Archive | Interview

  “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 […]

  Nik Theodore is Director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a leading theorist of the urban dimensions of neoliberal restructuring.  He has collaborated closely with the Right to the City Alliance, the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, and other groups that have been at the […]

  Here’s another clue about the real balance of forces in Libya, which has been obscured by the concerted corporate media propaganda.  Washington has decided that the Libyan rebels don’t have what it takes to take Tripoli, where about half of Libya’s population live, on their own (as the rebels admit themselves) and that the […]

  Bahraini man in the revolutionary camp: “Zine El Abidine down, Mubarak down, Al Khalifa down, down, down.” James Bays: “Can the king make political concessions, or is it too late?” Bahraini woman in the revolutionary camp: “It’s too late.  Too late now.  Now the people, they — you can hear them — they want […]

  Patty Culhane: Now that shots have been fired in the name of Bahrain’s government, a key ally to the US and home to the strategically critical US Navy base, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to be showing some support for the Bahraini government’s position. . . . Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institute: Not […]

  Hossam el-Hamalawy is a member of the organization Revolutionary Socialists as well as of the Center for Socialist Studies in Cairo.  A journalist and blogger, he is one of the “cyberguerrilla” youth at the heart of the revolutions underway in the Arab world.  While constantly occupying Tahrir Square, he seeks to regularly disseminate alternative […]

  Saturday, February 5th, 8 pm (Egyptian time) What are some of the hurdles the protest movement is facing?  Are there divisions emerging while trying to find common ground? Yesterday the square was completely packed with more than one million protestors and Alexandria witnessed similar protests as well as the other provinces.  But there are […]

  Listen to the interview with Michael D. Yates: I know there’s a lot of pent-up anger.  If you take a country like Egypt, where people are suppressed, when they get an opportunity, a real opportunity, like what happened in the wake of the revolt in Tunisia, they will do things, they will take to […]

  Amy Goodman: Your feelings today in the midst of this popular rebellion against the Mubarak regime, calling on Mubarak to leave?  Do you agree? Nawal El Saadawi: We are in the streets every day, people, children, old people, including myself.  I am now 80 years of age, suffering of this regime for half a […]

Ahmad Shokr: Well, the scenes right now are quite remarkable. Literally, tens of thousands are taking to the streets amidst a huge security presence. I’m standing in front of a demonstration of at least a few thousand people who have taken over one of the main bridges in Cairo, calling for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. They have raised their hands, stating that they’re peaceful protesters, but have been met by a shower of rubber bullets and tear gas.