Archive | Commentary

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 — […]

Is Europe Planning Seal of Approval for Israeli Settlers? An exclusive club of the world’s most developed countries is poised to admit Israel as a member even though, a confidential internal document indicates, doing so will amount to endorsing Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territories. Israel has been told that its accession to […]

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 […]

Memory and Justice for WomenInternational Feminist Mobilization8-14 March 2010 CommuniquéTo women of Honduras and the worldTo human rights organizationsTo democratic and independent organizationsTo national and international mediaTo people in general We, Feminists in Resistance, members of the National Front of Popular Resistance of Honduras, issue a cordial and sincere invitation to all feminists, women, democratic […]

  Charles Walton, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: The Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech.  Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.  xiii + 334 pp.  Figures, notes, bibliography, and index.  $49.95 U.S. (cl).  ISBN 0-19-536775-1. In this impressive first book, Charles Walton explores the fate of free speech […]

  The white man called you Bhagat Singh that day, The black man calls you Naxalite today. But everyone will call you the morning star tomorrow. — Excerpt from the Telugu poem ‘Final Journey: First Victory’ by Sri Sri 1 It has been a long and tortuous route.  Forty-three years ago, a group of Maoist […]

  Democracy Insurgent is a majority people-of-color activist group animated by principles of democracy, anti-racism, anti-imperialism, queer liberation, Third World Feminism, and workers’ power.  We are based in Seattle, Washington.  We are a member group of the UW Student Worker Coalition.  Find out more at <nobudgetcutsuw.blogspot.com> and <democracyinsurgent.org>.  Contact us at <[email protected]>. | | Print […]

Some 5,000 Arab and Jewish peace activists rallied tonight (Saturday, March 6), among them several members of Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality – Communist Party of Israel), in the Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem in order to protest against the settlement of Jews in the area and the eviction of […]

  The Barcelona-born writer recalls his intense relationship with one of his “greatest literary idols.” Juan Goytisolo has just published Genet en el Raval (Genet in El Raval, Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg/Círculo de lectores, 2009), a chronicle of a literary as well as emotional friendship.  The Barcelona-born writer met the poet Jean Genet (1910-1986), one of […]

We were in Tehran on February 24 — the day when Iranian authorities announced the capture of Abdol Malik Rigi, the head of Jundallah.  Jundallah (the name in Arabic for “soldiers of God”; the group is also known as the People’s Resistance Movement of Iran) is a Sunni Islamist group that claims to be fighting […]

There is now a general crisis in Europe without a visible or credible way out.  It is clearly evidenced by the continuous flare-up of hotspots of tension: from Greece to the Iberian Peninsula and back, and then onto increasingly less veiled allusions to Italy and a dramatic about-face of Paris. Until just over a month […]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Brasilia to mount a full court press on the Brazilian government to support a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities.  (Brazil is presently one of the Council’s ten non-permanent members.)  And, as accumulating media reports indicate, she was politely but […]

A front page headline in the New York Times on March 7, 1970 announced: “Townhouse Razed by Blast and Fire; Man’s Body Found.”  The story described an elegant four-story brick building in Greenwich Village destroyed by three large explosions and a raging fire “probably caused by leaking gas” at about noon on Friday, March 6. […]

Daughters are God’s irony on men.  Not His vengeance or His revenge on us, but surely His irony. Daughters, when they come, are never expected and seldom asked for, especially if she is a first child.  Always a surprise, usually more for the father than the mother, who, if she suspects at all, keeps it […]