Archive | Commentary

Syrian refugees fleeing for Iraqi Kurdistan, at the Girbalat crossing, northeast of Syria.  In 2012 alone, over 50,000 Syrian refugees have fled the civil war for Iraqi Kurdistan, according to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) officials. An empty frame now, it long displayed a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad in central Derek, a Kurdish town bordering […]

  Dear President Obama, Applauding your humane reaction to the recent school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, we wonder if you would also shed a tear for the plight of the Iranian people caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, as a result of the sanctions imposed on them by the international community. Heart-wrenching […]

  The speech below was delivered by the President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), Dave Coles, to the labor breakfast titled “Confronting the Climate Crisis: Can Labor Help Shape an Effective Strategy?” held at the City University of New York on 17 January 2013. The obvious answer to the question […]

First, a glance at long-past history — at the American hero Friedrich Wilhelm Augustin von Steuben, known as Baron Steuben.  In many ways he was really a phony.  His noble title and rank as “Prussian Lieutenant General” were inventions; he had really been dropped from Friedrich the Great’s army as a lowly captain.  That he […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its January 2013 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. We know nothing about the beliefs of the canon (religious) lawyers among the Christians, but can safely assume that they would consider it a sign of movement in […]

Bolivia’s government entered 2013 on an optimistic note.  Socialist-oriented projects aimed at shoring up national independence and protecting indigenous rights seemingly were on track.  Now, however, the government is having to deal with emerging reports of official corruption. Opinion surveys show that President Evo Morales, overwhelming victor in two presidential elections and one recall vote, […]

  January 10, 2013 Raz Mohammad: Salam ‘aleikum.  I am Raz Mohammad.  I’m from Maidan Wardak province and I’m Pashtun. Below is a transcript of an interview of Raz Mohammad, an Afghan Peace Volunteer, with questions prepared by Maya Evans of Voices for Creative Non Nonviolence UK. Kathy Kelly: Raz Mohmmad, what do you think […]

On December 12, 2012, 12 young people were arrested in the poor community of El Progreso 3, in the northeastern part of San Salvador.  Dressed all in black with their faces covered, police from the much-feared Anti-Gang Unit stormed the community in the middle of night, going home to home, trampling down doors and pulling […]

  The “Crisis, Resistance, and Prospects: The Arab Revolutions and Beyond” conference is being planned as a three-day event scheduled to take place at York University (4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) on March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, 2013. The objective of this conference is to provide a critical intervention that seeks to challenge the dominant […]

On January 11, eleven years to the day after George W. Bush sent the first detainees to Guantanamo, the Oscar-nominated film Zero Dark Thirty is making its national debut.  Zero Dark Thirty is disturbing for two reasons.  First and foremost, it leaves the viewer with the erroneous impression that torture helped the CIA find bin […]

  January 10, 2013 This week, in Washington, D.C., Presidents Obama and Karzai will discuss a proposed Bilateral Security Agreement between Afghanistan and the United States.  Presumably, they’ll note some of the main security problems Afghanistan faces. The people of Afghanistan have only seen cosmetic improvement in their living conditions.  UNICEF reports that 36% of […]

Things in Berlin are all really up in the air!  No, cancel that!  Just the opposite; they are grounded — indefinitely!  That giant new hub airport for Berlin, named after Willy Brandt, was due to be opened last June after weeks and months of ballyhoo.  But it wasn’t.  Something was not quite OK with the […]

January 7, 2013 Zainab, Umalbanin, Ali, Kathy, and Martha going up the mountainside Kabul — Yesterday, four young Afghan Peace Volunteer members, Zainab, Umalbanin, Abdulhai, and Ali, guided Martha and me along narrow, primitive roads and crumbling stairs, ascending a mountain slope on the outskirts of Kabul.  The icy, rutted roads twisted and turned.  I […]

Is it true that you are communist? What else can one be, the way things are? Communism left 70 million dead. . . That wasn’t communism. What was it, then? Industrialism.  Lenin proposed electrification plus soviets, that is to say, popular control . . . but popular control evaporated! And what remained? Industrialism.  Stalin imposed […]

  Q. Can you comment on increased public outrage regarding acts of corruption and strivings towards achieving what is considered normal functioning of the capitalist system? A. The question is: Do we oppose the anomalies of capitalism or capitalism itself?  Corruption is vastly overrated.  Of course, it can reach proportions in which even the normal […]

On 27 October, 2012, Gennady Zyuganov gave a rather important speech.  Presented at the 14th plenum of the central committee, it sought to provide the framework for renewing and improving the theoretical work of the party.  But this is not any party and Zyuganov is not any leader, for the party is the Russian Communist […]

Prabhat Patnaik: To me, imperialism is immanent in the money form, and I want to argue that in the era of finance capital, far from its becoming less relevant, it becomes more relevant. . . .  I would even define imperialism as an arrangement in which not only you get use values but you get […]

Madleen Kulab, December 19th, 2012.  Photo by Maher Alaa. “The problems started for me at eighteen,” Madleen Kulab said quietly, sitting just meters from the shore of the Mediterranean.  “The police and port authorities did not want me to sail as a woman.”  Though Madleen has emerged from this recent challenge, receiving a permanent permission […]

Doaa Eladl is a cartoonist in Cairo, Egypt.  Cf. ; and “Solidarity with cartoonist @doaaeladl charged by #Egypt attorney general for criticizing Islamists twitpic.com/bp0mzl” (Carlos Latuff, 24 December 2012). | Print

So the world didn’t end after all and the ‘Mayan apocalypse’ turned out to be another in a long line of doomsday-related tall tales and hoaxes.  No doubt a hard-core of Armageddon enthusiasts who really did believe — or wanted to believe — that the ‘Mayan prophecy’ was anything other than a load of cobblers […]