Archive | Commentary

There were great hopes in Latin America when President Obama was elected.  U.S. standing in the region had reached a low point under George W. Bush, and all of the hemisphere’s left-leaning governments expressed optimism that Obama would go in a different direction. These hopes have been dashed.  President Obama has continued the Bush policies […]

  اعتراف می کنم Mana Neyestani, born in Tehran in 1973, is an Iranian cartoonist.  He is Azeri himself, but his 12 May 2006 cartoon depicting a cockroach that appeared to speak in Azeri led to riots of Azeris in Iran, which in turn got him arrested.  A collection of his cartoons commenting on the […]

  February 2009 marked 10 years since Hugo Chavez took office, following a landslide election victory, and launched his revolution to bring radical change to Venezuela.  While wildly popular with many in the country, Chavez’s policies and his outspoken criticisms of the U.S. government have made him powerful enemies, both at home and abroad, especially […]

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which began with a dispute over the 21 November 2004 run-off vote between the leading presidential candidates, ended by installing Viktor Yushchenko, the Western favorite who cried fraud, into presidency on 23 January 2005.  Ian Traynor of the Guardian put the price tag of the Orange Revolution at about $14 […]

  Martin Savidge: What do you think will happen if the United States were to try to impose gasoline sanctions on Iran? Trita Parsi: I think, first of all, it’s going be very difficult to impose effective gasoline sanctions on Iran because you would have to get the cooperation of all the countries in the […]

Every week, Marcia Carroll collects examples of privatization (that is, corporatization of the peoples’ assets).  Looking at her website, Privatizationwatch.org, will either make you laugh helplessly or make your blood boil. The “off the wall” giveaways at bargain-basement prices of what you and other Americans own eclipses imagination.  The latest escapes from responsible government are […]

  In the Beginning I am a child of the cold war.  I was born in 1940, was an adolescent in the 1950s, and devoid of political consciousness when President Eisenhower warned of the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” in 1960.   I was modestly inspired by the young President Kennedy’s […]

  Labor Express interviews four Honduran civil society leaders, who visited Chicago on 7-8 August 2009 as part of the Honduras Coup Resistance Speaking Tour sponsored by the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC): Abencio Fernández Pineda, Gerardo Torres, Maria Luisa Jimenez, and Luther Castillo. Play now: “We are here, in the […]

  On Tuesday, July 21st, the United Nations Development Program launched its 5th Arab Human Development Report (AHDR).  The independently prepared report was not presented to the public prior to its publication, but criticism began to surface even before it was released, both from researchers involved in the report and from observers. Wujohat Nazar (Perspectives) […]

Forbes Magazine publishes an annual list of the 400 wealthiest Americans (the “Forbes 400”).  For each member of the Forbes 400, a very short description of his/her primary source of wealth is also published.  Here are the sources of wealth from which the most wealth has been derived by members of the first annual to […]

Honduras’s three principal labor centrals, the Unitary Confederation of Honduran Workers (CUTH), the General Workers Central (CGT), and the Confederation of Honduran Workers (CTH) began an open-ended national strike on 6 August 2009. * * * Communiqué The three workers confederations of Honduras, CUTH, CGT, and CTH address the critical political situation that prevails in […]

  The Media, the Left, and Power Tanner Mirrlees: Why do you think it is important for progressives to understand the media and participate in media democracy struggles? Robert McChesney: The media is one of the key areas in society where power is exercised, reinforced, and contested.  It is hard to imagine a successful left […]

  The history of the West Asia for over a century is one long history of how colonial and imperialist powers, both old and new, have arrogantly plundered, looted, dismembered, manipulated and raped a region for their unbridled self interests.  It is a history of total disregard and callous disrespect for the peoples of this […]

  Slide Presentation and Discussion: MOHAMMAD JAVAD JAHANGIR, THE INVISIBLE CROWD Presented by Mohammad Salemy Friday, August 14, 2009, 8:30 pm Little Mountain Studios 195 E. 26th Ave (at Main St.), Vancouver, B.C. Canada From Mohammad Javad Jahangir, The Invisible Crowd “Do not write the history of Iran in a foreign hand” DADABASE is pleased […]

The people of Honduras have now suffered more than 40 days of military rule.  The generals’ June 28 coup, crudely re-packaged in constitutional guise, ousted the country’s elected government and unleashed severe, targeted, and relentless repression. The grassroots protests have matched the regime in endurance and outmatched it in political support within the country and […]

Early in the morning on August 5th, one of the most notable left-wing political philosophers of the English-speaking world, Gerald Allan Cohen, (G. A. Cohen) or as he liked to be called by his friends, Jerry Cohen, died after suffering a massive stroke at the age of 68.  Jerry Cohen was probably best known for […]

  Birgit Müller.   The Disenchantment with Market Economics: East Germans and Western Capitalism.  Translated by John Bellamy, Jennie Challender, and Kathleen Repper.  European Anthropology in Translation.  New York: Berghahn Books, 2007.  ix + 244 pp.  $80.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-84545-217-9; $27.50 (paper), ISBN 978-1-84545-506-4. “Disenchantment with market economics” is the type of phrase that comes […]

On 6 August 2009, the 40th day of the killing of Kianoush Asa, in Kermanshah, Iran. . . .

  Iran, a major oil producing and exporting country, also imports gasoline because of inadequate refining capacity and rising petrol consumption.  This article examines the problems faced by an economy dependent on the export of crude oil and gas that are compounded by the dilemmas of rising domestic consumption, a significant decline in productive capacity, […]

The economy lost 247,000 jobs in July, bringing the rate of job loss over the last three months to 331,000.  This is down sharply from the 700,000 monthly rate of decline in the months from November to February.  The unemployment rate actually slid slightly to 9.4 percent, although this was entirely attributable to people dropping […]