Archive | Commentary

Join us for a stimulating discussion about the social and political changes currently sweeping through Latin America.  Learn how progressive governments backed by powerful social movements are gaining momentum and joining forces to shift power into the hands of their people and foster alternative models of development based on cooperation and regional integration.  Find out […]

As headlines focus on conventions and running mates, the third anniversary of Katrina offers an opportunity to examine the results of disastrous federal, state, and local policy on the people of New Orleans.  Several organizations have released reports in the past week, examining the current state of the city, and grassroots activists have plans to […]

  On Saturday, after 32 hours on the high seas, I sailed into the port of Gaza City with 45 other citizens from around the world in defiance of Israel’s blockade.  We traveled from Cyprus with humanitarian provisions for Palestinians living under siege.  My family in Michigan was worried sick. They are not naïve.  They […]

Introduction Despite the vast literature examining the link between trade liberalization and economic growth, empirical studies still fail to provide conclusive and unequivocal evidence supporting the link.  What most of these studies emphasize is that openness, accompanied by a country-specific mix of appropriate complementary policies (macroeconomic and financial policies, education, infrastructure, institutional capacity and governance), […]

Will shared resources always be misused and overused?  Is community ownership of land, forests, and fisheries a guaranteed road to ecological disaster?  Is privatization the only way to protect the environment and end Third World poverty?  Most economists and development planners will answer “yes” — and for proof they will point to the most influential […]

Yehudit Genud hardly feels she is on the frontier of Israel’s settlement project, although the huddle of mobile homes on a wind-swept West Bank hilltop she calls home is controversial even by Israeli standards. Despite the size and isolation of Migron, a settlement of about 45 religious families on a ridge next to the Palestinian […]

  Chinese Nationalism Paul Jay: To what extent is there development of big power nationalism, perhaps in the armed forces, in the Chinese Communist Party itself? Minqi Li: My own view is that, as far as China’s ruling elites are concerned, concerning China’s big capitalists, I’d say nationalism is not so much their own ideology.  […]

GAZA (23 August 2008) – Two small boats, the SS Free Gaza and the SS Liberty, successfully landed in Gaza early this evening, breaking the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. The boats were crewed by a determined group of international human rights workers from the Free Gaza Movement.  They had spent two years organizing […]

Statistically, South Africa produces enough food to feed its entire population, and in most years it is even a net exporter of food.1  There is, therefore, not a shortage of food in South Africa.  Yet if you walk through the streets of any township or rural village in the country, you will find hungry people […]

  The New Left in China Minqi Li: There has been dramatic change in terms of China’s intellectual life.  Back in the 1980s, among most of the intellectuals who were politically conscious or politically active, among most of the university students, it was dominated by neoliberal ideas. Paul Jay: The ideas of open markets, independent […]

In a historic vote on 15 August 2008 in Kathmandu,  Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda), chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M), was elected first Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, where now a “Maoist leads from the top of the world.”  Prachanda garnered 80% of the votes cast in the […]

It was the sinister synthesis of several salient trends: media consolidation to its ultimate end; educational deficiencies brought to undreamt-of levels; xenophobia stoked to its most loathsome heights; culminating in a re-working of Welles’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast worldwide,                                inducing panic and instituting pogroms that eliminated all but a favored few Michael Ceraolo […]

Lloyd D. McCarthy, “In-Dependence” from Bondage: Claude McKay and Michael Manley Defying the Ideological Clash and Policy Gaps in African Diaspora Relations (Africa World Press, 2007). Claude McKay and Michael Manley may seem like strange bedfellows for a study in 20th-century politics.  Though both born in Jamaica, a generation apart, they could hardly have pursued […]

Modern economic class struggle, the unremitting, sometimes hidden, sometimes open, fight between capitalists and workers that erupted in the 19th century and dominated the 20th, is taking on new forms and dimensions in the 21st century. The stakes of this continuing conflict are higher than they have ever been.  Every aspect of human life on […]

  The Japanese Communist Party is suddenly attracting many new members.  According to the party’s press release, the membership peaked at 500,000 in 1990 when it began its decline, and it has been hovering around 400,000 over the last ten years, but 9,000 have joined the party since the JCP central committee’s fifth general meeting […]

  As a young Palestinian from Gaza, I had been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to study at the University of California San Diego on a Fulbright scholarship.  The chance to escape Gaza’s confines and immerse myself in an American education was deeply thrilling.  With Israel controlling Gaza’s border exits, air space and sea access — […]

With sincere apologies for such short notice: please send messages of support for Marian Residence, a shelter and transitional housing program for homeless women in San Francisco, to SF mayor’s office, if possible in advance of press conference on Wednesday, August 20, at 11 a.m. (and please copy messages to for purposes of a tally). […]

Today’s critical labor struggles revolve around immigrants’ rights, while today’s struggles over immigrants’ rights are grounded in workplace and labor organizing.  Global, national, and local histories have woven these issues tightly together.  In the U.S. we are seeing the beginnings of a multifaceted movement which engages these dynamically linked histories. Twenty-five years ago, U.S. labor […]

The second issue of the recently-launched journal Harvard College Economics Review dealt with the topic of economic growth and inequality.  In one of the articles, Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina François Nielsen (also current editor of the academic journal Social Forces) contends that rising global income inequality is really a myth.1  […]

On August 15, Dave Pugh returned to the U.S. after spending three and a half weeks gathering information about the anti-displacement movement in India.  Pugh is a member of the Initiative Committee of the International Campaign Against Forced Displacement that was launched on June 19, 2008 at the Third International Assembly of the International League […]