Archive | Commentary

12th September 2007 CALL FOR SOLIDARITY Dear sisters, You may have heard about the strike in Novamed in Turkey/Antalya.  Novamed is one of the factories of Fresenius Medical Care located in Germany.  All the workers who have gone on strike are female workers.  Their working conditions are very bad and male-dominated (patriarchal).  For example: female […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its September 2007 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. No truths are more vigorously avoided, disguised and denied in our media than the disastrous and devastating results for the majority of the post-1991 economic “reforms” and the […]

Watch the welcoming of Joma Sison by his friends and colleagues after his release from detention. The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) is an anti-imperialist and democratic formation.  The video was made available at YouTube by beweging. | | Print

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) deplores the unanimous decision by the Israeli cabinet to impose sanctions on supplies of electricity, fuel, and other basic goods and services to the civilian population of Gaza and calls upon the international community to prevent this crime against humanity from being carried out.  Indeed, the very legal […]

The Federal Reserve is led by an inveterate “free market solves all economic problems best” kind of guy.  Mr. Bernanke loves Milton Friedman passionately and says so.  This is what big business wants to hear when it is making lots of money, when it wants tax reductions to boost profits, and when it wants government […]

Legitimacy is a central yet understudied concept in world politics.  Let me give you an example of how it works in our everyday lives.  If I were to wield a stick menacingly and run around the SOAS campus in London proclaiming that I am an academic, very few people would be persuaded.  What I need […]

  “The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy. . . .  Politics, the politics of a democracy which entails disagreement, which promotes candor — has been replaced by psychotherapy. . . .” — Susan Sontag, 9/24/01 Another anniversary […]

September 15, 2007 Dear friends, I have now been back in New York for two weeks, immersed in teaching at Columbia University and reunited with the women and families at the Bronx birthing center, as well as my own family.  I have had time to reflect on my work and need to share with you […]

September 14, 2007 — The release of Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding chair Jose Ma. Sison from detention in the Netherlands is “a victory for the Filipino people and their revolutionary forces, a big slap in the face of the US-Arroyo regime and a stinging blow against the fascist machinations of its National […]

JENNIFER DOHRN, CNM, is Director of Midwifery Services at the Childbearing Center of Morris Heights, the Bronx, New York, the first birthing center in the United States to serve inner-city women of diverse backgrounds.  Jennifer also directs the midwifery education program at Columbia University School of Nursing.  She has been working in South Africa to […]

Michael D. Yates will read from Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: An Economist’s Travelogue at the Brecht Forum! When: 5 October 2007, 7:30 PM Location: Brecht Forum, 451 West Street (between Bank & Bethune Streets, New York) Directions: Contact: (212) 242-4201; or . BTW, check out Mike’s blog at ! | | Print

In recent days, the US public has been satiated with a variety of press reports about numerous “new” plans aimed at addressing the US occupation and war in Iraq.  Some of these plans are rumored to include recommendations for an eventual withdrawal of all US forces from that country while some urge the Pentagon and […]

When George Bush began trying to justify the occupation of Iraq by invoking the “lessons” of Vietnam, I had the urge to send him a copy of the new documentary War Made Easy featuring Norman Solomon.  That’s hardly surprising — no doubt we’ve all had the occasional desire to try to educate our president. Then […]

Foreign countries are awash in dollars because they sell so much more to the US than they buy.  Increasingly, their governments use some of those dollars to establish and operate investment funds.  The funds buy shares in companies around the world.  Sometimes they buy companies directly.  Called “sovereign investment funds,” the IMF estimates that they […]

The Fairmont Conference In late September 1995, five hundred of the world’s economic and political leaders met in San Francisco’s prestigious Fairmont Hotel upon the invitation of an institution headed by Mikhail Gorbachev.  The conference was financed by some American super-rich, possibly in gratitude to Gorbachev’s “services rendered” in the ex-Soviet Union.  The task required […]

  In the big business media’s “two years after Katrina” coverage, there was one glaring omission — the story of the utter bankruptcy of the so-called Black leadership, in particular, the Black Democratic Party establishment.  Nothing confirms that story better than the brief appearance in New Orleans on August 29 of President George W. Bush.  […]

In a recent assessment, Stephen Zunes affirms the misconceptions of a segment of the progressive community about Iran’s internal politics, the range of U.S. options in that country, and the frequency with which Western powers invent and/or corrupt civil society movements.  After a review of past American interference, he enumerates and rejects Washington’s hostile choices […]

It was a good day to ride your bike in the Big Apple.  New York City cabbies launched a two-day strike on September 6, leaving the city’s streets quiet and would-be passengers scrambling.  Taxi workers were protesting a plan to install new technology into the city’s yellow cabs, a move they said would hurt both […]

Sept. 5, 2007.  Hundreds of Professor Norman Finkelstein‘s supporters try to escort the fired teacher onto campus of DePaul University in Chicago.  Finkelstein, denied tenure by pro-Zionist administration because of his questioning of Israeli foreign policy, gives a statement (excerpts) after his final meeting with University officials.   Produced by Labor Beat.  Labor Beat is […]

Jose Maria Sison has been a leading figure of the Philippine national democratic revolution for almost 40 years.  He is one of the pioneers who revived the anti-imperialist movement in the Philippines in the early 1960s, and he was elected chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968 when it was refounded on […]