Archive | Commentary

Western media commentary continues to depict Iran as having “rejected” the Baradei proposal for refueling the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), thereby setting the stage for the Obama Administration to pursue, at a minimum, tougher multilateral and unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic. As we wrote about in The Race for Iran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr […]

Forbes magazine recently placed two Mexicans, Carlos Slim and Joaquín Guzmán, high on their list of the most powerful people in the world.  Carlos Slim is the world’s third-richest man and CEO of a telecommunications company and Joaquín Guzmán is the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel.  While the purpose and the methodology of this […]

“Sanctions alone cannot eradicate apartheid; that task is ultimately left to the people of South Africa themselves.  But economic pressure and political isolation of the South African government can hasten the day when justice and freedom reign in that troubled land.” — Richard L. Trumka, June 23, 1987 “We call on other workers and unions […]

  A common explanation for the US presence in Afghanistan is Washington’s interest in Central Asian fuel sources — natural gas in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and petroleum in Kazakhstan.  The idea of Zalmay Khalilzad and others was to bring a gas pipeline down through Afghanistan and Pakistan to energy-hungry India.  Turkmenistan became independent of Moscow […]

1. Where We Are: a) The world has entered a depression, whose greatest impact is yet to come (in the next five years). b) The United States has entered a serious decline in geopolitical power, whose greatest impact is yet to come (in the next five years). c) The world environment is entering into serious […]

The historical geography of capitalist development is at a key inflexion point in which the geographical configurations of power are rapidly shifting at the very moment when the temporal dynamic is facing very serious constraints.  Three-percent compound annual growth (generally considered the minimum satisfactory growth rate for a healthy capitalist economy) is becoming less and […]

  The talks between the G5 plus 1 and Iran are careening toward a premature breakdown.  If they do fall apart, it will be due in large part to a serious diplomatic miscalculation by the Obama administration. Along with its European allies, the Obama administration seized on a plan that cleverly asked Iran to divest […]

The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) continues its fight for its members’ jobs and for the union itself, but now, two months since President Felipe Calderón’s liquidation of the state-owned Light and Power Company, seizure of the facilities, and firing of the 44,000 workers, and faced with the government’s intransigence, the union has been forced […]

Most modification plans leave homeowners without equity and paying excessive housing costs. The Federal Housing Authority has been taking steps over the last month to tighten its standards on the loans it guarantees, most notably by dropping several initiators who have had especially bad track records.  While this is a necessary and appropriate step given […]

It has been a hell of a year for Iran. Just last winter the nation’s elites were basking in 30 years of revolutionary triumph, launching satellites, enriching uranium, and holding neocon hawks at bay. Then, weeks of fervent presidential campaigning drew out the best and worst of Iranian society’s antagonisms, culminating in a poll exactly six months ago. Overnight the revolution’s orphans and cosmopolitan have-nots demanded their say. As a divided nation literally filled Tehran’s streets, cheerful jeering and honking horns turned into vigilantes with batons and street gangs with bonfires.

  1. Impact on Women in Different Social Groups Financial and economic crises and a rapid loss of existential security are nothing new for women and men in the former socialist bloc countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).  These crises have been a permanent condition of everyday life for the majority of populations in […]

  Paul Jay, Senior Editor, The Real News Network: So let’s talk about Copenhagen.  If in fact most of the scientific community is quite persuaded in the climate change science, and certainly they are, and all the world governments say they are, what’s preventing us from getting a serious agreement, and particularly with China and […]

A.S. Dhillon’s recent decision to paint again has to be seen not as his abandonment of creating public installations but as a step towards extending his social practice by specifically addressing the specialized audience of contemporary art.  This transition from the outside to the gallery, the specialized space of art, is a process that began […]

Like the peaks of the Hindu Kusch dominating much of Afghanistan, the war in that unhappy country increasingly overshadows the political scenery in Germany.  Parallels with the situation in the USA are unmistakable. On December 3rd the Bundestag voted on prolonging the use of German troops in Afghanistan for another year.  But before the delegates […]

  A Historical Perspective We all know that when a glass of tea is three quarters full, it is also one quarter empty.  I would like to dismiss the empty part of this dialectic first, the history that pertains to the self, to me, and then to talk a bit more of the history concerning […]

Take a look at the map.  Afghanistan is next to or near Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, and India.  These are all countries that are vitally important to the United States as key allies or enemies, and as potential economic and political competitors.  Afghanistan is also next to Turkmenistan and other Central Asian Republics that are […]

  A young boy sits on rusted tank tracks in the desert bordering Iran and Iraq.  His head is bowed, and he’s sobbing.  A few yards away, a dozen bearded men gather around a Shiite cleric.  The men weep as the cleric recounts the story of a fearless martyr killed during the Iran-Iraq war.  He […]

  A sobering new assessment by the “Climate Action Tracker” of the emission commitments and pledges put forward by industrialized and developing countries for the Copenhagen climate negotiations shows that the world is headed for a global warming of well over 3°C by 2100.  Carbon dioxide concentrations are projected to be over 650 ppm, with […]

Toufic Haddad: A prisoner exchange would be a real game changer in the Middle East if it is actually able to take place.  I’m less optimistic that it will.  The fact is it would be the first time that a political faction would be able to win such concessions out of Israel.  We’re talking about […]

  One of the fastest, if not the fastest, growing industries in the world today is based on nanotechnology.  The U.S. government spends $1.5 billion a year on nanoresearch funded by 25 federal agencies under the National Nanotechnology Initiative of 2003.  There are many new journals with “nano” in their titles and dozens more journals […]