Archive | Commentary

New York City Labor Against the War joins the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions in denouncing Israel’s recent massacres in Gaza, the victims of which include at least 130 Palestinians — half of them civilians, including dozens of women and children — since February 27.

More than a year ago, I attended the official book release for the Venezuelan edition of Eva Golinger‘s Bush Versus Chávez, published by Monte Avila, and the book had previously been printed in Cuba by Editorial José Martí.  I recount this to make the following point: long before the publication of Bush Versus Chávez in […]

March is a cruel month in the recent history of the Middle East.  This year is the fifth anniversary of the death of Rachel Corrie who was crushed to death by an Israeli soldier driving an armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozer on March 16, 2003 as she attempted to stop the gigantic vehicle from destroying the […]

  March 20, 2008, destined to be another day of infamy.  On this date the US officially declared war on Iran.  But it’s not going to be the kind of war many have been expecting. No, there was no dramatic televised announcement by President George W. Bush from the White House oval office.  In fact […]

The intimate partnership between mainstream economics and right-wing ideology has long trumpeted the wonderful efficiency of markets.  In these partners’ fantasy, markets are truly wondrous coordination mechanisms that perfectly match the supply of goods and services to what buyers demand.  All this happens, they say with immense self-satisfaction, without the intervention of any government or […]

Is the Bush administration ramping up for an attack on Iran?  The signs seem to point in that direction.  On March 11, Navy Adm. William Fallon, commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East, retired early because of differences with Washington on Iran policy.  And now, Dick Cheney’s current Middle East tour may be […]

  AMSTERDAM – TV Producer Harry de Winter, President of the board of the foundation Een Ander Joods Geluid [Another Jewish Voice], today placed a remarkable advertisement on the front page of the newspaper Volkskrant.  De Winter puts Geert Wilders‘s criticism of Muslims in the same category as anti-Semitism. See below the de Winter ad […]

When Henry Kissinger opines in an op-ed in the Washington Post, it behooves us all to pay attention.  There is a message there.  Kissinger has always presented himself as the supreme “realist” proponent on U.S. imperial policy.  But he has also always taken care not to distance himself too far from the conservative political Establishment. […]

The US Government is waging war on Venezuela — not your typical, traditional war, but a modern, asymmetric — 4th Generation War – against President Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution.  Below is a presentation I created regarding the pattern and escalation of US Government aggression against Venezuela, with clear quotes and cites as evidence to […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its March 2008 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. The struggle for democratic rights in India, its forward and backward movement, has been continuous from the days of British colonialism to the present.  Independence and Emergency, for […]

The world is teetering on the brink of unstoppable climate change.  Many now recognise the need for serious change in the way we produce and use energy, our transport systems, food production, urban design and forestry practices.  Yet politicians are still mouthing platitudes while allowing corporations to continue to profit from polluting our atmosphere and […]

Barack Obama’s speech on race, the greatest speech by a major American political figure in decades, elevates the discussion of race in America to a new level.  What makes this speech so powerful is not only what he said, but also what it requires us to ask and what it demands that we reply.  With […]

  Maryam Firuz in the final decade of her life Maryam Firuz, the first woman who became a political committee member of a party in Iran, passed away in Tehran, in the afternoon of Wednesday, 12 March 2008.  She was an iconoclast, a friend of many artists and intellectuals, and a prisoner for seven years. […]

Since August 2007, US and European banks have constantly made headline news concerning the deep crisis they are going through and its knock-on effect on the neoliberal economic system as a whole.  Asset depreciation for these banks currently stands at over 200 billion dollars.  Several banking research services and seasoned economists estimate that the final […]

March 19, 2003: a date that will live in infamy.  Perhaps not in the minds of many of our fellow citizens, but surely to most people around the world.  On that date, U.S. military forces invaded Iraq. Almost a year later I was in a small farming village some miles north of Baghdad, accompanying members […]

If I could be a bird I would fly to Guantanamo and perch on the barbed wire fence of Guantanamo prison and sing a song of praise of praise for your courage and sing a song of love march 18 2008; brooklyn; d.b. This poem by Dennis Brutus was posted to Debate, a discussion list […]

The world appears to be on the verge of an economic crisis and, if it turns out to be as serious as some think, one that could rival or exceed the great panics of the late nineteenth century and the decade-long Great Depression.  The crisis began with unscrupulous mortgage lending on an enormous scale, leading […]

  The recent beefing up of the US Navy in the Mediterranean has caused concern in Russia and some Mediterranean countries.  Experts believe the appearance of US warships off the coast of Syria and Lebanon presages a US military operation in the region. The recent deployment of the US Navy guided missile destroyer DDG 67 […]

Reeling from the blow that it received in the aftermath of the Colombian military’s illegal incursion on March 1 into Ecuador — which resulted in the brutal massacre of a number of civilians and members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), including its chief negotiator Raul Reyes — US imperialism has once again […]

  In September 2000, I decided to do my part to bring peace to the Middle East.  As a Canadian attorney of Palestinian origin, I believed I could use my legal skills to help broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.  Naive?  Perhaps. I left my comfortable life in California and moved to […]