Archive | December, 2010

For the past few months global attention, especially in the international financial media, has been focussed on the eurozone.  The reasons are obvious.  The group of countries that make up the European Union together constitute the largest economy in the world.  Instability within it — which now seems inevitable, no matter how the current problems […]

  Just what did Barack Obama and his spinners do to the critical faculties of so many leading American progressives?  Some of my regular readers might be surprised to know that I often bring a significant measure of disinclination to my recurrent radical criticism of President Barack Obama and his “progressive” defenders.  The reluctance stems […]

  December 22, 2010 The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is circulating the following statement from Palestine solidarity activist Maureen Murphy.  Maureen is the managing editor of the popular online publication, Electronic Intifada, and she is also the co-chair of the Chicago Committee Against Political Repression, which has been leading work in Chicago to oppose […]

  December 22, 2010 Dancing and singing to a parody of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s “Telephone,” more than forty members and friends of the St Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee (STL-PSC) serenaded holiday shoppers at Best Buy and AT&T stores in Brentwood, MO.  They urged patrons to join the boycott of Motorola products because of the […]

Introduction Molière’s 1670 his play, The Bourgeois Gentleman, presented before the court of Louis XIV, mocked a foolish, social-climbing merchant.  In his effort to remake himself, the merchant takes lessons to help him pass as an aristocrat.  In a basic lesson on language, he is both surprised and delighted to learn he had been speaking […]

Excerpt: From the descriptions given by the soldiers, one comes to grasp the logic of Israeli operations overall.  The testimonies leave no room for doubt: while it is true that the Israeli security apparatus has had to deal with concrete threats in the past decade, including terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens, Israeli operations are not […]

  “Palestine and Iraq in the Eyes of Kalvellido and Azagra.”  That’s the title of a series of panel cartoons by Spanish artists Juan Kalvellido and Carlos Azagra, who have criticized, in their own way, that is to say by cartoons, the wars in Iraq and Palestine in recent years. This exhibition, organized by the […]

Chilean government spokeswoman Ena Von Baer declared on Tuesday that her country “supports the establishment of a Palestinian state.”  With this declaration Chile joins Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia, which in past weeks have recognized Palestine as a free and independent state. Von Baer explained that Chile’s support is offered in the context of the […]

  While the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, fights his legal battles in front of the cameras (or from the palatial estate in Britain where he is under “house arrest”) the American soldier accused of releasing secret US government documents to him remains hidden from public view.  Army Private Bradley Manning has spent seven months […]

  On December 20, dozens of people crowded the office of Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue and the National Governors Association offices in Washington, DC, to present the governor with the demands set by prisoners in his state who had been on strike since December 9: a living wage for work, educational opportunities, decent health care, […]

Fintan O’Toole.  Enough Is Enough: How to Build a New Republic.  Faber.  £12.99. Suppose you were swept to power on the back of a massive popular vote — say something like 80%, the kind of number that usually has the USA and its client states jumping up and down and calling you a leftist narco-terrorist. […]

Tehran, December 19, 2010. On what he called “the historic economic night,” President Ahmadinejad appeared on Iranian television to announce the imminent launch of the subsidy reform law, starting with energy prices at midnight (see below for new prices).  He produced an impressive array of facts and figures from memory, hoping to calm fears about […]

In recent years, radical geographer David Harvey has emerged as one of the leading theorists and popularizers of Marxian political economy in the English-speaking world.  In books such as The New Imperialism and A Brief History of Neoliberalism, as well as his popular online courses in Volume I of Marx’s Capital, Harvey has articulated a […]

  In December 2007, over 2,000 American Muslims were asked what they wished they could say to the world.  This is what they said. Lena Khan is an independent filmmaker.  Music by Kareem Salama.  You can vote for this film at the Web site of Women’s Voices Now, “a not-for-profit social enterprise,” which is holding […]

Navid Kermani: Europe is in fact cementing its ideological borders. . . .  Radical openness is an essential feature of the European project. . . .  You can’t draw the borders of Europe just as you would draw the borders of a country.  Europe isn’t a country — it is an idea. . . .  […]

When discussing the current state of Iran’s economy, commentators, activists, politicians, and the U.S. government all seem to agree on the massive role played by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).  Stanford University Professor Abbas Milani told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, D.C. in June 2010 that this “military junta” controls “minimally […]

Fariborz Rais Dana, a left-wing economist and critic of the ongoing subsidy reform in Iran, was arrested, around midnight, on Saturday (28 Azar).  The reason for his arrest was not announced, the authorities reportedly saying only that Rais Dana was being taken for “questioning.”  Nasser Zarafshan, Rais Dana’s lawyer, says that “it’s not clear where […]

Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement in response to reports that the Obama Administration is preparing an Executive Order to formalize indefinite detention without charge or trial for certain unnamed Guantanamo detainees. The assertion that 48 men currently detained at Guantánamo can be held indefinitely without charge or trial confirms that […]

For each of the past two elections I have published my Citizen’s Manifesto.  The idea is that anyone could print it off and hand it to either of the government parties if they come to the door.  Here’s my new version for 2011.  It’s a substantial modification since the last election — a certain amount […]

Phases of Imperialism Lenin dated the imperialist phase of capitalism, which he associated with monopoly capitalism, from the beginning of the twentieth century, when the process of centralization of capital had led to the emergence of monopoly in industry and among banks.  The coming together (coalescence) of the capitals in these two spheres led to […]