Archive | Commentary

  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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

Attention all US law enforcement agencies!  Be on the lookout: a war criminal is coming our way.  The Butcher of Gaza is coming to America. One year after the war on Gaza, during which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) murdered 1,400 Palestinians including 400 children, the IDF and war criminal Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi will […]

The unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent in February in spite of snowstorms that kept millions of people out of work during the reference week.  The establishment survey showed the economy losing 36,000 jobs with all of the job loss explained by a drop in construction employment of 64,000.  With more normal conditions, it is […]

  Interview with Salim Lamrani, French professor, writer, and journalist, specialist on the relationship between Cuba and the U.S., and author of the recently published book Cuba. Ce que les médias ne vous diront jamais (Paris: Editions Estrella, 2009). You have just published a new book about the treatment the communications media give to Cuba. […]

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. […]

The unusually lengthy list of nominees for this year’s Best Picture Oscar features a slew of do-gooder films about the suffering of others.  Most are about people who’re at a considerable cultural distance from the white, middle-class Americans who are the primary consumers of these films. Lee Daniel’s Precious transports us to Harlem, to the […]

Around the world, anti-war activists are preparing for major protests this spring to oppose the continuing U.S.-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Meanwhile, a storm of developments is dramatically increasing tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.  In response, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) is issuing […]

Two months ago a few students got together at the American University of Beirut and started planning a week of conferences, workshops, and actions based on the model offered by Israeli Apartheid Week which started six years ago in Toronto.  A list of speakers was drawn up, and with nothing much to offer except the […]

On February 23, 2010, Cuban inmate Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on hunger strike.  He was 42.  This is the first such incident since inmate Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 under similar conditions.  The corporate media put the tragic incident on the front page and emphasized the plight of Cuban prisoners.1 Zapata’s […]

Dear Colleague, Eight months after the June 12 presidential elections in Iran, coverage by Western media like yours prompts us to pose the following questions based on common standards of journalism. 1. Most journalists who travel to Iran stay at hotels located in affluent north Tehran, but you convey their observations as “demands of the […]

Within days of a January 12 earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti, the New York Times was using the disaster to promote a United Nations plan for drastically expanding the country’s garment assembly industry, which employs low-paid workers to stitch apparel for duty-free export, mainly to the U.S. market.  This, according to several opinion […]

  Brasilia — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva just reiterated, in a meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that Brazil will continue to maintain commercial relations with Iran and will seek a peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear issue. After meeting with Hillary Clinton at the Bank of Brazil Cultural Center, the provisional […]

  Matthew Waites.  The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality, and Citizenship.  Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.  viii + 285 pp.  $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4039-2173-4.  $29.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-230-23718-6. There are many “ages of consent.”  But in common parlance, age of consent laws define the age at which a person can legally consent […]