Archive | Commentary

Faced with the growing impact of the global economic crisis, Washington’s intentions to establish seven military bases in Colombia, and growing challenges in solving structural problems, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reaffirmed the need to build a new state. Chavez explained: “We have inherited a capitalist state that serves the interests of the bourgeoisie and is […]

On Friday, September 25, 2009, activists from environmental, youth, labor, church, poverty advocacy, single payer, and various anti-capitalist organizations carried out a march on the G20 Summit in downtown Pittsburgh.  The protest was estimated to be 5,000 strong. Filmed and edited by Jeb Sprague, for the Inter Press Service (IPS).  See, also, Sprague’s video commentary […]

“Solidarity” is the name of the poem written by a University of California Berkeley student and read on 24 September 2009 at a mass rally of over 5,000 workers, faculty, staff, and community supporters in Berkeley, California. Produced by the Labor Video Project (P.O. Box 720027, San Francisco 94172; 415-282-1908; ; ).

“We need jobs, we need health care, we need education, we need housing.  We don’t need the United Police States of America.” — Cindy Sheehan

University of California faculty, students, and workers rallied against state budget cuts and unfair labor practices at 10 campuses and five medical centers from San Diego to Davis on September 24. As a boycott of classes to protest teachers’ unpaid days off (furloughs) and students’ double-digit fee increases unfolded across the state, members of the […]

NYT Fails to Include Advocates among ‘Diverse’ Experts The New York Times devoted some rare space on September 20 to discussing single-payer (or Medicare-for-all) health reform.  The result?  A one-sided account of why such a system couldn’t work. With a headline like “Medicare for All?  ‘Crazy,’ ‘Socialized’ and Unlikely,” readers probably had a sense of […]

Can Iran beat gasoline sanctions?  The answer seems to be yes. On the front page of the Financial Times on 23 September 2009 (Javier Blas and Carola Hoyos, “Chinese Begin Petrol Supplies to Iran”): Chinese state companies this month began supplying petrol to Iran and now provide up to one-third of its imports in a […]

The 2009 G20 Summit in Pittsburgh will be held September 24th and 25th, attended by leaders from the most powerful countries.  This footage — of activists in Pittsburgh organizing against the G20 Summit, including labor, fair trade, living wage, community, and socialist organizers  — was filmed on September 23rd, 2009 at the teach-in at the […]

Rights Group Critical of New DOJ Policy Promises September 23, 2009, New York — In response to news the Attorney General is establishing new policy on the question of the use of the state secrets privilege, the Center for Constitutional Rights issues the following statement: While CCR welcomes greater accountability in the Executive’s invocation of […]

  Anastasia Pinto is executive director of the Center for Organizing, Research and Education in India.

22 September 2009 Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returned to Honduras yesterday; President Zelaya is under the protection of the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.  The coup regime immediately declared a curfew; Honduran military and police have surrounded the embassy, violently dispersing President Zelaya’s supporters. As Secretary of State Clinton has noted, the question of whether President […]

  Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar.  The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.  xiv + 288 pp.  $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-13846-8; (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-51101-8. Over the last couple decades, histories of the partition of India and its consequences have proliferated.  But Vazira Zamindar’s study stands […]

Dear friends, This is a national appeal for your help in the effort to save one of this country’s most important Black History sites — an effort that has now reached a critical stage. Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom was once the site of the second largest slave market in the United States.  In the three decades […]

  Asia Society’s exhibition Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan (10 September 2009 through 3 January 2010) brings to New York some of Pakistan’s most significant, provocative, and influential artists in the first US museum survey exhibition of contemporary Pakistani art.  Hanging Fire is curated by Salima Hashmi, one of the most influential and well-respected […]

Now that President Zelaya has returned to Honduras, the coup government — after first denying that he was there — has unleashed a wave of repression to prevent people from gathering support for their elected president.  This is how U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the first phase of this new repression last night […]

  Laurent Dubois.  Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.  384 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-01304-9; $20.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-674-01826-6. Laurent Dubois’s Avengers of the New World builds on a body of Caribbean scholarship that has been torn between trying to place Haiti’s independence from France […]

  Come one, come all Down to the hall We’re gonna make noise We’re gonna bust balls We’re gonna disrupt We’re gonna jump in the fray I got a list of all the things that we’re supposed to say We’re gonna get real rowdy Have a barrel of fun But we’re the USA, so by […]

BAHAWALPUR, 22 September 2009 (IRIN) — Fears have been raised of a possible increase in food insecurity in Pakistan if a deal to lease out 202,342.8 hectares of farmland to Saudi Arabia goes ahead. Talks are reportedly under way between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to finalize an agreement.  The land, to be acquired in all […]

September 21, 2009 Washington, D.C. — President Manuel Zelaya’s reported return to Honduras would be a significant move and could force an end to the political crisis that followed the June 28 coup d’etat, Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said today. “This could be the moment of truth for […]