Archive | Commentary

  James Renton.  The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance 1914-1918.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.  xi + 231 pp. ISBN 978-0-230-54718-6; $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-230-54718-6. The word “masquerade” is not one to be used lightly by historians.  Obviously, James Renton is aware of this, and he strives to justify his choice of […]

The process of establishing a transatlantic free trade area is the inverse of the process that led to the construction of the European Union.  While the European common market is an economic structure based first on the liberalization of trade and then on the creation of a common currency, the transatlantic free trade area is […]

In recent years, there has been a gradual growth in the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, calling for putting economic pressure on Israel until it recognizes the rights of the occupied Palestinian people and puts an end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip […]

This year sees the 20th anniversary of the death of Raymond Williams, one of the towering socialist thinkers of the past century.  A superb biography — Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale — has just been published by Dai Smith.  He charts Williams’s passage from the Welsh border country, where his father was a railway signalman, […]

On November 18, 2008, activists in Cleveland, Ohio came together to form an organization called Ohio Moratorium Now on Foreclosures, Evictions, and Utility Shut-offs.  A Cleveland winter lay ahead of us in one of the most poverty-stricken, foreclosure-ridden cities in the United States.  All around the US on a daily basis came stories of working […]

This Sunday, the Eighth of March, Assemble at Plaza O’Leary at 9 AM in Silence, to March toward Plaza Los Museos, the Location of the Cultural Festival We Are Marching to Open New Paths.  Big Marches Work Their Magic Because We Make the Path by Marching, Which Is the Legacy of the Collective Memory of […]

This campaign film by Amnesty International and Mundi Romani drawing attention to the importance of women and the complexity of the Roma identity was released on 6 March 2009, in time for International Women’s Day.  The campaign seeks to combat the escalating violence against the Roma people in Europe, including Hungary, which is threatening the […]

  Who Am I? / من انا؟ Observer / متفرجة Excerpts from the Book of Aswat / مقتطفات من كتاب أصوات Aswat / أصوات Aswat (Voices) is a group of Palestinian gay women, home to all lesbian, inter-sex, queer, transsexual, transgender, and bisexual women and women who are just beginning to question their sexual identities.

Throughout the seemingly intractable Israel-Palestine conflict, civil society has been active in responding to crises and advocating for peace and justice.  Kathambi Kinoti of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) interviewed Eilat Maoz, a general coordinator of the Coalition of Women for Peace, an Israeli organization that works for peace in Israel and […]

Interview with Eric Toussaint, President of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM), in Havana. Obama Picked People Who Brought You This Crisis as His Advisers What is your opinion of Team Obama? Toussaint: Obama picked the very people who are responsible for this economic fiasco.  Some hoped that Obama would appoint […]

The February employment report showed the labor market deteriorating at an even faster rate, with the unemployment rate rising from 7.6 percent to 8.1 in February.  The economy lost 651,000 jobs in the month, but job loss for the prior two months was revised up as well.  Job loss for the last three months is […]

  Jean-Hugues Ratenon is President of the “Agir Pou Nou Tout” [Act for All of Us] Association, which is part of the Collective of Trade Unions, Political Organizations, and Community Associations of Réunion (COSPAR), the organizer of the social movement. The prefect of Réunion announced, on Thursday, 5 March, a decrease in the price of […]

The implementation of Shari’a reinforced the patriarchal order and institutionalized gender inequality in post-revolutionary Iran.  Nevertheless, the modernization of society has led to profound changes in the lives of Iranian women and in their attitudes regarding men’s authority.  The modernization of women’s attitudes1 has in turn led to their mounting resistance or opposition against gendered […]

  We call on the EU to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement until Israel respects human rights and International Law. The EU is Israel’s biggest importer of goods, and its second biggest exporter.  In 2006 the total traded between the EU and Israel amounted to 23.5 BILLION Euros. The EU-Israel Association Agreement forms the legal […]

שטח סגור | Closed Zone | منطقة مغلقة Despite declarations that it has “disengaged” from the Gaza Strip, Israel maintains control of the Strip’s overland border crossings, territorial waters, and air space.  This includes substantial, albeit indirect, control of the Rafah Crossing. During the past 18 months, Israel tightened its closure of Gaza, almost completely […]

The AFL-CIO has announced that it now supports nationalizing the nation’s banks rather than continuing to spend billions of dollars in repeated efforts to restore them to solvency. The American labor federation, which represents 10 million workers, released a draft statement expected to be approved by its executive council today stating, “We believe the debate […]

Most analysts agree that the chances of immigration reform in the first year or two of Obama’s administration are extremely slim.  We can’t expect politicians and policymakers to take action.  The change we want to see has to come from below. We can make it happen if we unite around a common goal: swift, practical, […]

  Throughout the Middle East, actors across the political spectrum cooperate in ways that were unprecedented before the democratic openings of the early 1990s.  Even though few of these openings have advanced toward democracy, groups that had never previously worked together — indeed, some with long histories as rivals — now routinely cooperate in a […]

The Center for Economic and Policy Research, Center of Concern and Heinrich Böll Foundation cordially invite you to: Industrializing Amidst a Global Financial Crisis: Is it Possible? with featured speakerHa-Joon Chang, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge and remarks byRogerio Studart, Alternate Executive Director for Brazil, World BankandMark Weisbrot, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy […]

  Gauging from the events in Iran’s bazaars, October 2008 had an uncanny resemblance to October 1978.  During the Islamic revolution, bazaaris, responding to the ancien régime’s misconceived scheme to address rampant inflation by identifying and prosecuting alleged profiteers, had organized nationwide closures.  Three decades later, bazaaris in Isfahan and subsequently in Mashhad, Shiraz, Tabriz, […]