Archive | Interview

Protests against the Formula One Grand Prix held in Manama on 22 April could have reminded the world that repression in Bahrain is still ongoing.  But once more the so-called international community by and large turned a blind eye: no diplomatic pressure, certainly no “crippling” international sanctions.  The Grand Prix went ahead as planned.  A […]

Carlo Fanelli (CF): Your early work pays a great deal of attention to the classical political economists (e.g. Ricardo, Smith, J.B. Say, J.S. Mill, Marx, etc.), with later writings engaging with economic luminaries such as Alfred Marshal and John Maynard Keynes.  Could you briefly discuss how this research has influenced your thinking about economics?  And […]

You’ve written about Beckett, Stevens, Blanchot, and others.  Literature seems a fundamental concern.  Indeed, your own prose is somewhat more literary than other contemporary philosophers’.  What is the significance of literature for you? Well, it’s very important.  When I stopped playing in punk bands when I was about 19 or 20, I decided I was […]

  Samir Amin: You see, the US establishment — and behind the US establishment its allies, the Europeans and others, Turkey as a member of NATO — derived their lesson from their having been surprised in Tunisia and Egypt: prevent similar movements elsewhere in the Arab countries, preempt them by taking the initiative of, initiating, […]

“No genuine democratic nationalist movement in the world has ever asked for any imperialist intervention.” — Aijaz Ahmad Aijaz Ahmad is a Marxist critic in India.  Prabir Purkayastha is a member of the Delhi Science Forum.  Video by NewsClick (15 February 2012).  See, also, Prabir Purkayastha, “Why Syria Matters: Interview with Aijaz Ahmad” (27 November […]

  Famous Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie recently directed a movie called In the Land of Blood and Honey in which Serbs are depicted as raping Muslim women prisoners during the Bosnian War.  As the movie doesn’t show the conduct of Bosnian soldiers, among the Serbian public it has been characterized as one-sided and anti-Serbian.  We […]

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 […]

  Jeremy Salt: I don’t think there’s any doubt at all that a large number of military, of civilians, have been killed by armed gangs and by defectors.  So, what we actually need to do is to disaggregate these (casualty) figures.  How many people have been killed by the Syrian Army?  How many of them […]

Ali Fathollah-Nejad from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London is a member of the initiative for a civil-society Conference for Security and Cooperation in the Middle East (CSCME). One of its key aims is the creation of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction.

  “My experience of the last year and half during the acceleration of this crisis is that the worst enemy of reason and progress are social democratic parties.  I say this painfully.  There’s no glee in this statement.”  — Yanis Varoufakis The Mess We’re In . . . The Future of Greece A Solution to […]

  “These NGOs funded by the World Bank, Ford, and so on — why are they participating, mediating what public policy should be? . . .  The World Bank runs 600 anti-corruption programs just in places like Sub-Saharan Africa.  Why is the World Bank that interested in anti-corruption?  I looked at five of the major […]

  Luc Duhamel.  The KGB Campaign against Corruption in Moscow, 1982-1987.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010.  312 pp.  $26.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8229-6108-6. Luc Duhamel’s study of an extensive anticorruption campaign in Moscow in the mid-1980s is riveting.  At multiple levels, this work provides new information and perspectives on a period of stalemate, factional competition, […]

Rudaw: The situation in Syria is turning increasingly violent and the western world has called on President Bashar al-Assad to step down. Where do you think things will go from here?

Abdulhakim Bashar: The Syrian regime will not fall merely based on the words and pleas of the west. The regime has made up its mind. Sanctions and international pressure will make things difficult, but the regime won’t collapse. We saw this in Iraq where 13 years of sanctions did not end Saddam Hussein’s regime until it was invaded. Syria is complicated. International pressure may encourage the protesters, but it will not be decisive.

  The way Egyptian scholar and researcher Samir Amin sees it, nothing will be the same as before in the Arab world: protest movements will challenge both the internal social order of Arab countries and their places in the regional and global political chessboard. Hassane Zerrouky: How do you see what’s happening in the Arab […]

  Herman Rosenfeld is a member of the Canadian Socialist Project and the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly, a new initiative aiming to reinvigorate working class and radical politics in the city.  He spoke to Tom Denning about the methods and activities of GTWA and the challenges it faces. Who initiated the GTWA, and with what […]

  Question: Today, Clinton stated that the US considered it necessary to step up pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  How can you comment on this? Foreign Minister Lavrov: No one is happy when in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, as in all other states there are disturbing developments, with blood […]

  Michael Munk’s The Portland Red Guide is a historical guidebook of social dissent in Portland, Oregon, and links notable radicals, their organizations, and their activities to physical sites in the city. We had a brief conversation over e-mail with Michael Munk to talk about the book, now in its Second Edition, and his experience […]

  Yaara Bou Melhem: On the edge of the capital, Manama, thousands gather for the funeral of a young man.  Hani Jumah was 32 years old and the father of two children. . . .  It’s a scene repeated over and over in Bahrain, where there are more and more killings, more and more funerals, […]

  Flynt Leverett, a professor of international affairs at Penn State and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial by Fire.  Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is the author of the forthcoming book In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness […]

  Roshan Muhammed Salih: Angered by the NATO bombing of Libya, this delegation made up of British academics, lawyers, and journalists set off from London’s Heathrow Airport on a peace mission to Tripoli.  Their intention is to emphasize that the Western intervention isn’t altruistic and has made the situation there worse. Dave Roberts: It’s really […]