Archive | Commentary

On Tuesday morning clashes erupted between Palestinian protesters and Israeli military and police forces across the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians hurled stones at police and burned tires and trash bins in several areas of East Jerusalem. Dozens of Palestinians were injured and many were detained.

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print

  “The times we live in reflect that in Latin America and the Caribbean the confrontation between historic forces is getting worse.” — Raul Castro On February 23, 2010, incarcerated Cuban Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after a prolonged hunger strike, despite the efforts of Cuban medical personnel to treat him and prevent the ending of […]

It is intriguing to see how whoever the United States and Israel find interfering with their imperial or dispossession plans is quickly demonized and becomes a threat and target for that Real-Axis-of-Evil (RAE), and hence their NATO allies and, with less intensity, much of the rest of the “international community” (IC, meaning ruling elites, not […]

Sometimes headlines really do convey powerful messages.  That was certainly the case with an AFP story, which appeared late last week under the headline, “Saudis Deny Discussing Pressure on China over Iran with US.”   The story was prompted by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ visits to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last week. […]

Hundreds of thousands of Thai Red Shirt pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets of Bangkok and other cities over the weekend.  This was a show of force to prove the strength of the movement and to dispel any lies by the royalist government and the media that the Red Shirts are not representative of the […]

  “It’s necessary to campaign on my record,” Nicolas Sarkozy had told UMP leaders in the regional elections, before prudently beating a retreat when polls revealed the darkening sky for the party.  Despite the same old cliché repeated by UMP spokespeople according to the dictate of the Élysée, the fact remains that voters clearly rejected […]

The Nahr al-Bared refugee camp still has not recovered from the devastating war in 2007 during which it was destroyed.  The Lebanese Army has been keeping a tight grip on the camp and the 20,000 displaced Palestinians who have returned so far.  The army’s siege seriously hampers the camp’s economic recovery, as access is restricted and the area has been declared a military zone.  A recent survey found that the army’s presence and measures are considered a difficulty by 98 per cent of Nahr al-Bared’s business owners.  The army meanwhile justifies its presence as necessary for the preservation of the safety of the people.

Frank Lumpkin.  Photo by People’s World. A few days ago Frank Lumpkin died, a true American hero.  I am still grateful that I was lucky enough to know not only him but his whole big fighting family! I was fresh out of Harvard, a red diaper New York radical in 1949, set on working in […]

  Two major lessons emerge from the first round of the regional elections The magnitude of abstention by millions of youth, workers, and the unemployed, who mostly wished to register their rejection of the political parties that have alternated in power and that are responsible for aggravating their conditions of life.   The vigor of […]

  Economist Heiner Flassbeck holds the German wage policy responsible for the problems of Greece. Neither the drastic Greek austerity program nor the proposed European Monetary Fund can help the euro zone out of its difficulties.  Instead, Heiner Flassbeck calls for higher wages in the Federal Republic of Germany in order to cope with the […]

  Zimbabwe’s land issue has generated unprecedented debates both within and outside the country.  The debates, which followed the dramatic occupations of white farms by rural peasants in the late 1990s, are generally polarised between those who support radical land reform and those who support market-orientated reforms.  The former stand accused of supporting Mugabe’s regime […]

Jon Stewart: “The votes are officially in.  How did it go?” Reporters: “Bombs ripped through parts of Baghdad today”; “Insurgents bombed a polling station and lobbed grenades at voters. . . .”; “A rocket killed seven people”; “Dozens of explosions”; “Bombs and mortar attacks”; “Some counted as many as fifty in Baghdad alone. . . […]

Vice President Joseph Biden set out to massage U.S.-Israeli relations this week, but instead ran up against the reality of Israeli politics, manifested in the Netanyahu government’s announcement of the construction of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem.  The result, as described by the normally rhetorically sober Financial Times, has been to expose “an emasculated […]

It is sad and surprising that among the deluge of comments and letters on Greece in the European papers in the last few weeks, not one has gotten the most crucial point about the crisis.  Most commentators treat Greece’s domestic problems and those of other southern members of the European Monetary Union (EMU) as if […]

An article in yesterday’s New York Times, from the Business Section, titled “Patchwork Pension Plan Adds to Greek Woes” is the latest in a series strikingly titled “Payback Time.” A friend of mine used to like to say: “The New York Times is the voice of the enlightened bourgeoisie.”  This article conjures up that phrase. […]

  Gervasio Umpiérrez is a cartoonist based in Montevideo, Uruguay.  This cartoon was featured on the home page of Rebelión on 13 March 2010. | | Print  

  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 […]

  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 […]