Archive | Commentary

July 13, 2009 Things are getting worse each day inside Honduras.  Over the weekend, two well-known social leaders were assassinated by the coup forces.  Roger Bados leader of the Bloque Popular & the National Resistance Front against the coup d’etat, was killed in the northern city of San Pedro Sula.  Approximately at 8pm on Saturday […]

Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, Simon Reich, eds.  Immigration, Integration, and Security: America and Europe in Comparative Perspective.   The Security Continuum: Global Politics in the Modern Age.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.  xi + 480 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8229-4344-0; $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8229-5984-7. Migration and security have always been linked, but, as Ariane Chebel […]

Abdelwahab El-Affendi is a well-known Islamic scholar and political philosopher from Sudan, presently based in London.  Author of numerous works, his latest book, provocatively titled Who Needs an Islamic State? discusses what he regards as the serious lacunae in contemporary Islamist political thought, which, in his view, have caused Islamist movements to reach a virtual […]

  The Slovenian philosopher and sociologist Slavoj Zizek argues that tolerance constitutes a mystifying discourse veiling what is really at the heart of political and social struggle.  There is good reason, Zizek argues, that someone like Martin Luther King didn’t make use of the concept.  The struggle against racism is not a struggle for tolerance, […]

  David Jan Sorkin.  The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.  xv + 339 pp.  $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-13502-1. On January 14, 1791, the Comte de Mirabeau delivered a speech to the National Assembly in defense of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the controversial project […]

Did a CID-Gallup poll last week indicate that a plurality of Hondurans support the military coup against democratically elected President Zelaya?  Yes, according to the Washington Post (July 9), the Wall Street Journal (July 10), the Christian Science Monitor (July 11), and Reuters (July 9), which all reported that the poll showed 41% in favor […]

  ایران ای سرای امید On 17 June 2009, Mehr News reported that Mohammad Reza Shajarian wrote a letter to Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Managing Director Ezzatollah Zarghami, objecting to the airing of his works on Iranian state TV and radio: “As you know, IRIB repeatedly airs my epic songs particularly ‘O Iran, O […]

Artists mobilize again to repudiate the coup d’état and the de facto government in Honduras, in what we shall call the Plaza of Resistance, where Isis Obed Murillo was murdered on the 5th of July. 11 July 2009 Red Lésbica Cattrachas is a lesbian feminist group.  For more information, contact Cattrachas general coordinator Indyra M. […]

These protesters that the Associated Press chose to label just “Iranian-Americans” (see below) are the Mojahedin (one of whose front groups the “National Coalition of Pro-Democracy Advocates” is as you can plainly see from its Web site promoting the cause of “Iranian Opposition Members in Camp Ashraf, Iraq“), Republicans, and their “useful idiots” who have […]

Since 2005, Israel has implemented a “welfare to work” program (dubbed the Wisconsin Plan) that serves primarily to punish and further impoverish the country’s most vulnerable residents, particularly Palestinians, Mizrahis, and ultra-orthodox Jewish religious families. This video was brought online by the Alternative Information Center on 1 July 2009.

Even before the crisis over the election outcome broke, the prognosis for Iran in the coming year was not good.  Back in October oil prices had started to fall and the contractionary measures taken by the Central Bank several months earlier to rein in inflation had slowed the economy.  Last year, Iran’s imports had soared […]

  The exit from the systemic crisis of capitalism needs to be political, and “a socialist project can mature in this turbulence.”  So says the Argentine economist, philosopher, and sociologist Claudio Katz, who also warns that the “global economic situation is very serious and is going to have to hit bottom, and now we are […]

Let’s do a couple of thought experiments. The former U.S. representative and Green Party presidential candidate, Cynthia McKinney, leaves on a humanitarian mission to Iran alongside several other international activists.  They are arrested, harassed, detained for several days, and their humanitarian aid, films, cameras, PCs taken away from them to leave no evidence behind. Can […]

On my last day in Tegucigalpa, I conducted an interview with writer/documentarian Manuel Antonio Villa, 37, who for the last seven years has traveled through his country studying the economic circumstances of the peasantry and the workers.  For Villa, Honduras has entered a new, revolutionary era, while the golpe against Mel Zelaya has commenced a […]

The military coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras took a new turn when Zelaya attempted to return home on Sunday.  The military closed the airport and blocked runways to prevent his plane from landing.  They also shot several protesters, killing at least one and injuring others. The violence and the enormous crowd — […]

Capitalism has generated recurring “crises” everywhere and throughout its history.  It alternates bursts of growth and prosperity with crisis periods when many workers lose jobs and homes, bankruptcies close enterprises, production shrinks, and governments reduce public services.  Growth periods almost always promote speculation, overproduction, inflation, and excess debts that crises then erase or even reverse.  […]

Protests in support of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and in commemoration of the 18th of Tir (9 July 1999). Taleghani and Vali Asr, Tehran Amir Abad Street, Tehran Fatemi Street, Tehran Keshavarz Blvd., Tehran Kooye Daneshgah, Tehran Tohid Square, Tehran

One image stands out from the Lalgarh resistance.  Chattradhar Mahato, the most visible leader of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), distributing food to ordinary villagers — not as a high-up leader doing charity but as one among them.  Is this the ‘new’ image of the Maoist?  But maybe Mahato is not a Maoist […]

The “Iranian people” have not spoken. What’s happening in Iran today is a developing conflict between two forces that each represent millions of people.  There are good people on both sides and the issues are complicated.  So before U.S. progressives decide to weigh in, supporting one side and condemning the other, let’s take a little […]

  Monday, July 13, 2009 7:30 pm The Brecht Forum, 451 West Street (between Bank & Bethune Streets), New York Please join us for a roundtable discussion with three leading Iranian analysts: Ervand Abrahamian, Hamid Dabashi, and Arang Keshavarzian.  The discussion will be moderated by Leili Kashani and be opened up to the public.  Come […]