Archive | Commentary

  Sunday 28 December 10.35am. Aqaba, Jordan The compound where our convoy members gather during the day, here in Aqaba, is full of activity.  In exactly an hour, more than 30 of us will begin a hunger strike in protest at Egypt’s refusal to allow the convoy entry onto its soil. Everyone else is making […]

Because it traces its origins to the Enlightenment tradition, the left has tended to conceive of itself as a “progressive” force, steering the course of History toward a more or less inevitable higher stage of development as the right tries to conserve traditional society from the onslaught of modernity.  Today, the term “progressive” is applied […]

  Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? out recently from Zer0 Books.  As a blogger he writes K-Punk.  Capitalist Realism is one of the most acute diagnoses of contemporary politics as it is played out in one small island off the coast of Europe.  After skewering the marketisation of […]

“This is an embedded film. We decided to be ’embedded within the ambulances’ opening an imaginary dialogue with those journalists who embed themselves within armies.” — Alberto Arce

I noted a couple of weeks ago the urgency of the condemnations being levelled at Iran (what The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss called the beginning of “the stupid season”). The hysteria appears to be mounting. Just a few of the latest incidents: We’ve been leaked the news that Barack Obama is almost powerless to stop Israel […]

Sunday, December 27 — The Egyptian security forces detained a group of 30 internationals in their hotel in el-Arish and another group of 8 at the bus station.  They also broke up a memorial action commemorating the Cast Lead massacre at the Kasr al Nil Bridge. At noon on 27 December, Egyptian security forces detained […]

World-renowned political organizer and one of Africa’s most celebrated poets, Dennis Brutus, died early on December 26 in Cape Town, in his sleep, aged 85. Even in his last days, Brutus was fully engaged, advocating social protest against those responsible for climate change, and promoting reparations to black South Africans from corporations that benefited from […]

The United States has had four presidents who received the Nobel Peace Prize.  I haven’t checked, but I presume that’s a record for heads of state.  All four have left their imprint on Latin America, “our little region over here that has never bothered anybody.”  That’s how Secretary of War Henry Stimson described the hemisphere […]

In The Taming of the American Crowd: From Stamp Riots to Shopping Sprees, I argue that unlike the kind of crowds that have surged across the pages of American history and unlike crowds in certain other parts of the world, today’s American crowds seldom even figure in the news.  We have crowds of shoppers, spectators, […]

We are making a public entreaty to Mubarak to let the Gaza Freedom March into Gaza.  Text below. — Max Ajl OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT MUBARAK FROM THE GAZA FREEDOM MARCH December 26, 2009 Dear President Mubarak; We, representing 1,362 individuals from 43 countries arriving in Cairo to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, are […]

The New York Times published an op-ed today that calls for war against Iran. Alan J. Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin, argues that the unraveling of the uranium enrichment agreement proves that the United States must conduct air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent […]

In Colombia there is an expression: la paz del cementerio — the peace of the graveyard.  This is the kind of peace that powerful forces enjoy when everyone who resists them is dead and buried. Colombia’s government and its military and paramilitary forces have spent decades working diligently for this kind of peace.  They’re so […]

The United Nations conference to address climate change in Copenhagen over the last week has illustrated several crucial features of contemporary politics, as Obama completes a year in power, the NATO plots a military surge into the war spanning from Palestine to Afghanistan, and an economic recovery staggers along. Three Features of Political Climate First, […]

  Detailed accounts from participants in the recent Copenhagen climate summit are still coming in, but a few things are already quite clear, even as countries step up the blame game in response to the summit’s disappointing conclusion. First, the 2 1/2 pages of diplomatic blather that the participating countries ultimately consented to “take note” […]

  Paul Jay: One of the big issues about the stimulus and government expenditure is the debate over military expenditure.  People say that World War 2 helped to get America out of the 1930s depression.  So, forget the kind of moral issues, ethical issues, or issues of international law — this expansion into Afghanistan may […]

The nuclear dispute between Iran and the United States is heating up. Iran made its proposal on December 12, having been in negotiation with the US and other powers since October 1.  Iran proposed exchanging 400 kilograms of its 3.5 percent enriched uranium for an equivalent amount of 20 percent enriched uranium to be used […]

The nature of the current wars in the wider western Asian area reveals a disturbing trend: next to sources of conflict between states there are an increasing number of conflicts within them.  In Yemen, the civil war has had a ripple effect throughout the Persian Gulf region provoking the military intervention of Saudi Arabia and […]

The 2010 Statistical Abstract of the United States (and especially Tables 574 to 650), published by the US Census Bureau, provides many statistics that can update understanding of today’s working class and possibilities of its movement.  The Abstract counts 154 million people as members of the US labor force in 2008.  Of these, 129 million […]

Dec. 22, 2009 A national organization of 17,000 physicians who favor a single-payer health care system called on the U.S. Senate today to defeat the health care legislation presently before it and to immediately consider the adoption of an expanded and improved Medicare-for-All program. While noting that the Senate bill includes some “salutary provisions” like […]

  The following table shows Iranian defence expenditure in each year since 1989 in local currency and constant US$ as well as the military burden, defined as spending as a proportion of GDP. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in 2007 Iran’s defence expenditure was one of the lowest in the Middle […]