Archive | Commentary

Talks between Barack Obama and the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships over the past fortnight have unleashed a flood of media interest in the settlements Israel has been constructing on Palestinian territory for more than four decades. The US president’s message is unambiguous: the continuing growth of the settlements makes impossible the establishment of a Palestinian […]

Member of the Knesset, Dr. Afo Agbaria (Hadash fraction) on Wednesday (June 3, 2009) wrote to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, asking that he be allowed to assist the UN investigation on war crimes during the Israeli military’s Operation “Cast Lead” in the Gaza Strip.  International prosecutor Richard Goldstone and his team of investigators arrived […]

  A new five-year study reveals that private sector employer opposition to the efforts of American workers to form unions has intensified and become more punitive in recent years. Conducted by highly-regarded labor expert and Cornell University professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, the study concludes that employers are using much more aggressive tactics — including threats of […]

June 2, 2009 Mr. President, The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) hopes that your speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds will contain practical steps to uphold your administration’s stated intention to seriously deal with the problems that have inflamed resentment and fostered a sense of humiliation among peoples, individuals, and ethnic and […]

A debate between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, candidates for the tenth presidential election of the Islamic Republic of Iran. UPDATE A debate between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, dubbed in English by Press TV Afshin Salimpour, “The Ghost of Elections Past” (Tehran Bureau, 3 June 2009). Shahrazad, “Did Ahmadinejad Win the Debate?” (5 June […]

More than four months after Gaza was devastated by a massive Israeli military bombardment, rebuilding has been slow to come.  The problem is not a lack of funding or will.  However, an Israeli-led blockade has kept all rebuilding materials, including concrete or any tools that could be used to rebuild the hundreds of homes and […]

Chicago, IL (June 3) — For the sixth year in a row, members of Jewish, Christian, and human rights organizations will be present at Caterpillar, Inc.’s annual shareholder meeting to demand that Caterpillar end its complicity with violations of human rights and international law in the occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. Concerned […]

This is the second in a series of articles on “Ideas for the Struggle” by Marta Harnecker. 1.  Popular movements and, more generally, various social actors who are engaged in the struggle against neoliberal globalization today at the international level as well as in their own countries reject, with good reason, actions that aim to […]

Union workers at two companies facing threats of liquidation and layoffs are following the lead of Chicago workers who in December occupied their factory and decided to take their fight to Bank of America.  In the two new battles, the workers’ adversary is another big bank, Wells Fargo, which like Bank of America received $25 […]

Part 1 Part 2 Minqi Li is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and the author of The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy among other publications.  This lecture was delivered at the Marxist School of Sacramento on 21 May 2009. 

  On Monday, June 1, 2009, El Salvador will turn a new page in its history with the inauguration of the country’s first left government, joining the ranks of the majority of Latin America.  Representing the FMLN (Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional), Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sanchez Ceren, president and vice-president elect, will face […]

  Dear friends, The solidarity struggle with Palestinian theatre-artist and activist Samieh Jabbarin, who is still under house arrest in Um Al Fahm, has gained significant resonance in the past two weeks thanks to the publication of journalist Aviva Lori’s extensive coverage of the affair in Haaretz weekend supplement in Hebrew (22.5.09) and English (28.5.09).  […]

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama pledged to close Guantánamo within one year.  The Republicans, led by Senators John McCain, Mitch McConnell, and Pat Roberts, immediately launched a concerted campaign to assail the new president.  They claimed his plan would release dangerous terrorists into U.S. communities and allow released terrorists to resume fighting against […]

  Here is Parsa.  He is ten months old.  He is my nephew and I love him with all my heart and soul.  Parsa was born just eight days after the second sanction resolution against Iran. Parsa has learned a few things since he was born ten months ago.  He points to everything that seems […]

May 28, 2009 If the Oval Office guest list is an indicator, President Obama is making good on his commitment to try to revive the long-dead Arab-Israeli peace process.  On May 18 President Obama received Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; today he met with Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. As […]

“It’s hard,” says an American in Rachel DeWoskin’s Repeat After Me, “to know much about someone whose language you don’t speak.” Communication is not the only difficulty experienced by the people in this nimble first novel.  Whether from the United States or from China, they are angry, guilty, distrustful, insane.  Lovers singe themselves with suspicion […]

  Celia E. Naylor.  African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens.   The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.  Illustrations, maps.  xii + 360 pp.  $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8078-3203-5; $22.50 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8078-5883-7. Debates about the citizenship status of Cherokee freedmen […]

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — decreased at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the first quarter of 2009, (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to preliminary estimates released by the Bureau of […]

  Bahman Ghobadi, born in Baneh on 1 February 1969, is a Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker.  Nobody Knows about the Persian Cats, his latest film, won the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.  Roxana Saberi, his fiancée, is credited as one of the scriptwriters of the film.  Ghobadi’s […]

  Humanism and Human Rights Who or what is the ‘human’ of human rights and the ‘humanity’ of humanitarianism?  The question sounds naïve, silly even.  Yet, important philosophical and ontological questions are involved.  If rights are given to beings on account of their humanity, ‘human’ nature with its needs, characteristics and desires is the normative […]