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  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 […]

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 […]

Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 28 November 2010. | Print

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 […]

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 […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  | Print

“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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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: […]

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 […]

* * * “[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, […]

Default, Debt Renegotiation and Exit When the Eurozone crisis burst out in early 2010, an RMF report identified three strategic options for peripheral countries, namely, first, austerity imposed by the core and transferring the costs of adjustment onto society at large, second, broad structural reform of the Eurozone in favour of labour and, third, exit […]

Negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are due to start again shortly, and once again the European Union is called upon as a “mediator.”  This is no minor challenge.  With Iran insisting on discussing Israel’s nuclear capacity and the United States preparing a tougher uranium swap agreement, a deal seems as far away as ever.  Nevertheless, […]

When a firefighter or medical team make a rescue, the person is usually better off as a result.  This is less clear when the rescuer is the European Central Bank (ECB) or the IMF. Ireland is currently experiencing a 14.1 percent unemployment rate.  As a result of bailout conditions that will require more cuts in […]

  Some time before the offer [at the meetings with the IMF and the WB in Dubai on 22 September 2003], [Argentine Economy Minister Roberto] Lavagna was already preparing the ground: he realized that after the offer “there are going to be sad faces everywhere.”  And indeed the first reaction of the creditors was rejection. […]

For the banks For the Irish Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 19 November 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

Acclaimed philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He shared his perspectives on international affairs, economics, and other themes in an interview conducted at his office in Boston on September 14, 2010. Keane Bhatt: Your new book Hopes and Prospects begins with the story of […]