Archive | Commentary

In mid-October, a nongovernmental organization in Iran called the House of Latin America, or HOLA, invited several anti-imperialist organizations from North America to Tehran with the goal of building the movement against war and sanctions against Iran.  Among those who attended were representatives of the International Action Center, ANSWER Coalition, Toronto Coalition Against the War, […]

11 October 2010 — The daughter of the celebrated revolutionary Che Guevara, who is currently visiting Lebanon, met on Sunday the number two leader of Hezbollah after visiting southern Lebanon where she received a plaque in homage to her father and the martyr Imad Mughniyeh.

Social Security has made it possible for the vast majority of workers to enjoy a period of retirement in at least modest comfort without relying on their children for support.  The average length of retirement has increased consistently since the program was started in 1937.  However, the increase in the normal retirement age from 65 […]

Over the years Gore Vidal has spilled a lot of ink telling readers how the mass media murdered serious book culture in the United States, but he is the only living US novelist to have his own coffee table book.  Snapshots in History’s Glare is a photo album of fine design and no small expense […]

The North Atlantic Left Dialogue (NALD), by bringing North Americans and Europeans together, allows participants to reflect on their own situation through the lens of the thinking of other leftists who face similar political issues in different contexts.  There are commonalities in the division between social movements on the one hand and political parties/labor organizations […]

October 28, 2010 Today, Marc Lynch — a professor at George Washington University who blogs at Foreign Policy — published a timely piece entitled “Keep the Iran War Talk Quiet.”  As Marc notes, “there’s some hope that Iran will return to nuclear talks with the P-5+1 in Geneva on Nov.15, even if they probably will […]

Inventories grew at a $115.9 billion annual rate in the third quarter, the highest rate of increase since a $117.2 billion rise in the first quarter of 1998.  This increase added 1.44 percentage points to growth for the quarter, bringing the rate to 2.0 percent. Final demand growth, which excludes fluctuations in inventories, was just […]

Introduction The IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook (WEO) projects world economic growth will slow, from 4.8 percent in 2010 to 4.2 percent next year.  Throughout the report, there are numerous concerns expressed about the “fragility” of the global economic recovery.  The Acting Chair of the Executive Board states that “[t]he recovery is losing momentum […]

Once I went to May Day.  I never got workers’ festivities.  The day of work, are you kidding?  The day of workers celebrating themselves.  I never got it into my head what workers’ day or the day of work meant.  I never got it into my head why work should be celebrated.  But when I […]

The sudden death of Néstor Kirchner today is a great loss not only to Argentina but to the region and the world.  Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a terrible recession.  His role in rescuing Argentina’s economy is comparable to that of […]

The August Case-Shiller 20-City Index showed that house prices have resumed their decline, dropping by 0.2 percent for the month.  Prices fell in 15 of the 20 cities in the index for the month. The drop was led by a decline in the prices of homes in the bottom tier of the Case-Shiller index.  Prices […]

Kashmir, Oct. 26 — I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir.  This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir.  I said what millions of people here say every day.  I said what I, as well as other commentators, have written […]

In a recent article, I discussed the 2010 Economics Nobel Prize in rather unflattering terms.  However, nothing beats the decision to award the 1997 Economics Nobel to Robert Merton and Myron Scholes for developing “a pioneering formula for the valuation of stock options.”  “Their methodology,” trumpeted the Nobel committee, “has paved the way for economic […]

“The Cat and the Coup is a documentary game in which you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran.  During the summer of 1953, the CIA engineered a coup to bring about his downfall.  As a player, you coax Mossadegh back through significant events of his life […]

For many weeks now, the historic social change sweeping across France has drawn increasing attention globally.  It should.  A genuine, mass democratic upsurge has surprised all those who thought, hoped, or feared that such things could no longer happen in countries like France or the US.  Millions of French people — in left political parties, […]

  Only a few days left for the second round of the 2010 elections, our mobilization continues.  To energize the activists for Dilma some more, here is a game made for the presidential election, in which we can get Dilma to the Palácio do Planalto. The idea comes from Professor Alex Leal, in the Digital […]

Zapatero winks to the Left . . . and gets back to the business of cuts. 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 22 October 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi […]

  Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, eminent Marxist economist, taught in CESP-JNU (Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University) over the last four decades.  He has been one of the most outstanding economists in India and a great teacher.  He has retired from JNU recently.  On the occasion of his farewell, the students of CESP […]

  The detritus of mobile phone footage of protests, from Tehran to Toronto, over the last year . . . assembled without grand narratives of the mainstream media. Public Studio is a transient Toronto artist collective. | Print  

As we stated at the outset of Part 1,1 there is no better test of the independence and integrity of the establishment U.S. media than in their comparative treatment of Iran and Honduras in 2009 and 2010. Iran held its most recent presidential election on June 12, 2009.  This followed a typically short three-week campaign […]