Archive | Commentary

  Reed Lindsay: It’s election day in Egypt, the second round of parliamentary balloting.  But in this working-class suburb of Cairo, few people seem to care. “There are no free and fair elections.  All the opposition parties withdrew.  A lot of us are unemployed.  So why should we vote?” “All we are seeing is corruption, […]

  “When you are in love with two persons at the same time. . . .” “I could have married the both of you if I were a man.” “Well, of course I wouldn’t have accepted your proposal while another woman named Ahmad was also involved. . . .” Written, edited, and directed by Saeed […]

  Listen to the interview with Samir Amin: Can you tell me very briefly what your book Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism? is about? The title of my book is indicative of the intention.  The title, in a provocative way, is Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism in Crisis?  As […]

Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published in Granma.  See, also, Meena Raman, “COP16: Cancunhagen Lets Rich Countries Off the Hook” (MRZine, 11 December 2010). | Print

  Pedro Méndez Suárez is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in CubaDebate on 30 November 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  Cf. David Axe, “Secret U.S. Space Plane May Be Too Mysterious” (Wired, 18 November 2010); Brad Lendon, “U.S. Military Says They’ve Launched Largest Spy Satellite” (This Just In, CNN, […]

  Meena Raman: The developed countries have gained quite a bit [at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancún] because the proposals in there [in the COP16 Outcome] really take them off the hook in terms of doing the real kind of emission reduction they need to do and a lot of responsibility has […]

  Video by Ricardo Stuckert President Lula offered solidarity on Thursday (9 December) to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was arrested this week after his group published cables written by American diplomats, and he criticized the Brazilian media for not defending the Australian activist and the freedom of expression.  “The guy was arrested, and yet […]

Bolivian President Evo Morales, this Friday, promulgated the Law of Pensions whose content was, for the first time in the history of Bolivia, concretized by workers and representatives of social movements.  The Bolivian leader declared that the promulgation of this new law is evidence of the deepening of democracy in the nation. “What is most […]

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Fall 2010 was marked by a drastic rise in attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians. . . . According to a report published by the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, during the olive harvest 50 such attacks against Palestinians were reported.  127 Palestinians were injured in these incidents, and over 3,700 […]

“My name is Bassam ‘Aramin. I am a resident of the town of Anata. . . . At 9:30 am on 16 January 2007, an Israeli Border Guard soldier shot my daughter ‘Abeer in the head from a distance of 15 meters. She died two days later in the hospital. . . . The soldier who killed my daughter is still free.”

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  | Print

In 1968, the world was transfixed by global student unrest.  Less attention was paid to factory uprisings that occurred at the same time and overlapped with campus protests in places like France.  In one small corner of the Ford Motor Company’s huge production complex in Dagenham, England, several hundred women did their part in the […]

Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s Ambassador to the United Nations: To the Via Campesina protesters, to social movements, we can tell you: What you’re doing is key because we, Bolivia, the ALBA countries, are not going to be able to change the reality of these negotiations if the people of the whole world don’t raise their consciousness, […]

Abstract: This paper proposes a new kind of “political arithmetic” as a key element of the foundation for a good society.  Starting from the premise that the labor process in capitalism developed along lines laid down by double-entry bookkeeping, the paper cites the “wondrous errors and confusion” inherent in performing social accounting while retaining the […]

  “And this book is dedicated to you, to young women artists and old women artists, who are aspiring and creating something huge.  Yours is the future I write for.” — Barbara Hammer Barbara Hammer, an acclaimed filmmaker, has made more than eighty films over the past forty years.  For more information about HAMMER!  Making […]

December 3, 2010 Dear President Obama, A week ago, I wrote you on this same subject but since I’ve not yet received a reply either personal or automated, I felt I should try again. As president of Veterans For Peace (VFP), a national organization of military veterans, I want to convey to you our serious […]

Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera: The empire, in the name of diplomacy, is committing third-class espionage — lamentable for a serious country, and lamentable and decadent for an empire.  The reason [for making the WikiLeaks cables available] is to show the public the quality of an empire which — there’s no doubt about it […]

Abstract: On May 29, 1871, the engineers of Newcastle, England went on strike for a nine-hour day.  “Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line” draws on several narratives arising out of the strike and the lives of its participants to frame an investigation of the historical debate over shorter working time and its prime aspiration, disposable […]

After September 11th, 2001, one of the liberal justifications for the military intervention against Afghanistan was the oppression of women, but also of gays, by the Taliban.  People in Europe and the USA received with shock the news that same-sex couples were publicly executed in the Kabul Stadium by bringing down a wall upon them […]