Archive | Commentary

  The austerity measures imposed on Greek workers to reduce the deficits are nothing but a prelude of what may happen to the other European countries.  The Greek crisis demonstrates the divisions in the ruling class on the strategies to adopt. For the second time since December 2008, Greece is at the heart of politics […]

The prospects for democracy, socio-economic development, and conflict resolution will suffer if the West continues to rely on punitive measures. This time, the warmongers’ silly season found its apogée in U.S. neo-conservative Daniel Pipes’ advice to Obama to “bomb Iran,” which appeared shortly after Tony Blair, having outlined why he helped invade Iraq, remarked ominously, […]

The National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) informs the Honduran population and the international community: 1. We will hold a national consultation to call for an Inclusive and Popular National Constituent Assembly.  The planned date of the consultation is 28 June 2010, one year after the coup d’état.  The consultation will represent the urgent will […]

  It is no secret that something must be done about our healthcare system — and soon.  Even those lucky enough to have good coverage are aware that the current system is unsustainable.  The number of uninsured people and the absurd costs of our medical needs continue to rise dramatically.  Unfortunately, the problem with our […]

  Michael Sonenscher, Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution.  Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008.  x + 493 pp.  $45.00 U.S. (cl).  ISBN 978- 0691124988. Michael Sonenscher begins, “This is a book about the sans-culottes and the part that they played in the French Revolution” (p. 1).  Actually, there are no revolutionary sans-culottes […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

Johannesburg, 11 March 2010 (IRIN) — Most food crop cultivation in Africa is rain-fed, but climate change is affecting vital rainfall patterns and pushing up temperatures, diminishing yields that could halve in some countries by 2020.  This warning has been widely quoted since it first appeared in a synthesis report for policy-makers in 2007 by […]

“It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty […]

  A street of Guernica after the fascist bombardment of 26 April 1937 Greece faces a veritable economic Guernica, a massacre, in the face of which the European Left shows an unforgivable passivity.  What is imposed on Athens is meant as an example, to strike terror into Spain, Portugal, and even Italy.  But even France, […]

  “Census forms are being mailed to all Americans this month so make sure to fill yours out.  Iranian-Americans are asked to mark ‘other’ on question 9 and write in Iranian or Iranian-American.  (I’m told that the FBI does not get these forms, but please let me know if you do end up getting deported […]

Alan Greenspan had a dream, or rather a nightmare.  Greenspan seems to have woken up in a cold sweat one morning in fear that the period of “disinflationary pressures” that had kept inflation low since the 1990s was about to end.  This was 2007, when he published his autobiographical economic treatise, The Age of Turbulence. […]

Kayed al-Ghoul, a member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, says that, in the event of aggression against Iran, the Occupying Power will likely attack the Gaza Strip and Lebanon to prevent any reactions and to disarm the resistance forces. Al-Ghoul remarked in an interview televised by Al […]

The nation state is once again proving its special usefulness as a vehicle for managing capitalist crisis.  Partly, this follows from the renewal of Keynesian monetary and fiscal policies.  Other key dimensions of state usefulness include its more direct provision of financial guarantees to private enterprises and its over-priced purchase of “toxic” assets (those that […]

  Jean-Clément Martin, Violence et Révolution: Essai sur la naissance d’un mythe national.  Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2006. 339 pp.  Bibliography and index.  23.00 Euros (pb).  ISBN 2-02-043842-9. This work subtitles itself an “essay on the birth of a national myth”.  The “myth” in question, as the first pages of the Introduction make clear, is […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

On March 2, the New York Times ran a story informing readers of recent “controversies” related to global warming.  The story chronicled the efforts of scientists affiliated with the United Nations Climate Panel and other major research institutions to answer the claims of conservatives who suggest there is a conspiracy to hide the “debate” over […]

China and India are generally regarded as the two large countries in the developing world that are the “success stories” of globalisation.  This success has been defined by the high and sustained rates of growth of aggregate and per capita national income; and the substantial reduction in income poverty.  Further, both China and India are […]

  Robert Allen, Les Tribunaux criminels sous la Révolution et l’Empire, 1792-1811.  Collection « Histoire » Translated by James Steven Bryant (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2005) 318 pp. 22€ ISBN 2-7535-00095-9. At the end of the Old Regime, the judicial system of the kingdom stood accused of all manner of barbarities and atrocities — […]

Tomorrow, Wednesday, 10 March 2010, at 10:00 a.m. the trial of Member of Knesset Mohammed Barakeh, and chairman of Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality — Communist Party of Israel) will open.  Adalah Attorneys Hassan Jabareen and Orna Kohn are representing MK Barakeh in this case. The Attorney General indicted MK Barakeh in […]

At this very moment Nepal is making a constitution through the historic Constitutional Assembly (CA).  It is important to note that up till now all prior constitutions handed over to the people of Nepal were through direct intervention of oligarchs or kings.  It was the historic ten years of People’s War (PW) (1996-2006) complemented with […]