Archive | Commentary

  ‘I didn’t know Che had any economic ideas’ has been a frequent reply I’ve received when telling people about the topic of my research and my book Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution.   It reflects the caricature of Guevara as a romantic guerrilla fighter with idealist notions of how human beings are motivated […]

  In spite of the tireless calls of the Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon (LKP, Collective against Exploitation), the employers and the French government have let the situation deteriorate. Instead of really facilitating the negotiations, the French government’s representatives went from evasions to evasions (the prefect left the negotiation table on the 28th of January, and the […]

2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution.  The Revolution ended a symbiotic relation between the US and the Shah, whereby the latter helped to sustain the economic and political interests of the US in the Persian Gulf region and the former helped to preserve the rule of the Shah.  Since the end of […]

  In an unprecedented action, the first following the recent Israeli war on Gaza, workers of the Egyptian Fertilizers Company in Suez protested on Saturday, 7 February against the export of fertilizers to Israel. The Egyptian Fertilizers Company is owned by Onsi and Nassef Sawiris under the umbrella of Orascom Construction Industries.  The Egyptian Fertilizers […]

A large-scale anti-fascist action in Dresden last weekend ended with brutal violence.  February 13th has for years been a day of solemn ceremonies in this city on the Elbe, the capital of Saxony.  It marks the date in 1945 when British and American planes destroyed the heart of Dresden, a treasure chest of baroque architecture […]

  The general strike in Guadeloupe began almost a month ago, and the strike movement has spread to Martinique over the last two weeks, and yet the government and the management are still maneuvering, stalling and buying time, refusing to meet the demands. Backed by the entire population holding the largest demonstrations ever seen in […]

Andy Stern’s SEIU is pouring in millions of dollars to take over the UHW, ousting its leadership.  The first part of the video shows the rank and file of the 150,000-member local, as well as their ousted president Sal Rosselli, speaking out against Stern’s trusteeship; in the second part, Steve Zeltzer interviews former UHW organizer […]

Many observers describe Israel’s political system as dysfunctional because its latest elections have likely produced a government hostile to the peace process.  These observers forget that Israeli voters themselves may have no interest in the peace process.  Otherwise, why the largest votes went to the three candidates who most stridently brandished their anti-Arab credentials? No […]

The end of eight years of neoconservative belligerence in the White House came with a financial crisis exacerbated by decades of neoliberal economic policies.  As a result of this coincidence, the ideological winds in the United States are blowing powerfully to the left. The possibility of another great depression looming over the economy,1 left-wing and […]

  Japan’s economy shrank at an annual rate of 12.7 percent last quarter, the worst decline since 1974.  It is estimated that 125,000-400,000 more workers will be jobless by the end of March.  Japanese capitalism is visibly incapacitated, and so is its finance minister. Minister Nakagawa at a Post-G7 Press Conference Rome, 14 February 2009 […]

The amendment won the support of 54.36 percent of the population: 6,003,594 votes.  The “No” vote received 5,040,082 votes, i.e. 45.63 percent.  The abstention was about 33 percent.  The bulletin was issued with 94 percent of the votes counted. At 9:35 PM, the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Tibisay Lucena, first issued the […]

Introduction Over the last two months, cholera has broken out in a number of provinces in South Africa.  Thousands of people have been infected and over fifty people have already died.1  Initially, a number of politicians, including parliamentarians from the right-wing Democratic Alliance (DA), tried to blame Zimbabweans — who were fleeing the economic meltdown, […]

In those days when I, as an altar boy, used to walk in the humble church of Sabaneta, at the beginning of the stormy decade of the sixties of the last century, my spirit was first conquered by the blazing and whipping words of Jesus, Christ the Redeemer of the oppressed peoples. The Sermon on […]

  Washington D.C., February 15, 2009 — Twenty years ago today, the commander of the Soviet Limited Contingent in Afghanistan Boris Gromov crossed the Termez Bridge out of Afghanistan, thus marking the end of the Soviet war which lasted almost ten years and cost tens of thousands of Soviet and Afghan lives. As a tribute […]

The Jewish Association of Venezuela expressed its appreciation to the Chávez government and its organs of security for their investigations of the attack against the Tiferet Synagogue.  Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro expressed the government’s desire to cooperate with the Jewish community and made it clear that the national government maintains “absolute respect for religious freedom.” […]

  The Middle East has always been a difficult challenge for Western human rights organizations, particularly those seeking influence or funding in the United States.  The pressure to go soft on US allies is in some respects reminiscent of Washington’s special pleading for Latin American terror regimes in the 1970s and 1980s.  In the case […]

  Rageh Omaar: Amnesty International’s 2008 report on human rights states that allegations of torture and other ill treatments and the use of excessive force by law enforcement officials persist in Turkey.  This despite an overt expression of zero tolerance for torture by the Turkish government since 2002.  Kurdish-born human rights lawyer Eren Keskin has […]

“When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” — Israeli Army Chief of Staff Raphael Eitan, 1983 “Before [the Palestinians’] very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they, and their ancestors, have […]

In 1846, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The German Ideology, the first mature statement of what became known as historical materialism.  This passage was on the second page: We know only a single science, the science of history.  One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature […]

One of the most important books that influenced Darwin, by his own account, was John Herschel’s A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831).  Herschel was one of the leading British scientists of the age, known for his work in astronomy, geography, and scientific method.  Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy provided […]