Patnaik Jayati Ghosh C.P. Chandrasekhar Javeed Alam Discussants: Sanjay Reddy Arjun Jayadev Anwar Shaikh Anush Kapadia […]