Archive | Commentary

Earlier this month, the Burlington had a busy weekend mustering its “troops” for active duty on several fronts, one at home and the other abroad. On Saturday, Dec. 5, two hundred labor and community activists gathered in this leading progressive city to plan more effective resistance to job cuts and contract give-backs demanded by recession-ravaged […]

Most people have heard that our retirement income security system is built as if it were a three-legged stool, where income comes from Social Security, from employer-based pensions, and from personal wealth.  That image implies that there are equal sources of income coming from each of those sources for all retired families, and that image […]

Capitalist crises, especially severe ones, are case studies in that system’s social costs.  Because the dutifully conservative economics profession rarely studies such cases, let’s do just that here by focusing on how the current capitalist crisis is damaging public education.  Deteriorating schools leave scars lasting for many years.  They undercut the quality of the skills […]

Kurdish-Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi, known for making slow-moving, heart-rending films along the western border of Kurdistan (A Time for Drunken Horses, Turtles Can Fly, Half Moon), shifts to the heart of the capital in his latest feature to give us a glimpse of Tehran’s underground music scene. Making a self-reflexive appearance in the opening sequence […]

At dawn on June 28, the Honduran military abducted President Manuel Zelaya at gunpoint and flew him out of the country.  Conflicting and ambiguous statements from the Obama administration left many confused about whether it opposed this coup or was really trying to help it succeed.  Here are the top ten indicators (with apologies to […]

Perhaps because I am a Brazilian, the first time I heard the expression “buen vivir,” I immediately thought of “boa vida,” a term which in our country is used pejoratively to refer to an easy, tranquil, and carefree life: no work, plenty of evening strolls, luxury at the expense of others, and zero political consciousness.

California has recently seen a massive movement erupt in defense of public education — but layoffs, fee hikes, cuts, and the re-segregation of public education are attacks taking place throughout the country.  A nationwide resistance movement is needed. We call on all students, workers, teachers, parents, and their organizations and communities across the country to […]

The ‘Sandwich Theory’ I was piqued by the phrase ‘sandwich theory’ when I first heard it from Delhi students.  They were referring to the views of a section of articulate, influential, middle India in the wake of the controversies over Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh and now Operation Green Hunt.  The ‘theory’, if we may call […]

Heather Boehlke, widow of Jared Boehlke, locomotive remote control operator, who was killed on Mother’s Day, 2009, while working alone, appeals for support. Click here to find a sample letter to Congressman James Oberstar, head of the House Transportation Committee. Video by Railroad Workers United.  For more information, go to . | | Print

  But for Iran, the 6th Manama Dialogue would have failed to achieve its very objective, namely serving as a forum for debating regional security.  Held in Bahrain from 11 to 13 December, the occasion attracted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki following a two-year absence from the annual event. Senior Iranian officials shunned the 2007 […]

We want to draw your attention to a brilliant piece, “Iran’s Foreign Policy Strategy After Saddam,” just published by Kayhan Barzegar, an Iranian scholar and foreign policy analyst currently at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.  We have previously posted about an Op Ed that Barzegar published on Iranian perspectives about […]

Iran is not going to the 2010 World Cup, but there is another football being kicked around in the domestic Iranian media: the extent of poverty in Iran. Last month, the Statistical Center of Iran reported that 70 percent of Iranians earn less than a monthly income of $450 for a household of five.  This […]

The United States has already lost the war in Afghanistan, just as it has lost the war in Iraq. President Barack Obama’s vast expansion of the Afghan war announced Dec. 1, and the extension of the violence into neighboring Pakistan, are intended to camouflage the reality of defeat, as was the Bush Administration’s “surge” in […]

With millions of jobs lost during the first part of 2009, who is calling for a shorter work week to spread the work around?  Not the Republicans.  Not even the Democrats.  But why is there nary a peep from unions? In the U.S., auto sets the pace for organized labor.  The only discussion at the […]

I’m going to discuss the utility of non-violent resistance as it applies to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict and, specifically, the occupation and blockade of the Gaza strip.  Even more specifically, I’m going to discuss the Gaza Freedom March (GFM), of which I’m one of the organizers.  But before discussing Palestinian non-violence, several things must be […]

“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 […]

  For many Shia Muslims in Lebanon since the late 1970s — particular practices of piety have become part of a discourse that is held up as an alternative to notions of a secular modernity.  In this process, an identity has been forged that is understood to be both pious and modern, and where notions […]