Archive | Commentary

There is little doubt, even among some opposition leaders (who normally oppose just about anything the government does), that the recent currency adjustment of the bolivar was economically necessary.  It is a matter of basic math to realize that if inflation averaged 22% between 2005 and 2009 and each bolivar thereby lost about 72% of […]

In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country.  Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian […]

“The Yankees expect to send 20,000 troops to Haiti.” “Unbelievable.  Could it be that they found oil in Haiti?” Alfredo Martirena Hernández was born in 1965 in Santa Clara, Cuba.  This cartoon was published by Rebelión on 23 January 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010, it’s now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island’s recent history.  It has adopted military priorities and strategies.  It has sidelined Haiti’s […]

Some bad news.  Via e-mail: I have urgent news to report back to everyone . . . unfortunately it’s not good news. Today I spoke with Kristen Coughlin Carr, the aunt of one of our dear GFMers, Shannon Hughes (who was staying at Select Hotel).  She informed me that Shannon is missing in Egypt.  It […]

Six union confederations in Turkey have announced that they will go on a general strike if the government does not respond to the Tekel workers’ demands by 26 January 2010.  The hunger strike mentioned below is now on hold pending the government response by the deadline.  — Ed. Worker Yaşar from the Tek Gıda-İş union: […]

  This study compared The New York Times‘ and The Moscow Times‘ coverage of the political movements in three former Soviet republics.  Data analysis revealed a clear pro-movement pattern in The New York Times’ reporting.  The U.S. newspaper used more pro-movement sources than pro-incumbent sources.  Overall, The New York Times depicted the protesters favorably and […]

Vali Nasr.  Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World.  New York: Free Press, 2009.  320 pp. This empirically informative yet analytically defective book labors to dissect the complexities of political and economic development in the Muslim world, strongly focusing on Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, […]

  Mike Rapport.  1848: Year of Revolution.  New York: Basic Books, 2009.  xvi + 461 pp.  $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-01436-1. Mike Rapport is one of the few scholars who write European history not as the history of a few select countries, but of the entire continent.  Rapport is at home in the history of the […]

Union membership fell in line with the decline in overall employment in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual union membership report released today.  The unionized share of the U.S. workforce dipped to 12.3 percent last year from 12.4 percent in 2008.  For the first time ever, union members in the public sector […]

Repeat it to see if they believe it.  We are here on a peace mission. Alfredo Martirena Hernández was born in 1965 in Santa Clara, Cuba.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

“But we can’t eat rights, hawu!”  Those five words of protest from the lips of South Africa’s underclass sting like a slap in the face.  Good liberals will always take offense.  We find ourselves scrambling desperately to battle the mad claim that “things were better under apartheid.”  “But of what worth is a job,” we […]

“Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, and other countries send in the medical brigades; the Yankees send in the troops.” “It must be so they won’t go out of character.” Alfredo Martirena Hernández was born in 1965 in Santa Clara, Cuba.  This cartoon was published by Rebelión on 21 January 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi […]

How is it that we could be facing a crisis of empire, of imperialism, of war, of conflict internationally, we could be facing an environmental crisis on a scale that threatens the whole planet as we know it, and we could be facing at the same time being in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression? And how do we deal with all these problems simultaneously?

An important and perhaps growing feature of official and strong-interest-group propaganda is the resort to personal attacks and flak to keep dissidents at bay and inconvenient thoughts out of sight and mind.  This has been notable over many years in the case of pro-Israel propaganda, where we can observe a positive correlation between upward spikes […]

[The author was in Port-au-Prince with a delegation when the January 12 earthquake struck the city.  Because of limited electricity and internet access, he was unable to send this report out until after he got back to New York the morning of January 18.] PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan. 16 — Wednesday night, January 13, the second night […]

  Elyse Semerdjian.  Off the Straight Path: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo.  Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008.  xxxviii + 247 pp.  $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8156-3173-6. The content of Off the Straight Path is less juicy than its title suggests.  The reader with an appetite for stories of sexual scandals and dangerous liaisons […]

Open the Door!  “Humanitarian Aid!” Sergio Langer is an Argentinean cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published by Argenpress.info on 18 January 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

Not surprisingly, Saturday’s meeting of representatives from the P-5+1 countries reached no agreement about further sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear activities; as we pointed out in a post on January 14, China’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, He Yafei, who has been representing his country in the P-5+1 political directors’ meetings, declined to […]

On Monday, six days after the earthquake in Haiti, the U.S. Southern Command finally began to drop bottled water and food (MREs) from an Air Force C-17.  U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had previously rejected such a method because of “security concerns.” The Guardian reports that people are dying of thirst.  And if they do […]