Archive | Commentary

It was as if some official, perhaps one of President Obama’s “czars,” like the Czar for Demolishing American Credibility, had orchestrated a systematic campaign to isolate the US from the rest of the world, make it a political laughingstock and, finally, render it a second-rate power capable of throwing around tremendous military weight but absolutely […]

  The Anthony Hyman Memorial Lecture, School of Oriental and African Studies University of London, 2009 I feel both honoured and gratified to be offering the 7th Anthony Hyman Memorial Lecture.  This gives me the opportunity to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Tony for his unwavering support and friendship over the years.  When I […]

“What made Spence dangerous to the bourgeoisie was not that he was a proletarian nor that he had ideas opposed to private property but that he was both.” — Peter Linebaugh.2 ‘Poorest of the Poor’ and Politics It is always easy to criticize and dismiss an argument in its weakest formulation.  Attacking the policies of […]

Henry Kissinger said that diplomacy is the “art of restraining power.”  Obviously, the most influential ideologue on US foreign policy of the twenty-first century was referring to the necessity to “restrain the power” of other countries and governments in order to maintain the dominant world power of the United States.  Presidents in the style of […]

  Jasmin Hristov.  Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia.   Ohio University Research in International Studies Series.  Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009. xxiii + 263 pp. 28.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-89680-267-4. Jasmin Hristov’s book is an exploration of the history and evolution of armed paramilitary forces in Colombia, focusing primarily on the past two decades.  […]

Court Refuses to Hold U.S. Officials Accountable for Complicity in Torture Abroad November 2, 2009, New York  — Today, a federal Court of Appeals dismissed Canadian citizen Maher Arar’s case against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and interrogated for a year.  Arar is represented by the Center […]

  To Candidate Member of the Politburo of the CC CPSU USSR Minister of Defense Comrade Dmitry Timofeevich Yazov Moscow, USSR Ministry of Defense The Afghan problem continues to attract attention in the sphere of international affairs.  It begins to cause a certain concern on the part of the Soviet people as well.  This is […]

The Maoist movement in India is a direct consequence of the tragedy of India ruled by her big bourgeoisie and governed by parties co-opted by that class-fraction.  The movement now threatens the accumulation of capital in its areas of influence, prompting the Indian state to intensify its barbaric counter-insurgency strategy to throttle it.  In trying […]

  Ilana Feldman.  Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917-1967.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. xii + 324 pp. 84.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8223-4222-9; 23.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-4240-3. Governance at some level is collectively and discursively conducted in the sense that the whole of society has a share in the making of its […]

  Lecture delivered at the Economic and Black Labor Forum, the Philadelphia Community Institute for Africana Studies, 22 October 22 2009 The present Great Recession is the latest and largest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  During the Great Depression over half of all African-American men were unemployed.  The present Great […]

  Notes of Anatoly S. Chernyaev Shevardnadze: In the country and in the provinces they created authoritative organizations for reconciliation.  They are working actively.  There is a special committee for refugees.  Many [rebel] bands — although they are not big — stopped armed struggle.  Najib leaves a very good impression.  However, not everybody supports him, […]

The National Front of Resistance against the Coup d’Etát, facing the imminent signing of a negotiated agreement between the commission representing the legitimate President Manuel Zelaya Rosales and the representatives of the de facto regime, communicates the following to the Honduran people and the international community: 1. We celebrate the upcoming restoration of President Manuel […]

Crises expose the system’s irrationalities and wasteful resource allocations.  For example, Madoff and his many, smaller imitators reveal the tips of corruption icebergs.  More important, the crisis-induced fiscal emergencies looming in most of the 50 states demonstrate several absurdities in our economic system. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) in Washington, DC monitors […]

187 with Cuba at the UN Alfredo Martirena Hernández was born in 1965 in Santa Clara, Cuba.  This cartoon was published by Rebelión on 1 November 2009.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

Mike Whitney: In your new book, The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know, you allude to right-wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which promote a “free market” ideology.  How successful have these organizations been in shaping public opinion about capitalism?  Do you think that […]

  Notes of Anatoly S. Chernyaev Gorbachev: My intuition tells me — something is worrisome.  I am afraid we are losing time!  Everybody is getting used to it.  I guess they say, well, there is a war going on, everything in its turn, such is life.  “The strange war!” — soon they will attach this […]

(for Hafiz) The stillest fall of all is the fall from grace.  No louder than a feather falling in a forest, and yet we fall.  There are many ways to kill a man.  Gun and knife will work well but to make a man irrelevant will also do, and what better way to ignore an […]

At long last and after decades of talking about doing something about the subsidies, there is a bill before Iran’s majlis to target (but not remove) subsidies.  I could not locate the bill itself but my impression is that it only addresses energy subsidies and not other subsidies such as food and medicine.  So far […]

Washington, D.C. — News of a deal that would effectively end the coup d’etat in Honduras and restore democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya to office would be a “victory for democracy in the hemisphere” resulting from the continued resistance of the Honduran people and pressure from Latin American governments, Center for Economic and Policy Research […]

GDP grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate in the 3rd quarter, driven by a 22.4 percent jump in car sales, the result of the Cash for Clunkers (C4C) program.  This increase in car sales accounted for 42.0 percent of the growth in the quarter.  Consumption as a whole, which grew at a 3.4 percent […]