Archive | Commentary

  While supporters of Troy Davis, including Bob Barr and Pope Benedict, were overjoyed that the US Supreme Court ordered the Georgia district court last month to determine “whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes petitioner’s [Davis’s] innocence,” the ruling may still bode ill. Newly-appointed Sonia Sotomayor […]

به یاد پرویز مشکاتیان تمنا Parviz Meshkatian, an Iranian musician and composer, died of a heart attack in Tehran on 21 September 2009.  He was 54 years old.

  The Obama administration’s decision to scrap the Bush era anti-missile defense plans in Eastern Europe was actually expected.  Nonetheless, this was a very pragmatic move on the part of Washington.  However, the immediate talk and plans for a different American-led “stronger, smarter, and swifter” anti-missile strategy was not helpful.  I will reserve judgment on […]

On the 19th September this year, the 3rd anniversary of the military coup that wrecked Thai democracy, two demonstrations took place.  They sum up the two faces of Thailand. One demonstration, by tens of thousands of Red Shirts in Bangkok, was organised in order to continue the demand for full democracy.  It was a peaceful […]

Lack of health insurance now more lethal. A new study estimates that nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance.  That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002. The new study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” appears […]

The stars are aligning for a winnable and worthwhile fight on U.S. policy in Afghanistan in the next several weeks: stopping the Obama Administration from sending more troops. It should be winnable, because the public is against sending more troops, the overwhelming majority of Democrats are against sending more troops, key Democrats in Congress have […]

Umut Özkırımlı, Spyros A. Sofos.  Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.  viii + 220 pp.  $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-70052-8. Tormented by History by Umut Özkırımlı and Spyros A. Sofos provides a comparative approach to Turkish and Greek nationalisms from the late nineteenth century to the present.  The […]

  Gervasio Umpiérrez is a cartoonist based in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Howard Zinn makes a call to attend the People’s Summit in Pittsburgh and protest the G20, 20-25 September 2009. “The idea of the People’s Summit, one which can declare to the deciders of society, we don’t like your policies, and here’s what we think should happen.  The People’s Summit should have an agenda and say, […]

Iraqi trade unionists participated in a panel of Middle Eastern unionists at a reception held at the USWA headquarters on 16 September 2009 during the 2009 Pittsburgh AFL-CIO convention.  The trade unionists from Iraq who spoke were Falah Alwan, President of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq, and Rasim Hussain Abdullah Al-Awady […]

No subject arouses the passion of our labor officialdom more than “raiding.”  In his blustery maiden address as president of the AFL-CIO, Rich Trumka won thunderous applause last Wednesday by announcing that anyone daring to “raid an AFL-CIO union will find 1,000 organizers coming to the rescue of that union.” In trade unions that too […]

It started with a Single Payer caucus at 8 in the morning where Mark Dudzic, Rose Ann DeMoro, and others brought us up to date on how they saw the day unfolding. The two-resolution agreement was holding up.  The resolutions would be discussed after the Obama speech.  The general sentiment of the meeting was that […]

Dear friends, I’d like to let you know about an important conference that will take place in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 29: “Death by Sanctions: The Conference to Ban Economic Sanctions,” sponsored by the Committee to Ban Economic Sanctions of the National Association of Muslim American Women. The Conference to Ban Economic Sanctions September 29, […]

The overall CPI rose by 0.4 percent in August, driven by a 4.6 percent jump in energy prices.  The core CPI increased by just 0.1 percent for the second consecutive month.  The overall CPI has risen at a 4.9 percent annual rate for the last quarter, compared to a drop of 1.5 percent over the […]

Exactly one year ago, the Wall Street investment bank Lehmann Brothers was allowed to go bust, in a move that is generally seen to have brought on the global financial crisis.  Shock waves hit the financial markets; stock markets collapsed in waves of contagion across the world; credit seized up in most developed and many […]

BMR:What is the likely impact of the present financial crisis on geopolitics, especially if the crisis is considered in the context of the energy crisis including the peak oil issue, the food crisis, The Great Hunger, the environmental crisis, and the declining dollar?  Will the world experience war(s) as an effort to survive?  Will monopoly-finance […]

US workers’ real wages (money wages adjusted for the prices workers actually pay) have not risen from their levels in the 1970s.  Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data confirm that real wages continued to stagnate through 2009.  Across the same 30-year period, the productivity of labor kept rising: the average worker produced ever more output […]

Lesson One See the U.S. President.  See the U.S. President give billions of tax dollars to help failing investment firms.  See the U.S. President decide that terrorism suspects can be held without trial in “prolonged detention.”  See the U.S. President oppose gay marriage and expand the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. President is black.  Yet […]

“Admit that now you have more freedom of expression . . . or I will kill you.” Juan Kalvellido, born in Cádiz, Andalucía, Spain in 1968, is a working-class cartoonist who has never stopped believing in revolution. He currently lives in Fuengirola, Málaga, Spain. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).

Joseph Andoni Massad.  Desiring Arabs.   Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007 . xiv + 453 pp.  $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-226-50958-7. With Desiring Arabs, Joseph Massad makes a significant contribution to the existing scholarship on sexuality.  He merits praise for boldly tackling the problematic of knowledge in a world that continues to be unevenly carved […]