Archive | Commentary

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 […]

  Tegucigalpa, Honduras — Scores of students, trade unionists, and teachers of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) marched to the National Congress today in protest, due to the current crisis of this university, demanding that it be not closed. The march was composed of a student group from the University Revolutionary Front (FRU), […]

On Wednesday, eleven years after the start of the NATO bombing, Belgrade remembered the victims.  There was mourning in churches (photo), and sirens wailed across the country.  On 24 March 1999, the air war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began.  At first, 430 bombers were deployed.  The number climbed, by the tenth of June, […]

On July 10, 1996, at a Joint Session of the United States Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation for these words: “With America’s help, Israel has grown to be a powerful, modern state. . . .  But I believe there can be no greater tribute to America’s long-standing economic aid to […]

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine salutes the efforts of the Danish comrades in Opror (Rebellion) and Fighters + Lovers to challenge so-called “anti-terror” laws and defend the right to support national liberation movements.  We salute Patrick Mac Manus and all those who struggle around the world in solidarity with the cause of […]

Harvard just announced its charges for the 2010-2011 academic year: $51,000 per undergraduate.  That covers tuition, fees, room and board.  It does not cover such things as clothing, books and computers, school supplies, room furnishings, cleaning expenses, travel to and from Cambridge, MA, and entertainment.  If we conservatively estimate these to cost another $9,000 on […]