Perspectives
Ten years since East Timor’s independence vote
By Patrick O’Connor, August 31, 2009
Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of the referendum that saw nearly 80 percent of the East Timorese people vote to secede from Indonesia and become a separate nation-state.
Coup in Honduras enters its third month
By Bill Van Auken, August 29, 2009
Despite mass popular resistance and formal condemnations by Washington, the OAS and various Latin American governments, two months after the June 28 coup the right-wing military-backed regime remains ...
Washington’s double standard: The elections in Iran and Afghanistan
By Patrick Martin, August 28, 2009
The Obama administration and the American media, after denouncing the presidential election in Iran as “rigged” and undemocratic (without any evidence), now uphold the legitimacy of the presidenti...
Ted Kennedy and the decay of American liberalism
By Barry Grey, August 27, 2009
The death of Massachusetts Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy on Tuesday marks the end of the Kennedy family’s role as a major force in American politics.
Obama, rendition, and the decay of American democracy
By Tom Eley, August 26, 2009
The Obama administration’s decision to carry on the practice of rendition testifies to the profound decay of American democracy.
Nearly one year since the crash of 2008
Bernanke's apologia for the Fed
By Patrick Martin, August 25, 2009
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a speech to the annual summer symposium of the world’s central bankers, held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which combined a review of the past year ...
70 years since the Hitler-Stalin Pact
By Alex Lantier, August 24, 2009
Seventy years ago, Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov met in Moscow to sign a hastily-negotiated Non-Aggression Pact between Hitlerite Germany ...
Washington praises Afghan election fiasco to justify war escalation
By Bill Van Auken, August 22, 2009
In an attempt to legitimize the escalation of a war opposed by the majority of the American people, the Obama administration, backed by the US media, has hailed Afghanistan’s August 20 election.
America’s Death Squads Inc.
By Bill Van Auken, August 21, 2009
The revelation that the CIA sought to contract out overseas assassinations to the politically connected mercenary outfit, Blackwater, underscores the grave dangers to democratic rights in the US itsel...
Afghanistan’s gunpoint election
By James Cogan, August 20, 2009
The poll takes place under conditions of a continuing foreign military occupation to prop up a puppet government that is notorious for its human rights abuses, corruption and failure to provide for th...
US income gap widest since 1917
By Bill Van Auken, August 19, 2009
The social chasm separating America’s financial oligarchy from working people is wider than at any time since 1917, according to the latest statistics from the Internal Revenue Service.
South Korea: The political lessons of the Ssangyong occupation
By James Cogan, August 18, 2009
The state crackdown on the Ssangyong occupation demonstrates that the defence of the basic right to a job is a revolutionary question.
