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"There Are Marxists in India?" Prabhat Patnaik on the Global Crisis
![[Prabhat Patnaik speaking at the CESP farwell party in JNU, New Delhi, 2006. Image by SubinDennis, via Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_pp.jpg "[Prabhat Patnaik speaking at the CESP farwell party in JNU, New Delhi, 2006. Image by SubinDennis, via Wikimedia Commons.]")
After an engaging half-hour interview with India’s pre-eminent Marxist economist during a conference at New York University, I told a friend about my one-on-one time with Prabhat Patnaik. “There are Marxists in India?” came the bemused response. “I thought India was the heart of the new capitalism.” Indeed, we hear about India mostly as a rising economic power that is challenging the United States. While there certainly are no shortages of capitalists, there are still lots of Marxists in India, as well as communist parties that have won state elections. Patnaik represents the best thinking and practice of those left traditions—both the academic Marxism that provides a ...
Keep Reading »On Kony2012: In Defense of the Armchair
![[Kony2012-inspired graffiti. Image by AshtonPal from Flickr.]](/content_images/3/sm_kony1.jpg "[Kony2012-inspired graffiti. Image by AshtonPal from Flickr.]")
It is quite possible that there remains nothing new to say about Kony2012. This thirty-minute video, narrated by Jason Russell, co-founder of the non-profit organization Invisible Children, aims to rally mass awareness and support for the campaign to capture Joseph Kony, leader of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). But Kony2012 is, after all, the gift that keeps on giving. Its tally includes an unprecedented humanitarian social media coup with close to ninety million YouTube views, a mind-boggling number of (re)tweets, and various Facebook-related milestones. It has generated comparable measures of support for and backlash against it, copious analyses of both, and even ...
Keep Reading »A New Kind of Armenian-Turkish Reconciliation
In October 2011, the newly renovated Sourp Giragos Armenian Apostolic Church reopened in Turkey’s southeastern province of Diyarbakir. Among the hundreds gathered to celebrate its first mass in over ninety years were local men and women who had chosen the occasion to be baptized into the Armenian Apostolic Church. Raised as Sunni Muslims, these men and women were the children and grandchildren of Armenians who had converted to Islam to escape persecution in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Living in a society that glorified cultural homogeneity and in a country that still bore the scars of its Ottoman past, the first generation of converts often kept their ...
Keep Reading »The Academic Boycott on Campus: Breaking New Ground, Gaining Momentum
![[PACBI logo. Image from pacbi.org]](/content_images/3/sm_PACBI(1).jpg "[PACBI logo. Image from pacbi.org]")
[The following statement was issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) on 3 February 2012.] In an open letter dated 21 October 2011, Palestinian students wrote to their counterparts across the world, “We hope you put Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) at the forefront of your campaigns and join together for Israeli Apartheid Week: the pinnacle of action across universities worldwide.” [1] The 8th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) constitutes a direct response to this call, at a crucial moment when youth are taking to the streets to combat dictatorships and an international economic crisis marked by ...
Keep Reading »Turkey and Syria: A Breakup Bound to Happen
![[Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan meets with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_assad-erdogan.jpg "[Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan meets with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Image from unknown archive.]")
While Syria and Turkey have called it quits for now, a possible regime change in Syria could bring them even closer together. The sultans must be green with envy. At no time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire have Turks held such sway over the Middle East. In the context of Arab uprisings, Turkey has been able to solidify a position it has been carefully trying to establish for the past decade. So far, Turkey appears to have made all the right choices. Now, it is navigating everyday turns in the Arab uprisings with a dexterity that is only more salient when juxtaposed with the failed, often barbaric attempts by the region's bumbling dictators to quash revolts, which ...
Keep Reading »هل تخبرنا التجربة الرومانية بما سيحدث في مصر؟
![[المصدر موقع زمالك فوروم]](/content_images/3/sm_RomaniaEgypt.jpg "[المصدر موقع زمالك فوروم]")
1-في البدء كانت ثورة خرجت الجماهير الرومانية في ديسمبر من سنة 1989 في كبريات المدن هاتفة ضد الديكتاتور المتداعي نيقولاي تشاوتشيسكو الذي كان قابضا على زمام الحكم منذ 1964. وبعد حوالي أسبوع من المواجهات في المدن بين قوات الأمن وعشرات الآلاف من المتظاهرين أضطر تشاوتشيسكو وزوجته إلينا للهرب حيث تم إلقاء القبض عليهما ومحاكمتهما بشكل صوري ثم ما لبثا أن تم إعدامهما ضربا بالرصاص. وتلى ذلك القبض على رؤوس الحزب الشيوعي الحاكم المقربين للديكتاتور المعدوم وتقديمهم للمحاكمة وسجنهم. بيد أن القضاء على تشاوتشيسكو وأعوانه المقربين لم يعن أن الطريق كان معبدا أمام الرومانيين للانتقال إلى نظام ديمقراطي على غرار ما وقع في كثير من دول شرق ووسط أوروبا في نفس الفترة بعد انهيار جدار برلين، ...
Keep Reading »The New Kurdish Movie
![[Image from stargazete.com]](/content_images/3/sm_newturkishplitics.jpg "[Image from stargazete.com]")
Turkey’s decades-old “Kurdish Question” has recently changed its trajectory. There is a new movie playing in town. The Turkish state is determined to follow a new kind of politics in order to resolve the issues that have been haunting Turkish-Kurdish relations for almost a century. In this commentary, I would like to describe what this new politics looks like. Let us begin with the question, Why did Prime Minister Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) choose a new and contentious political path? Behind the rationale for this choice lies the collapse of the negotiations initiated by the AKP government with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) – the militant ...
Keep Reading »Press Release by South African Union on Russell Tribunal on Palestine
![[SAMWU logo. Image from samwu.org.za]](/content_images/3/sm_image001.png "[SAMWU logo. Image from samwu.org.za]")
[The following press release was issued by the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) on 7 November, 2011. It was recently published on samwu.org.za] Jacob Zuma and Government must implement recommendations made by Russell Tribunal SAMWU PRESS STATEMENT 07 November 2011 The South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) welcomes the findings of the international citizen-based Tribunal of conscience, The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP). This important Tribunal will form a historical reference point in stamping out the institutionalised regime of domination amounting to apartheid, perpetrated against the innocent Palestinians. We urge ...
Keep Reading »Bertrand Russell's Legacy
![[Bertrand Russell. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_BertrandRussell.jpg "[Bertrand Russell. Image from unknown archive.]")
Making my way back to Ireland from the Third World Approaches to International Law conference at the University of Oregon last week, I found myself with a few hours to kill between flights in New York. In the basement of a second-hand bookshop, I picked up a dusty old copy of the Selected Writings of Bertrand Russell. After paying a visit to Occupy Wall Street, I caught a bus back to the airport, where the words of Russell’s introduction, written on the cusp of the great depression in the late 1920s, jumped out: “It is evident that, in a world where there was leisure and economic security for all, the happiness of all would be greater than that of ninety-nine per cent of ...
Keep Reading »Amnesty International Memorandum on Investigating Former US President George W. Bush for Crimes Under International Law
![[Amnesty International logo. Image from amnesty.org]](/content_images/3/sm_amnesty-international-image.jpg "[Amnesty International logo. Image from amnesty.org]")
[The following is the latest from Amnesty International on the criminality of George W. Bush's use of torture.] VISIT TO CANADA OF FORMER US PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH AND CANADIAN OBLIGATIONS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL MEMORANDUM TO THE CANADIAN AUTHORITIES AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Summary: Amnesty International considers that there is enough material in the public domain – even if one were to rely only upon information released by United States authorities, and by former US President George W. Bush himself – to give rise to an obligation for Canada, should former President Bush proceed with his visit to Canada on or around 20 October ...
Keep Reading »Let's Talk About Sex
This week Foreign Policy published a “Sex Issue.” They explained their decision to feature a special issue with these words Foreign Policy's first-ever Sex Issue…is dedicated…to the consideration of how and why sex—in all the various meanings of the word—matters in shaping the world's politics. Why? In Foreign Policy, the magazine and the subject, sex is too often the missing part of the equation—the part that the policymakers and journalists talk about with each other, but not with ...
Keep Reading »Call to National and European MPs: For an Audit of Tunisia's Debts to the EU
[The following statement was issued on 16 March 2012 by a diverse group of European parliamentarians calling for an audit of Tunisia's debt to the European Union.] With dictator Ben Ali ousted from power since 14 January 2011, Tunisia bears the burden of a public external debt amounting to $14.4 bn, which is a major obstacle to the development of the Tunisian people since repayment (capital plus interests) drains on an average an annual sum 6 times larger than the health budget. While Tunisia urgently ...
Keep Reading »From Greece: Declaration for the Defense of Society and Democracy
[The following statement was issued by a group of Greek academics regarding the ongoing crises in Greece.] Greek society is suffering both from the crisis and the responses to it, which have reached a dead-end. Major social and political institutions that were created with enormous struggles and sacrifices in post-War Greece—social security, the public health care system, public education, public transport, the natural and urban environment, the right to live a safe existence, and various elemental ...
Keep Reading »Imagine Africa
Imagine Africa. Published by the Pirogue Collective. Brooklyn, NY and Dakar, Senegal: Island Position, 2011. If you do a Google search for the phrase “Imagine Africa,” the results are not encouraging. Among the most popular results, you will find a company operating under that name offering “luxury safaris and beach holidays” in Africa. You will also encounter a project originating out of the University of Michigan under the name “IMAGINE Africa,” which in this case stands for “IMplementing A Global ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840-1915
Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840-1915. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. [Co-winner of the 2011 Albert Hourani Book Award] Jadaliyya: What made you write this book? Nile Green: It took me some time to realize the importance of Bombay to Muslims from all around the Indian Ocean, but after so many textual trails led me there, I realized I had to write a book about Bombay and its steam-spun web of connections. The documentation was ...
Keep Reading »Bombing the Neighborhood: Daniel Ellsberg and the Radical Critique of American Empire
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith. United States, 2010. “It wasn’t that we were on the wrong side. We were the wrong side.” – Daniel Ellsberg Two of the most chilling scenes in Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith’s extraordinary 2010 film, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, involve Richard Nixon. Nixon had just won the 1968 presidential election, a victory that he owed in part ...
Keep Reading »Statement by SASI on People to People Solidarity with Palestine and Duplicity of South Asian States
[The following statement was issued by the South Asia Solidarity Initiative (SASI) on 6 November, 2011.] SASI Calls for People-to-People Solidarity with Palestine and Condemns Duplicity of South Asian States in Palestine Bid for UN Recognition The South Asia Solidarity Initiative (SASI) recognizes the importance and urgency of the Palestinian bid for recognition by the United Nations this September. Despite the threatened U.S. veto in the Security Council, all member nations have an opportunity to ...
Keep Reading »Africa without Qaddafi: The Case of Chad
[The following is the latest from International Crisis Group (ICG) on the impact of Qaddafi's death on neighboring countries.] Africa without Qaddafi: The Case of Chad Executive Summary The end of the long reign of Muammar Qaddafi, killed on 20 October in his hometown of Syrte, opens the way to democracy in Libya. His fall has also left the country and its neighbors facing a multitude of potential new problems that could threaten stability in the region. Chad is a case in point. Qaddafi made his ...
Keep Reading »The Spectre of South Africa
Next week, the third session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will convene in Cape Town’s famous District Six. In the 1970s, 60,000 residents of District Six were forcibly removed following its designation as a White Area by the apartheid regime. Based on testimony from international legal experts and witnesses from the ground in Israel/Palestine, this “International People’s Tribunal” will examine whether Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people violates the prohibition of apartheid under ...
Keep Reading »Bashful "Indignados": Chronicle of a Portuguese Protest
Under the heat of the warm sun on a late summer Saturday, I left my house in Vila Real and travelled the one hundred kilometers that separate it from Porto, Portugal’s second biggest city, where a demonstration of the Fifteenth of October Movement was supposed to take place. Here in my hometown, where pro-government parties have ruled since the Carnation Revolution, a coup led by leftist mid-rank army officers which ended forty-eight years of dictatorship on 25 April 1974, no demonstrations were ...
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