Archive | Commentary

  Shahram Akbarzadeh, Benjamin MacQueen, eds.  Islam and Human Rights in Practice: Perspectives across the Ummah.  London: Routledge, 2008.  x + 176 pp.  $140.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-44959-5. Islam and Human Rights in Practice: Perspectives across the Ummah addresses a vexing theoretical issue: can contemporary human rights practically inform normative and political structures in the Muslim […]

Doris “Dobby” Brin Walker, the first woman president of the National Lawyers Guild, died on August 13 at the age of 90.  Doris was a brilliant lawyer and a tenacious defender of human rights.  The only woman in her University of California Berkeley law school class, Doris defied the odds throughout her life, achieving significant […]

  Since the coup of 28 June 2009, the world has been focusing on Honduras.  We have already seen images from a country that did not have a history of social movements — at least till now.  So, who are these young people?  Who are the people organizing these marches?  By chance, I was able […]

  For many years, various American governments have called on Israel to stop the expansion of settlements, but Israel has consistently ignored this demand.  The Obama administration has been the most vocal administration so far in articulation of this demand.  Yet unfortunately a number of American individuals and institutions have provided large quantities of material […]

Et la guerre est à peine commencée… “The sleep of our era is not a good sleep that provides rest.  It’s an anxious sleep that leaves you feeling even more worn out, desiring only to go back to sleep again, to escape this irritating reality a little longer.  There is a narcosis that begs for […]

The Great Recession is allowing some widely held beliefs about the U.S. economy — which were the source of much evangelism over the last few decades — to run up against a reality check.  This is to be expected, since the United States has been the epicenter of the storm of policy blunders that caused […]

Our trip to New Orleans gave us the opportunity to visit a unique American city and to speak to survivors of one of the country’s worst natural disasters, Hurricane Katrina. We heard some great stories of hope from Muslim New Orleanians who provided food and water to those, like Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American, who heroically saved people using their personal boats. But it was also from Zeitoun that we heard a different kind of Hurricane Katrina story that left me aghast and ashamed.

Thank you for all that you have done so far to increase U.S. pressure on the coup regime in Honduras.   While the Obama administration’s previous round of targeted sanctions demonstrated great promise in helping to reverse the coup, the administration has since appeared to back down from its position of active support for the […]

13 August 2009, Washington, D. C. — The Obama administration has an obligation to demand that the de facto regime in Honduras stop ongoing political killings and other human rights abuses, Center for Economic and Policy Research Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said today.  Weisbrot noted that human rights observers and international media have documented the killings […]

  This is not the first time that I stand trial for my beliefs.  But it is the first time that they will probably be able to stop me. I always knew that many people silently supported me, and that if I ever got into trouble they would stand behind me.  This moment has come. […]

The overall CPI was unchanged in July while the core index rose by 0.1 percent.  Over the last three months the overall index has increased at a 3.4 percent annual rate, driven by sharply higher energy prices in June.  It is down by 2.1 percent over the last year.  The core index has increased at […]

The military coup carried out by masked soldiers in the early hours of June 28against the democratically elected President of Honduras, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, was a bandit act with differing messages intended for different audiences. One such audience is the oligarchical groupings throughout the hemisphere, who will be emboldened by Washington’s tacit tolerance of […]

Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, whose daughter is married to a son of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the President’s Chief of Staff.  Mr. Mashaei is known for actions that have appalled certain conservative quarters of the Iranian political establishment, such as attending a ceremony in Turkey where women danced and hosting a ceremony in Tehran where women drumming […]

The repression is escalating.  Crackdowns are occurring in San Pedro Sula as well as Tegucigalpa. Micheletti decreta de nuevo el toque de quedaVergonzosa intimidación policial y militar en el STIBYS Our delegation is accounted for and unharmed.  They are now accompanying Honduran human rights workers and sending alarming reports.  Police and military are rounding up […]

  “No matter where we come from, there should never be any support for the US or any outside forces intervening in any country, particularly in Iran.  There should be no sanctions.  Not only sanctions are not humane but are not effective even, for the purpose of people who are doing them. . . . […]

  In the Summer of 1984, under the oversight of U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, I was deported from Honduras with five other Americans for meeting with union representatives who wanted to tell us about the murders and disappearances of their leaders. At the time, the poor nation was known as “the aircraft carrier USS Honduras” […]

  As members of the Board of Iranians For Peace (IFP), we are deeply concerned about the events following June 12 election in Iran particularly the street violence, loss of life, and widespread arrests.  One of the detainees, Dr Bijan Khajehpour Khoei, is a supporter of the IFP. We appeal to the Iranian authorities to […]

John Bellamy Foster.  The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet.  New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009.  328 pp. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels famously urged the world’s workers to unite because they had a world to win, and nothing to lose but their chains.  Today, the reality of climate change and worsening environmental breakdowns […]

This year’s Postal Press Association Editors Conference was abuzz with discussion of the Postal Service’s threats to close hundreds of’ stations.  Virtually every editor present knew of one or more stations at risk in her or his own jurisdiction.  The wolf which has loomed at the APWU‘s door for years — plant closings, job losses, […]

“Amnesty” has become one of the dirtiest words in U.S. politics.  Immigration opponents use it to attack any plan — however restrictive and punitive — to regularize the status of the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.  Immigration advocates avoid the word, substituting euphemisms like “a path to citizenship.” Amnesty’s big problem […]