Archive | Commentary

  In Philadelphia, thousands of striking SEPTA transportation workers and members of the Transport Workers Union Local 234 are facing persistent attacks by politicians and the media.  NPR’s initial coverage of the strike seemed largely aimed at inciting tension between commuters and the striking workers.  It even gave credence to Mayor Michael Nutter’s absurd criticism: […]

Dr. Baburam Bhattarai is a leading figure of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist. WPRM: Thank you for meeting with us today.  In your article in The Worker #4 ‘The Political Economy of the People’s War’ you write that “the transformation of one social system into another, or the destruction of the old by the […]

Over 21,000 people in Okinawa protested on Sunday to demand the removal of the US bases from the prefecture, criticizing the plan to only relocate the Futenma US air base from its current location of Ginowan City to the Henoko district of Nago City, also in Okinawa.  US President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive […]

A shift in US policies toward Iran was already discernible at the end of the Bush presidency.  With the extreme right wing of the neoconservative movement marginalized and the US army bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration amended its policies in accordance with a re-assessment of the United States’ capabilities after the […]

  The Iranian nuclear crisis has been on the international agenda for nearly eight years now.  At the heart of the matter is Iran’s insistence on its right under the IAEA protocols to uranium enrichment, and international concern lest the Islamic regime acquire the capability to develop nuclear weapons should it decide to embark on […]

Bertha Oliva, Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH): I believe that the accord was destined to come out bad.  As a general rule, you can’t sit down and negotiate under imposition and repression.  This was what happened before, during, and after the agreement. . . . Jesse Freeston: The accord was broken […]

Tariq Ali, a co-editor of New Left Review, is the author of The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power as well as more than a dozen other books. Raza Naeem: Given that much of your recent writing has focused exclusively on Latin America and the Middle East, why this sudden motivation to […]

Too Late to Have Free Elections This Month, She Says from Washington Washington, D.C. — Bertha Oliva, the head of Honduras’ most well-known and respected human rights organization, called on the Obama administration to denounce the “grave human right violations” in Honduras. “How can it be that the United States government is silent while Hondurans […]

Our community is distraught by the tragic shooting at Fort Hood yesterday.  We extend our condolences to the families and friends of the victims. As upset as we are about this incident, this shooting does not come as a shock.  Eight years of senseless wars have taken a huge toll on our troops and their […]

Where is the U.S. peace movement when the White House is preparing to escalate the Afghanistan war for the second time since President Barack Obama took office over 10 months ago? The Bush era antiwar movement has ebbed and flowed a few times since it abruptly materialized just after 9/11 and then exploded into a […]

Madam Chair and Members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the employment and unemployment data we released this morning. In October, the unemployment rate rose to 10.2 percent, the highest rate since April 1983, and nonfarm payroll employment declined by 190,000.  Since the start of the recession, payroll employment has fallen […]

The constitutional president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, said the Tegucigalpa/San José agreement failed, along with what was thought to be the attempt to end the political crisis in this Central American country.  His declaration came after the unilateral formation of an alleged Government of Unity and Reconciliation by the de facto Honduran regime. Speaking to […]

Cf. Amnesty International, “Thirsting for Justice: Palestinian Access to Water Restricted” (27 October 2009). Gervasio Umpiérrez is a cartoonist based in Montevideo, Uruguay. | | Print

Part 1: Eight Years and Counting The United States invasion and occupation of Afghanistan entered its ninth year in October, and the majority of Americans now tell opinion polls they want it to end.  So far the war has failed to achieve U.S. objectives, and it is likely the Obama Administration’s expansion of the fighting […]

In stark contrast to the surge of pro-LGBT activism, and legislative and legal progress in recent months, Maine voters overturned equal marriage rights on Election Day by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. Voter turnout of nearly 50 percent, local efforts by 8,000 volunteers — many of them straight — and a national […]

“We have no other word but crisis to describe it, really.  It’s very different than the economic crisis that we are now in, in the sense that even a very, very severe economic crisis, such as the one that has been present since late 2007 . . . still is, in many ways, a cyclical […]

When promising ideas threaten to be sunk under the transatlantic waters. . . . On 28 October, a new German government took office.  A coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling conservative Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) as junior partner replaced the Grand Coalition of conservatives (CDU/CSU) and social democrats […]

  “It’s beginning to increasingly look as if this urge to the 10% growth rate and democracy are mutually incompatible . . . because this growth has been based on . . . the displacement of millions of people off their land.  It’s based on extracting minerals and harnessing rivers in a way that is […]

Paper delivered at the plenary session of the 2009 National Conference of the Philippine Sociological Society held at the PSSC Building on 16 October 2009 Why does the ideology of neoliberalism still exercise such influence in the Philippines despite the challenges it has faced from both the Asian and now global financial crisis? This paper […]

Speaking to a delegation of American doctors visiting the Gaza Strip on October 29, Hamas Prime Minister Esmail Haniya acknowledged an “optimistic mood” in the region, thanks to the Obama Administration. He commended “Obama’s new language” and called for direct dialogue between Hamas and the US — words that sent shockwaves throughout the upper echelons […]