Archive | Commentary

  19 May 2008: Friends, this is simply an account of what I saw and experienced in a twenty four period.  It might be incomplete.  It is not an analytical piece as such, but I hope a small step towards trying to understand what had taken place in this city, in this country that I […]

  David A. Bell.  The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.  x + 420 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index.  ISBN 978-0-618-91981-9. The concept of “total war” is not a new one to historians, particularly those of the twentieth century.  For many, the […]

Hezbollah is the big winner in the accord on Lebanon signed in Doha, Qatar. But everyone — including Washington — is welcoming this asymmetrical compromise. Why? Hard bargaining is underway. . . .

In the Middle East, neither the worst nor the best is ever certain. But what happened in Doha, the capital of Qatar, on Wednesday, at 3 o’clock in the morning, is a historic event. The accord putting an end — for now — to the political crisis that tore Lebanon for the past eighteen months (and many more in fact) contains a tough lesson for the West: its weakened friends in Beirut had to bend themselves to the force of Hezbollah and its allies Amal, another Shi’i party, and the Christians led by Michel Aoun. The Party of God will enter the government without laying down its arms, as a minority with veto power.

  Action Alert for Sami Al-Arian As we speak, the US government is manipulating the justice system to keep the high-profile prisoner Dr. Sami Al-Arian imprisoned indefinitely. Despite having never been convicted of any crime whatsoever, and despite being an upright citizen who dedicated his life to improving America, Dr. Al-Arian has been imprisoned since […]

I couldn’t stop my head from cocking to the left for a moment when my grandmother, while watching John Wayne on the television, said that the Old West should have sunk for all the lead he fired into the ground. And it is probably true, given just how many black-hatted ne’er-do-wells would outlive their ninety […]

1 Mayis 2008, İstanbul | | Print

It is fair to say that the anti-war movement in the US is moribund.  A movement that put a million people in the streets a month before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and has drawn as many as half-a-million protesters to protests as recently as January 2007 has failed to mobilize anything even near […]

  As everybody in our country knows, the Congress of South African Trade Unions has been at the forefront of the campaign to create jobs and eradicate poverty.  For years we have fought to ensure that this struggle is taken seriously and remains at the centre of the national agenda. COSATU has done everything in […]

The relative decline in violence in Iraq that Bush, McCain, and other supporters of the war have attributed to the “surge” appears to have reversed.  Al Qaeda and others in the Sunni resistance began stepping up their attacks at the beginning of the year and Moqtada Al Sadr’s Mahdi Army has been battling US and […]

Marjane Satrapi’s film Persepolis must have made George Bush and his new ally Nicolas Sarokzy quite happy.  After all, despite Satrapi’s rhetoric against the two leaders, her film’s core argument is one that Bush and Sarkozy have long been busy constructing: the evil state versus the wonderful people. Aesthetically, Persepolis is a refreshing and beautiful […]

To: The Administration of Brown University On April 22, Brown University student Molly Little threw a pie at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in protest of his pro-war, pro-corporate views, and the prominence he receives in promulgating those views while others are suppressed.  Friedman received no injuries from the fluffy pie, and resumed his […]

Attention all unions, workers, and rank and file activists working in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice: You are invited to a three-day conference to help build and share strategies to support the movement for Palestinian rights in our workplaces, our unions and our communities. Friday, May 30 to Sunday, June 1, 2008 in […]

  For the first time in a generation or more, SEIU is facing a substantial movement by internal dissidents seeking to push through democratic reforms.  This push has a two-fold character. One prong is the very public resignation by Sal Roselli, the head of United Healthcare Workers — West (UHW), the third largest local in […]

In 1984, the Margaret Thatcher regime and the British National Coal Board annulled an agreement reached after the 1974 British miners’ strike.  The Board told the British public that they intended to close 20 coal mines and privatize the previously nationalized industry.  At least twenty thousand jobs would be lost, and many communities in the […]

We, South Africans who faced the might of unjust and brutal apartheid machinery in South Africa and fought against it with all our strength, with the objective to live in a just, democratic society, refuse today to celebrate the existence of an Apartheid state in the Middle East.  While Israel and its apologists around the […]

  ONGOING XENOPHOBIC ATTACKS Nehawu joins all progressive minded South Africans and ordinary people in expressing their disgust at the current attacks against African brothers and sisters from the North.  What is happening in Alexandra is completely unjustifiable, immoral and short sighted. POVERTY UNEMPLOYMENT AND SLOW SERVICE DELIVERY More than 40% of South Africans are […]

On May 17, 1987, a double act of Exocet missiles skimmed through the air and slammed into the American Perry-class frigate the USS Stark. The first Exocet antiship missile punched into the warship “at 600 miles per hour and exploded in the forward crew’s quarters.”  The warhead failed to detonate but managed to smash through […]

It has been a week of adulation from world leaders, ostentatious displays of military prowess, and street parties.  Heads of state have rubbed shoulders with celebrities to pay homage to the Jewish state on its 60th birthday, while a million Israelis reportedly headed off to the country’s forests to enjoy the national pastime: a barbecue. […]

  Schauleh Sahba is an Iranian American who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.  This film is the final cut of a public service announcement about Iranian Americans that she made, featuring fifty Iranian Americans speaking up about who they are, what they believe in, and why they are against attacking Iran.  Her goal […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its May 2008 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. Today, but few can recall memories of the Bengal famine of 1943 and 1944.  Most disturbingly, after almost two decades of “reform” and a full decade or more […]