Archive | Commentary

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 […]

Nilanjana Gupta.  Reading with Allah: Madrasas in West Bengal.  New Delhi: Routledge, 2010.  Pp. 192.  R. 595.  ISBN: 978-0-415-54459-7.  Much has been written on the Indian madrasas or Islamic seminaries, but because the most influential madrasas in the country are concentrated in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, many of these writings tend […]

The share of workers with health insurance fell from 93.5 percent in 1979 to 83.3 percent in 2008.  If health-insurance rates in 2008 had remained at their 1979 levels, an additional 12.6 million workers would have had health insurance in 2008.  The main reason for the decline in overall coverage rates was the steep drop […]

  “What is it that they have against Iran?  If you look at it, it’s only that Iran is rising as a competitor of Israel.  There is no other basis for this animosity.” — Aijaz Ahmad Aijaz Ahmad: The US is running out of all options.  You mentioned this possible agreement.  Iran has actually agreed […]

Workers in the electrical sector are set to embark on nationwide consultation process to elaborate strategic and immediate solutions for the electricity crisis.  Alongside proposals for improving the sector and energy-saving measures, discussions will focus on introducing workers’ participation in the management of the state-owned electricity company, Corpoelec. In February this year, Venezuelan President Hugo […]

  What are the consequences of the implementation of neo-liberal economic philosophy for industrialization and development of poor countries?  The answer: de-industrialization of many low-income countries; destruction of their food production (influenced also by protectionist agricultural policies of developed countries), thus their heavy dependence on food imports.  The boom in commodity prices had improved the […]

The latest Obama Administration initiative aimed at easing the nation’s foreclosure crisis may be well-intentioned, but fails to give proper consideration to the state of the housing market.  The biggest winners are likely once again to be the banks.  In particular, holders of second mortgages are likely to see this program as a huge bonanza. […]

There are two countries in the world which are routinely described by American politicians across the political spectrum as having a “special relationship” with the United States — Israel and the United Kingdom.  We have all grown more familiar than we probably like to acknowledge with Israel using its channels to Capitol Hill and in […]

Iraj Yamin Esfandiary is a painter, designer, and cartoonist from Iran.  This cartoon was first published in Iranian.com on 25 March 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  Click here to see other cartoons by Esfandiary. | | Print

  Jayati Ghosh: What’s happening to Greece is in an interesting way what many developing countries have gone through.  It’s really an inability to have independent monetary and fiscal policies, combined with a fact that during the boom it was chosen as a favorite destination, which creates a situation where you then become uncompetitive.  Suddenly […]

Caspian Makan with Shimon Peres, 22 March 2010 Caspian Makan on Channel 2 Neda Agha Soltan’s fiancé Caspian Makan, who has been lionized in the West as an Iranian “dissident” on account of his claim that she was shot by basij, visited Israel as guest of Israel’s Channel 2.  He was given a hero’s welcome, […]

As the EU summit meeting convenes, Greece is dominating the agenda much more than Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel had wanted.  This week she has thrown cold water on the idea that Germany and other EU countries would take responsibility for helping Greece to roll over some of its debt, handing that job off to the […]

José Manuel FloresFrancisco Castillo The Vos el Soberano Collective strongly condemns the wave of selective assassinations perpetrated by the regime, the most recent victims of which are compañeros José Manuel Flores, Francisco Castillo, José Antonio Cardoza, José Carías, and Nahun Palacios murdered over the last ten days. Added to these are a wave of massacres […]

Don’t use weapons of mass destruction! Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published by Rebelión on 25 March 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

“. . . a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.” — The Goldstone Report “I can promise you that throughout the war, […]

With the passage in the House of the Obama administration’s health care reform bill, it would seem at first glance that the movement for national, single-payer health insurance has been seriously derailed.  After all, if all of the hype and adulation surrounding the bill’s passage is to be believed, the fight for universal health care […]

In a 219-212 vote this week, the House of Representatives approved, and President Barack Obama signed into law, a new round of national health care reform.  The bill is the subject of celebration in the liberal corporate press, with the editors at the New York Times framing it as “a triumph for countless Americans who […]

  UK passport holders should be aware of a recent Serious Organised Crime Agency investigation into the misuse of UK passports in the murder of Mahmud al-Mabhuh in Dubai on 19 January 2010.  The SOCA investigation found circumstantial evidence of Israeli involvement in the fraudulent use of British passports.  This has raised the possibility that […]

The all too predictable dynamics surrounding a potential new Iran sanctions resolution in the United Nations Security Council continue to play out just as we have anticipated.  As some commentators are leaping on media stories that one of China’s diplomats took part in a P-5+1 conference call yesterday about a possible resolution, the Wall Street […]