Subjects Archives: Democracy

  Two weeks ago, the 10th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Council summit, held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, approved the SCO Rules of Procedure and the regulation on procedure for future membership expansion. Before the summit, Chinese diplomats ritually pointed out that approval of the admission regulations was the first step in forming the basis for a […]

Four years ago, when the government of Evo Morales re-nationalized its hydrocarbon industry, the Brazilian media was spoiling for a fight.  After all, Petrobras, the Brazilian oil and gas company, had major interests there.  But President Lula Da Silva was calm.  “I haven’t had a fight with George W. Bush,” he told the press.  “Why […]

  The Israeli Knesset’s House Committee met Monday (7 June) to recommend revoking the privileges of MK Hanin Zoabi.  The revocation would serve as punishment for Zoabi’s participation in last week’s Freedom Flotilla aid mission to Gaza, an act some in the Knesset are calling treason. Zoabi made history in February 2009, becoming the first […]

  Norman G. Finkelstein: What happened with the Gaza flotilla was not an accident.  You have to remember that the Israeli cabinet met for fully a week.  All the cabinet ministers discussed and deliberated how they would handle the flotilla.  There were numerous reports in the Israeli press, numerous suggestions, numerous recommendations about what to […]

  After the Second World War, from which the Allied forces emerged victorious, the government of the United States sought to make the most of its military victory.  It structured the Assembly of the United Nations to be led by a Security Council composed of the seven most powerful countries, with veto power over decisions […]

  Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an inter-governmental organization under the auspices of the United Nations, from December 1997 to November 2009.  Dr. ElBaradei and the IAEA were awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for “for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for […]

  Listen to Étienne Balibar: Étienne Balibar: . . . I will be trying to reverse the implicit rule of this kind of event.  Far from coming with positions for which I would argue, I mean already established positions for which I would argue, trying to convince others that they can be shared, I’m coming […]

In a democratic society, when there is a deep crisis, it is customary for the government to dissolve parliament and call elections in order for the people to decide.  This happened in Britain and France after mass strikes and demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s. After mass Yellow Shirt protests against the government in Bangkok […]

THERE is no alternative but to call things by their name. Anyone with minimal commonsense can observe without much effort how little realism remains in the current world. When United States President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Michael Moore stated “Now please earn it!” That witty comment pleased a lot of people […]

Only tyrants stay in power by sending tanks on to the streets.  So why won’t Abhisit call an immediate election?  Answer: he knows he would lose. Soldiers stand under a sign saying “We Won’t Use Violence.”  The guns are obviously for eating noodles. Abhisit says these people are terrorists! Keeping the streets safe from democracy. […]

I had the privilege of talking for three hours last Thursday 15th with Hugo Chávez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, who had the gentility to once again visit our country, this time arriving from Nicaragua. Few times in my life, perhaps never, have I met a person who has been capable of leading […]

  Maryam Panah.  The Islamic Republic and the World: Global Dimensions of the Iranian Revolution.  Pluto Press, 2007.  232 pp.  ISBN: 978-0-7453-2622-1, ISBN10: 0-7453-2622-6. Review of The Islamic Republic and the World Maryam Panah offers a refreshingly different and powerful account of the causes and consequences of the Iranian Revolution.  Drawing on recent developments within […]

Tony Judt.  Ill Fares the Land.  The Penguin Press, 2010.  237 pp.  $25.95. In December, the New York Review of Books transcribed an October 2009 speech delivered by the eminent historian Tony Judt at New York University under the title “What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?”  A major address by Judt […]

Once again the Thai NGOs have sided with the military-installed royalist government against the demands of hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy Red Shirts.  The Red Shirts, who represent millions of ordinary working people in urban and rural areas, have been staging huge protests in Bangkok in recent days.  Their demands are for the dissolution of […]

  Neo-Liberalism, Secularism, and the Future of the Left in India A Day-long Conference Thursday, April 1, 2010, 10 am — 7:30 pm Heyman Center for the Humanities, Second Floor Common Room Keynote speaker: Sitaram Yechury Additional Speakers: Prabhat Patnaik Jayati Ghosh C.P. Chandrasekhar Javeed Alam Discussants: Sanjay Reddy Arjun Jayadev Anwar Shaikh Anush Kapadia […]

  Brasília — Since the beginning of his trip to the Middle East, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said that the unity of two Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah is essential to the achievement of peace in the region. Today (17 March 2010), after meeting with President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud […]

“Here is the ultimate paradox of the Great Health Care Showdown: Congress will divide along partisan lines to pass a Republican version of health care reform, and Republicans will vote against it.” — E.J. Dionne, 20 March 2010 Here is where the true beauty of the two-party capitalist political system kicks in. Spiraling health care […]

On March 10, the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere held a hearing to chart the course of their agenda in the Western Hemisphere over the coming year. On March 12-15, the National Popular Resistance Front in Honduras (FNRP) held a national meeting to pave the way for a Honduran Constitutional Convention, even in […]

Hundreds of thousands of Thai Red Shirt pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets of Bangkok and other cities over the weekend.  This was a show of force to prove the strength of the movement and to dispel any lies by the royalist government and the media that the Red Shirts are not representative of the […]

  Two major lessons emerge from the first round of the regional elections The magnitude of abstention by millions of youth, workers, and the unemployed, who mostly wished to register their rejection of the political parties that have alternated in power and that are responsible for aggravating their conditions of life.   The vigor of […]