Archive | Commentary

  President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech on January 25 contained distressing news for opponents of global warming who recognize the need to begin substantially reducing reliance upon carbon-based fossil fuels. “Over the last three years,” Obama said, “we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration.  And tonight, I’m directing […]

People in the United States may not be as rabidly anti-immigrant as we’ve been led to believe. An article posted on the Center for American Progress website in December, “The Public’s View of Immigration,” summarizes five recent U.S. opinion polls.  Authors Philip E. Wolgin and Angela Maria Kelley find that while the media and the […]

  We all know it from the movies of Costa-Gavras: once “the leaders of the free world” start visiting your country frequently, carnage won’t be far behind. Nowadays, the capital city of Turkey, Ankara, looks very much like the set of a Costa-Gavras movie (except, of course, what we really want to see happens off-camera). […]

The attempt by sectarian Syrian oppositionists to silence Bahraini and Palestinian voices documented below by Maath Musleh and Sara Yasin occurred at a demonstration ostensibly for all Arab revolts organized by Amnesty International at Trafalgar Square, London, 11 February 2011. (It is noteworthy, though, that Amnesty International itself gives top billing to Syria in its […]

Still stinging from the “travesty” of their defeat in the United Nations Security Council over the weekend, the United States and the “international community” have already begun to hatch their next ploy for intervention into Syria. On Monday — with the Security Council, and ostensibly diplomacy as well, having been deemed “neutered” by Secretary of […]

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is the Secretary General of Hezbollah.  This speech was delivered on 7 February 2012.  The tweets above are Mazen Shaer‘s translation of the speech, plus one note of his and one note of sshusma‘s.  See, also, twitter.com/#!/Amani_Lebanon, twitter.com/#!/les_politiques, and twitter.com/#!/rania_masri for other translations and notes. | Print

  Communiqué The heads of state and government of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) reiterate their condemnation of the systematic policy of interference in and destabilization of the brother Syrian Arab Republic, the aim of which is to impose, by force, regime change on the Syrian people. The ALBA member […]

  Jorge Insunza: Look, the Communist Party of Syria, which is a great, serious, and responsible Communist Party and which is not part of the Syrian government, says that it is necessary for Syria to make progress in the deepening of the real exercise of democratic rights.  That there have been flaws and errors is […]

  Excerpt: 26. In Homs and Dera’a, the Mission observed armed groups committing acts of violence against Government forces, resulting in death and injury among their ranks.  In certain situations, Government forces responded to attacks against their personnel with force.  The observers noted that some of the armed groups were using flares and armour-piercing projectiles. […]

Dear Amnesty (amnestyis@amnesty.org): “Russia’s threats to abort a binding UN resolution on Syria for the second time are utterly irresponsible,” said José Luis Díaz, Amnesty’s representative to the UN.  “Russia bears a heavy responsibility for allowing the brutal crackdown to continue.”1 With Libya still suffering the lethal consequences of western military “liberation,” with Iran gravely […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print

Speech at the Occupy Oakland Rally, 28 January 2012 “This Land!  Don’t you feel it?  Doesn’t it make you want to go out and lift dead Indians tenderly from their graves, to steal from them — as if it must be clinging to their corpses — some authenticity. . .” Those are the words of […]

When I recently went to Alta Bates hospital for surgery, I discovered that legal procedures take precedence over medical ones.  I had to sign intimidating statements about financial counseling, indemnity, patient responsibilities, consent to treatment, use of electronic technologies, and the like. One of these documents committed me to the following: “The hospital pathologist is […]

Laura Oldfield Ford.  Savage Messiah.  Verso, 2011. HAMLET: Alas poor ghost! GHOST: Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold It isn’t just that the alternatives are written over, or out, it is that they return as their own simulacra.     Mark Fisher from the introduction to Savage Messiah In Tom McCarthy’s […]

a This is the full-text of the introductory remarks made by the author at the Fourth Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy on 20th January 2012 at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. I woke up this morning to the chirping sounds of the swallows.  Arundhati Roy seems to have brought in those love-birds that […]

One state or two?  Boycott of Israeli goods or goods from the settlements?  Is the lobby the genesis of American wrongdoing in Palestine or is it imperialism?  The questions — regarding vision, strategy, and analysis — produce sharp cleavages on the Left.  Indeed, generally ones much deeper than they need to be.  And they remain […]

Sasha Lilley: Protests against Wall Street have inspired many people to move their money from big banks to smaller banks and credit unions and encourage others to do the same.  Why might you be skeptical of this effort? Doug Henwood: There are several reasons.  First of all, I think a lot of the big banks […]

In circles close to the former Zapatero administration, attempts have been made to represent former Prime Minister Zapatero as the politician who “sacrificed himself to save Spain,” comparing him to former German Chancellor Schröder who, though aware that he would antagonize his electoral base with his clearly neoliberal policies, went ahead with them, for he […]

Below is a statement by the UNAC CC on the assassination of Iranian scientists and the growing threat of war against Iran. Also, UNAC members participated in a national conference call on Tuesday with many other antiwar and Iranian groups.  The meeting called for demonstrations on February 4 to protest the threat of war against […]

Americans wonder who will be president next January; Germans are still uncertain who will live in Berlin’s presidential mansion this February.  Its current resident, Christian Wulff, has been under strong pressure to do just the same as his predecessor did — and resign! For weeks the media have attacked Wulff with angry charges of corruption […]