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CCR Denounces Government Attempt to Frighten Jury in NYC Trial of Fahad Hashmi
April 21, 2010, New York — In response to a government motion today asking for jurors in the case of Fahad Hashmi to be anonymous and kept under extra security, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement: The case against Fahad Hashmi in itself raises many red flags related to the violation of […]
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Reason, Faith, and Revolution
Christianity Fair and Foul The Limits of Liberalism Faith and Reason Culture and Barbarism . . . Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God? Who would have expected theology to rear its head once more in the technocratic twenty-first century, almost as surprisingly as some mass revival of Zoroastrianism or […]
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Whose Lost Cause?
Mark A. Lause. Race and Radicalism in the Union Army. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009. In the decades following the U.S. Civil War there was a rash of monument building. Plaques were sunk into ground still littered with shards of weaponry and human beings; statues appeared on the landscape like mute and […]
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Honduran Campesinos under the Gun: Part 2
Jesse Freeston: In Part 1, we described the landmark deal negotiated by the campesinos of the lower Aguán, despite the ongoing militarization of their communities. Land conflicts in the Aguán region are not new. Regular occupations by landless peasants in Aguán and elsewhere in Honduras during the 1970s forced the military dictatorship to enact land […]
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What “Populist Uprising?”Part 1: Facts and Reflections on Race, Class, and the Tea Party “Movement”
The right-wing Tea Party “movement” has recently grabbed attention in the dominant media again. On Tax Day last April, it garnered headlines by rolling out its standard high-decibel complaints against “big government,” deficits, taxes, and the supposed “radical” agenda of “Obama, Pelosi, and Reid” and the rest of the Democratic Party. As usual, the Tea […]
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World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth
For more information, visit <cmpcc.org>. | | Print
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The Global Securitization of Religion
My first thought upon reading the Chicago Council’s report “Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy” is that the title is misleading. This report is not about engaging religious communities abroad — one hears little if at all from such communities — nor does it say anything particularly new. There is, […]
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An Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi People
Two former soldiers from the Army unit responsible for the Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” incident have written an open letter of “Reconciliation and Responsibility” to those injured in the July 2007 attack, in which US forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees. […]
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The Social Cost of Carbon: A Report for the Economics for Equity and the Environment Network
Executive Summary: In its first attempts to regulate carbon emissions, the U.S. government is undermining its own efforts by relying on deeply flawed economic models that lead to gross miscalculations of the impact of carbon on the climate and on the nation’s economic future. Agencies seeking to incorporate climate change considerations in rules and regulations […]
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The Extra-territorial Establishment of Religion
There is an embarrassing giddiness in the religious studies world today. With our new mantra in hand — the new “salience” of religion — we, both scholars of religion and other self-appointed spokespersons for religion, feel licensed to instruct the world on the importance of religion. We are suddenly relevant again. Or so we […]
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Message to the Tehran International Nuclear Disarmament Conference “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None”
I would like to welcome the honorable guests who have gathered here. It is a pleasure for the Islamic Republic of Iran to be the host of the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament today. I hope this occasion will be an opportunity to yield enduring and important results from your dialogues and discussions for the […]
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Will Feminism Be Articulated to the Left or to the Right?
EA: You are one of the leading theorists trying to develop the notion of the public sphere. In what ways has globalisation affected the public sphere? Has the public sphere become more transnational? NF: Today, the flow of public political discourse does not respect borders, but is often transnational. The result is a serious […]
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UN Must Oppose US Threat to Use Nuclear Weapons
Iran’s UN ambassador Mohammad Khazaee calls on the United Nations Security Council and other UN bodies to oppose the US President’s nuclear policy and his threat against an NPT signatory which does not have nuclear weapons. Below is a letter that Khazaee sent to UN Security Council President Yukio Takasu, UN General Assembly President Ali […]
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No Crisis in Public Retirement Systems: Debunking the Hype and the Attacks on Employee Benefits
For years, right-wing groups have been beating the drums to roll back decent pensions and retirement benefits for American workers. At the federal level, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, ranking member on the U.S. House Budget Committee, proposed a “Road Map” plan to privatize social security, cut payments, and slash Medicare benefits for all seniors. […]
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The Left and Marxism in Eastern Europe
You now describe yourself as a Marxist, with plans for a Marxist theory group in Hungary in addition to your ongoing work as a writer and political commentator from the Left. Why Marx now? In Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, Marxist ideas and theories were hard-pressed to survive their connection to state socialism […]
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Iran: New Challenges in the New Year
About one month after the beginning of the new Iranian calendar year (21 March 2010), and following the international recognition of Norouz by the United Nations General Assembly, Iran is facing new challenges. Some of the challenges are domestic, while others emanate from Iran’s regional and international policies as well as international pressures put […]
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Asian Countries and the Dutch Disease
The Dutch disease does not derive from abundant and cheap natural resources, but from the combination of low wages and high wage dispersion. The American government was about to declare China an exchange rate-manipulator country, but, since bilateral negotiations continue, the American Treasury decided to postpone the decision, probably because it expects China to yield […]
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Chomsky and the Teabaggers
Do the teabaggers represent the vanguard of fascism in the United States? Noam Chomsky seems to think so. As The Progressive recently reported, Chomsky is rather frightened by the people who apparently think Lipton is the name of a headwear designer rather than a brand of tea: “I’m just old enough to have heard a […]
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Venezuela Needs an Economic Development Strategy
Throughout Venezuela’s record-breaking economic expansion, the government’s opponents — which includes most of the international media as well as Washington — were “crying, waiting, hoping,” as the rock and roll legend Buddy Holly once sang. The “oil bust” had to be just around the corner, they prayed and wrote. But for five and a half […]
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Can the Obama Administration Take a Deal with Iran on the TRR?
We have argued that the Obama Administration’s approach to Iran sanctions is, truly, a “dead end” policy and that the only way out of this dead end “is to get serious about nuclear diplomacy with Iran — first of all, by reaching agreement on a plan to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).” Although the […]