November 29, 2010 We will be writing about the WikiLeaks documents and Iran throughout this week. As we sort through the cables that are available so far, the first major point is that, as even the New York Times‘ quasi-neoconservative David Sanger and his colleagues noted in their first story on the documents, the Obama […]
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Monthly Review Magazine
Postcards? No Thanks!
In the past year or two it seems as if I have been signing or getting signed more postcards, letters, and petitions to Congress than at any time in my personal history. Most likely this was the result of the 2008 election, which put the Democrats completely in power, holding the Presidency, House, and Senate. […]
Decoding Class Politics in Iran
Reference ID Date Classification Origin 09RPODUBAI177 2009-04-22 11:11 SECRET//NOFORN Iran RPO Dubai Game of Attrition. Ahmadinejad’s defeats on the budget and his plan to distribute cash payments to lower-income Iranians show that power centers, such as the Majles, are actively working to pressure the President prior to the June election, according to [Source removed]. […]
Israeli Intentions regarding the Iranian Nuclear Program
Reference ID Date Classification Origin 05TELAVIV1593 2005-03-17 14:02 SECRET Embassy Tel Aviv This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available. S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 TEL AVIV 001593 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/14/2015 TAGS: PARM PREL MNUC […]
New York Times Oversells WikiLeaks/Iranian Missiles Story
WikiLeaks document dumps are largely what media want to make of them. There’s one conventional response, which goes something like this: “There’s nothing new here, but WikiLeaks is dangerous!” But there’s another option: “There’s nothing here, except for the part that confirms a storyline we’ve been pushing.” In those cases, WikiLeaks is deemed very, very […]
Nehru on Kashmir
New Delhi, India, Nov. 27 — My reaction to today’s court order directing the Delhi Police to file an FIR against me for waging war against the state: Perhaps they should posthumously file a charge against Jawaharlal Nehru too. Here’s what he said about Kashmir: Indian Pledges 1. In his telegram to the Prime Minister […]
Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup
Reference ID Date Classification Origin 09TEGUCIGALPA645 2009- 07-24 00:12 CONFIDENTIAL Embassy Tegucigalpa VZCZCXYZ0000 OO RUEHWEB DE RUEHTG #0645/01 2050023 ZNY CCCCC ZZH O 240023Z JUL 09 FM AMEMBASSY TEGUCIGALPA TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0237 INFO RUEHZA/WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE IMMEDIATE RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS IMMEDIATE 0735 RHEHAAA/THE WHITE HOUSE WASHDC IMMEDIATE RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC IMMEDIATE RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON […]
The Crisis and Obama’s Decline
The economic crisis that Obama rode to victory in 2008 also rode him down in the 2010 elections. Obama and his economic advisors badly “mismanaged the crisis.” While the Obama team seems to have learned little from its failure, we need to draw its lessons if we are to reduce the costly social consequences of […]
To Sanction, or Not to Sanction — That Is the Question
A hallmark of the Obama administration’s Iran policy has been a dual track approach to its contentious nuclear program: diplomacy, and pressure on the regime. An improvement, to be sure, over President Obama’s predecessor’s policy — essentially all pressure and no diplomacy — but pressure, the Iranians have stated time and time again, will not […]
Military Fitness American Style
Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist. This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 28 November 2010. | Print
Egyptian Elections
No voting for the Muslim Brotherhood under the Mubarak dynasty. . . . Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist. This cartoon was first published by Al Jazeera on 25 November 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. The text above is an interpretation of the cartoon by Yoshie Furuhashi. Cf. “Egypt: Systematic Crackdown […]
Help Unwanted
“When I was 20, they told me I must have experience. Now that I have experience, they tell me they’re looking for a 20-year-old.” Juan Kalvellido, born in Cádiz, Andalucía, Spain in 1968, is a working-class cartoonist who has never stopped believing in revolution. He currently lives in Fuengirola, Málaga, Spain. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi […]
Morales Laments Exclusion of His Proposal from Cancún Summit
Bolivian President Evo Morales lamented this Friday that his proposal as well as that of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, calling on the rich countries to halve their greenhouse gas emissions, has not been welcomed into the Cancún Summit on climate change to be held next week. Morales indicated at a press conference that the petitions […]
Ireland: “We Can’t Pay That Money, and We Won’t Pay That Money”
Outside the General Post Office, Dublin, Ireland, 27.11.10 “Well, our gallant allies in Europe have arrived 95 years too late and uninvited, and instead of guns to help the revolution they have brought economic weapons of mass destruction. Does anybody in this country or in Dáil Éireann think that we can as a people […]
Eurozone Time Bomb
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print
Gates’ False Iran Premise: Sanctions Will Not Sow Internal Discord and Change Iran’s Nuclear Calculations
Since returning to government service to take up his current position, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been a sober skeptic about the wisdom of military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets — under President Obama as well as under President George W. Bush, and regardless of whether such strikes would be carried out by the […]
Palestine 2011
Struggling as I have for the past decades to grasp the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and find ways to get out of this interminable and absolutely superfluous conflict, I have been two-thirds successful. After many years of activism and analysis, I think I have put my finger on the first third of the equation: […]
Currency War and US Imperialism: Interview with Samir Amin
There has been much publicity about the so-called “currency war” arising from the discussions at the recent G20 meeting. Can you explain what is meant by currency war? The discourse, the rhetoric, on the currency war is very superficial and even misleading. As everybody knows, what is being said is that the Chinese yuan is […]
How Panurge Praiseth the Debtors and Borrowers
But, quoth Pantagruel, when will you be out of debt? At the next ensuing term of the Greek kalends, answered Panurge, when all the world shall be content, and that it be your fate to become your own heir. The Lord forbid that I should be out of debt, as if, indeed, I could not […]
Day X: “Only the Beginning”
* * * “[T]his picture from the occupation at Royal Holloway, taken by Philip Ieuan John, illustrates the scale of yesterday’s protest.” — Jamie Stern-Weiner, New Left Project * * * After Day X: 28 Nov Student Coordination After the day of action . . . NATIONAL STUDENT COORDINATION12noon — 5pm Sunday 28th NovemberBirkbeck College, […]
