Archive | Commentary

  Part I: Brenda Villacorta JRW: It’s in the evening of January 25, in Tegucigalpa, outside the Brazilian embassy, where a gathering of the anti-coup resistance is taking place.  So, you’re a part of the Resistance against the coup, and, in particular, a part of the feminist resistance to the coup? Brenda Villacorta BV: That’s […]

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan instructed his ministers to work out a new endeavour regarding the Tekel workers.  Minister Hayati Yazıcı said that they are going to investigate the possibilities of all workers in the scope of 4C. After a meeting of Turkish Confederation of Labour Unions (Türk-İş) executives with Yazıcı and Finance Minister Mehmet […]

“Development,” I’ve discovered, operates as a flagrantly racist discourse in some guises.  Scrambling to explain the reasons for Africa’s perpetual poverty and apparently incurable misery, laypersons in the West point to Africans’ “savagery” and alleged incapacity for civilization.  This is not just a fringe opinion; even among putatively educated individuals such nonsense recurs with disturbing […]

When I write about U.S. foreign policy in places like Haiti or Honduras, I often get responses from people who find it difficult to believe that the U.S. government would care enough about these countries to try and control or topple their governments.  These are small, poor countries with little in the way of resources […]

(PU) In an oak-paneled conference room somewhere in Manhattan’s Goldman Sachs building, the Republican National Committee today signed over its soul to the Reverend Pat Robertson. “They had a soul?” asked a reporter at a press conference shortly after the signing.  “Oh yes,” explained RNC chairman Michael Steele.  “You see, the legal reality of corporate […]

Back in May 2009 — before the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election — we took a lot criticism for our view in a New York Times Op Ed that “President Obama’s Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed.”  In particular, we argued that Obama “has made several policy and personnel decisions that have […]

Washington, Jan. 30  — The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today reiterated its call for an independent investigation into the death of a Michigan imam, or Islamic religious leader, who a leaked autopsy report has revealed was shot 21 times and then handcuffed during an October FBI raid in Detroit. Shocking Details of Slain Imam’s […]

  About Repression in Honduras by Jeremy John This powerful video was made by César Silva, a publicist who before the coup in Honduras worked for Channel 8, the State Television Channel.  He made this video in collaboration with Edwin Renán Fajardo Argueta.  Once the coup happened, and Channel 8 was no longer directed by […]

  With the world economy’s center of gravity shifting from the West to the East, led by China’s rising economic and corresponding political power, the year 2010 may witness a series of epoch-making events in Asia. 日中首脳会談、「友愛」で外交デビュー Hatoyama (left) and Hu, 22 September 2009 A grand rapprochement between Japan and China could be one such […]

  Kids Love Peace Outdoors ICY and SOT are artists in Tabriz, Iran.  More videos by ICY and SOT may be viewed at <vimeo.com/icyandsot>. | | Print  

We are not the quickest on the draw in pulling out humanitarian aid, but when it comes to foreign occupation there is no one ahead of us. Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published by Rebelión on 30 January 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] […]

Dongping Han’s talk is preceded by Reiko Redmond’s and Raymond Lotta’s introductions. Dongping Han: I am not just going to talk about my book.  I’ll tell you my love story.  When I teach in the classroom and tell my students that it’s possible for people to work together, to solve their problems, to improve their […]

On January 14, two days after the Port-au-Prince earthquake, I finally got a chance to look over my email, courtesy of a small Haitian NGO in a quiet, relatively undamaged neighborhood in the south of the city.  After reading and answering personal messages, I noticed that a lot of my mail consisted of appeals for […]

  Ruth Ellen Mandel.  Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.  xxiv + 413 pp.  $89.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8223-4176-5; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-4193-2. In September 1979, the first federal commissioner of foreigners’ affairs (Ausländerbeauftragte) Heinz Kühn declared Germany a country of immigration — a novel and controversial […]

Despite the systematic efforts of many commentators and media outlets to represent what is happening in Iran as a wholesale revolt against everything the Islamic Republic stands for, a sober analysis reveals that we are witnessing the renegotiation of political power in the country.  The protagonists represent different wings within the system; the contours of […]

Scott Brown’s January 19 defeat of Martha Coakley in the race to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat has been greeted as a “game changer” for Barack Obama and his political backers.  This GOP victory has deprived Democrats of their “filibuster-proof” super-majority in the Senate, making Obama’s health care plan — at least, in its current […]

  Today is my daughter Leila’s fourth birthday, and while this occasion brings my thoughts back to the day she was born, the past 24 hours have otherwise been full of fairly devastating news. If the left can admit to having icons, then two of them have just died.  Yesterday it was the great historian […]

Join us for an evening of discussion, music, art, and refreshments inspired by a recent delegation to Bolivia focused on indigenous resistance and food sovereignty. When: Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 7 PM Where: 1199 SEIU MLK Labor Center, 310 West 43rd St., Auditorium Last November, a group of twenty activists from different parts of […]

A couple months ago, I wrote a post titled “The Coming Liberal Austerity Program.”  Well, it’s not just coming anymore.  It’s here. In response to the Republican victory in the special election in Massachusetts and the deficit paranoia that has gripped the right-wing and orthodox economists, President Obama announced that he will pursue a three-year […]

  Last night, President Obama said he wanted ideas on health care reform. Obama put it this way: “If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.  Let me know.  Let […]