En Clave Roja / No Pasarán Pan y Rosas Brought online by TV PTS (Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas) of Argentina on 27 July 2009, for the march today against the coup in Honduras. En Clave Roja, <www.enclaveroja.org.ar>; No Pasarán <www.np.org.ar>; and Pan y Rosas <www.pyr.org.ar>.
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
Venezuela: Class Struggle Heats Up over Battle for Workers’ Control
On July 22, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez again declared his complete support for the proposal by industrial workers for a new model of production based on workers’ control. This push from Chavez, part of the socialist revolution, aims at transforming Venezuela’s basic industry. However, it faces resistance from within the state bureaucracy and the revolutionary […]
Independence Is a Hard-earned Reality in Iran
Iranians are writing their history. The pen of the revolutionaries of the 1970s has been supplemented by the keyboard of a new generation. Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters perfected clandestine pamphleteering and the distribution of audio cassettes to subvert the regime of the shah; today’s activists use Facebook and Twitter to get their message across. This is […]
Iran’s Quiet Revolution: Mohammad Javad Jahangir’s The Invisible Crowd
According to Ervand Abrahamian, a scholar of Iran’s contemporary history, George Rudé’s observation that “perhaps no historical phenomenon has been so thoroughly neglected by historians as the crowd” is particularly true about the Middle East.1 While European journalists have invariably portrayed oriental crowds as “xenophobic mobs” hurling insults and bricks at Western embassies, local conservatives […]
Dissecting Utopia: New Book Assesses Latin American Left
Patrick Barrett, Daniel Chavez, and Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito, eds., The New Latin American Left: Utopia Reborn, Pluto Press (2008), 320 pages. The conflict in Honduras has been an ongoing challenge for governments across the political spectrum in Latin America. In the years leading up to this tense and decisive event a number of leaders and social […]
How Many Leftists Are “United for Iran”?
So, how many leftists are United for Iran? “8,000 people at the event in Paris, 4,000 in Stockholm, 3,000 in Amsterdam, more than 2,500 in Washington DC, 2,500 in New York, 2,000 in London. . . ,” says United4Iran.org, the sponsor of the global day of action on 25 July 2009. The low numbers1 (in […]
“Me Detain Zelaya? What Are You Saying!”
Today in passing, a Honduran colleague told me that the latest news was that the national police were on strike because they had not been paid and that, when the de facto regime’s designate to run the Treasury, Gabriela Nuñez, said she would get them back pay, they said they would refuse to accept […]
The Decline of Manufacturing and Machine Tools, and the Future of American Industry and the Working Class
The U.S. economy continued in a deep recession and hopes for a rapid recovery faded as new national unemployment figures of 9.5 percent were announced early this month. If one includes discouraged workers and the underemployed (those with part-time jobs who would like full-time work) in the calculations, then the figure soars to 16.5 percent. […]
Honduras Solidarity Protest at the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, Florida
Take Action in Solidarity with the People of Honduras Gather on Saturday, July 25 at 10:30 am at NW 87th Ave & NW 36th St in Miami On June 28, SOA-trained Honduran generals overthrew the democratically-elected government of President Manuel Zelaya in a military coup. The Honduran social movements are resisting the coup regime and […]
Riding the “Green Wave” at the Campaign for Peace and Democracy and Beyond
There are many problems with the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s “Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis,” issued by the CPD on July 7, and widely circulated since then.1 The CPD adopted this format, it tells us, because “some on the left, and others as well, have questioned the legitimacy of and the need […]
Telling the Stories of Iranian Women’s Lives
I was 10 years old and every week my mother would buy Zan-e Rooz (Today’s Woman), Iran’s highest circulation women-oriented publication, from the neighborhood newsstand. She always said that when I read a magazine I can speak better. My sisters and I would wait for the magazine every Saturday, and I particularly enjoyed reading […]
Manuel Zelaya: Democracy Has a Price and I Am Prepared to Pay It
When the Managua embassy press conference of the constitutional president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya Rosales ended, I was able to get into the president’s vehicle along with his Minister of the Presidency, Enrique Flores Lanza, to go to an interview with international media. In just a few days — or perhaps hours — President Zelaya […]
Branding “Free Iran”
By the way, do you know that you can get free “Free Iran” t-shirts, “donated by American Apparel, a company that supports liberty and open minded thinking by people worldwide”? Supporting all Iranian People and their freedom T-shirts were donated by American Apparel, a company that supports liberty and open minded thinking by people worldwide. […]
Interview with Simone Bitton, Director of Rachel
How would you tell the story of your movie Rachel? It is a cinematographic inquiry into the death of a young girl who was crushed by a military vehicle in a diseased country. This young girl was American, the vehicle was an Israeli bulldozer, and the country is Palestine and Israel — a region whose […]
Honduras: Anti-Chavez “Free Speech” Warriors Linked to Coup
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) is well known for its mission to expose the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez as a threat to free speech “all over the continent.” These brave free speech warriors made a big deal this year about how they “dared” to hold a meeting in the Venezuelan capital, “defying” […]
Honduras: The Hour of the Grassroots
Three weeks after the June 28 military coup that expelled Honduran President Mel Zelaya and claimed to overthrow his government, the country remains shaken by a profound and dynamic popular upsurge demanding Zelaya’s return and the restoration of democracy. The collapse on July 18 of the much-touted “negotiation dialogue” between Zelaya’s government delegation and representatives […]
Private Insurance Is a Defective Product
Testimony of Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., to the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, 24 June 2009, Washington Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. I’m Steffie Woolhandler. I am a primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard. I also co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program. Our […]
Tehran, the 30th of Tir 1388 / 21 July 2009
On one hand, protests in support of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, on the 57th anniversary of the 30th of Tir (20 July 1952). Haft-e Tir Square, Tehran On the other hand, Parivash Fatemi, the widow of Hossein Fatemi, who served as Mohammad Mossadegh’s Foreign Minister and was the driving force behind his oil nationalization program, says that […]
Brazil: Amorim Calls Hillary and Criticizes Mediation by Arias
Foreign Affairs Minister Celso Amorim yesterday phoned U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in New Delhi, India, to “express concern” about the slow pace and handling of the negotiations for the reinstatement of the democratic order in Honduras, the Brazilian Minister’s press office said. Amorim conveyed Brazil’s criticism to Hillary regarding the way […]
Cartoonists Say No to the Coup in Honduras
Cuban Cartoonists’ Appeal to Their Colleagues in the World We have learned, thanks to the alternative Web site Rebelión, that, in the morning of Tuesday, the 30th of June, Honduran cartoonist and frequent contributor to this portal Allan McDonald was arrested and taken by force from his house, along with his 17-month-old daughter. The brutalities […]
