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  On December 24, 2010, Dr. Binayak Sen was convicted of conspiring to commit sedition and other charges and sentenced to life in prison.  What is the evidence against Dr. Sen?  In this video, based on previously published analyses of the judgement and a 2008 People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) report, we dissect the […]

  No more censorship on YouTube! Restore CubaDebate! Iván Lira is a Venezuelan artist.  This cartoon was published in Rebelión on 16 January 2011.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. Javier Rodríguez, “Censura de Youtube a Cubadebate desató movimiento solidario” (CubaDebate, 13 January 2011); Ellery Biddle, “Cuba: Cubadebate’s YouTube Channel Taken […]

The Tunisian revolution continues to dictate its own logic on all levels. . . .  After attempts by regime leftovers to spread chaos by several techniques (cars driving through the streets shooting at people and houses randomly, destroying infrastructure, etc.), the Tunisian people organized itself in committees that spread all across the country, in every […]

While there will be general agreement that the judgement in Binayak Sen‘s case represents a gross miscarriage of justice, most people will attribute it to the overzealousness of a lower judicial functionary, or, at the most, to the prevailing atmosphere in the state of Chhattisgarh.  If the trial had been held elsewhere, they would argue, […]

30,000 activists, Jews and Arabs, from left-wing parties, movements, and human rights organizations marched in Tel Aviv on Saturday, 15 January 2011, in protest of the Knesset’s decision to set up a committee of inquiry to probe the funding sources of organizations that rightists allege “participate in delegitimization campaigns against Israel Defense Forces soldiers.” “Demonstration […]

Comments made at the Brookings Institution Forum titled “Should the Disadvantaged Be Spared From the Budget Axe? A Look at the President’s Budget Commission Findings and How They Could Impact the Poor,” December 16, 2010 I am about to make comments that will likely place me seriously at odds with the other members of this […]

The discussion of violent and paranoid rhetoric in the media is long overdue, whether or not it is ever determined that accused Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner was somehow influenced or motivated by such rhetoric.  Before the shooting, there had been a remarkable surge of politically motivated violence (FAIR Blog, 1/12/11).  Despite media efforts to […]

14 January 2011 Where are the ‘democracy promoters’ on the Tunisian uprising?, asks Marc Lynch.  It’s a fair question: Thus far, a month into the massive demonstrations rocking Tunisia, the Washington Post editorial page has published exactly zero editorials about Tunisia.  For that matter, the Weekly Standard, another magazine which frequently claims the mantle of […]

  It is bad enough that, by delaying reconstruction aid to Haiti, the United States has failed to give adequate assistance to our neighbor, which was struck by a devastating earthquake one year ago.  It is far worse that we have also actively cooperated in its deeply flawed election.  Our government helped impose an election […]

From day one it was clear this was a revolution that was not about bread only, it was also against dictatorship and corruption.  The revolution was supported by all segments of society.  Poor, middle class, and even upper middle class.  Especially the middle class showed its claws in the last days in Tunis.  Many friends […]

The Consumer Price Index rose 0.5 percent in December — the largest single-month jump since July of 2009, when the index rose 0.7 percent.  This rise in headline inflation is entirely attributable to a 4.6 percent increase in energy prices over the month.  Though energy accounts for less than one-tenth of the index, the price […]

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 11 January 2011.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

  Asʻad Ghanem.  Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.  x + 208 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-35427-3; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-22160-5. November 2010 marked the sixth anniversary of the death of Palestinian National Authority (PNA) president Yasser Arafat.  For the last two years of his life, the once […]

TO: Warden David Bobby, Ohio State Penitentiary Director Gary Mohr, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Chief William A. Eleby, Bureau of Classification Ohio Department of Rehabilitation We the undersigned call for an end to isolated “supermax” imprisonment in Ohio State Penitentiary.  We are especially concerned about the cases of Siddique Abdullah Hasan (Carlos Sanders); […]

Paul Krugman does a very good job laying out the issues behind the euro zone crisis in his NYT Magazine piece.  There are two additional points that would have been worth noting. First, there are powerful forces who are working hard to prevent the partial or full Argentinification (partial default or a departure from the […]

  People’s Houses (Turkey) is preparing to organize the second People’s Rights Forum on 21-23 January 2011 in Ankara, in a time when people’s rights struggles against neo-liberal capitalist aggression on labour, humanity and nature are growing. The first People’s Rights Forum was held in July 2007 with the common initiative and contributions of People’s […]

  Sadri Khiari, Tunisian activist exiled in France since early 2003, is one of the founding members of the Party of the Indigenous of the Republic (PIR), of which he is currently one of the key leaders.  He has published, among others, Tunisie. Le délitement de la cité : coercition, consentement, résistance, éditions Karthala, Paris, 2003; […]

The “small round” surveys of the NSSO are usually not considered to be so good at capturing trends, because their smaller size makes them non-comparable with the quinquennial large surveys.  However, the 64th Round was a much larger survey than normal (with a sample of 1,25,578 households: 79,091 in rural areas and 46,487 in urban […]

On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a young Tunisian man of 26 years old, heads towards the municipality of Sidi Bouzid, a Tunisian provincial city.  He walks calmly towards the entrance of the building with the intention of protesting.  Bouazizi, who was unemployed despite holding a university degree as an IT engineer, was gaining his […]

  Highlights: Zhao Dongmin, a labor lawyer and Maoist, was sentenced on 25 October 2010 to three years in prison for applying to set up a workers’ organisation to monitor the privatization of state enterprises and alert the authorities about cases of corruption.  The Zhao Dongming case is significant for a number of reasons: First, […]