Commentary archive

Commentary Who’s afraid of gay parents? Sylvie duvergersymbolic order (dated): see Sexual difference (will never go out of fashion). … Sexual difference , cultural, natural, in a word anthropological. Republican value. Universal. Intellectual buffer, impossible to go beyond, like day and night. Not to be gone beyond in any event, or at least not in […]

Commentary Many enemies, much honour The founding of The Left Party in Germany Albrecht von lucke The foundation of The Left Party in June this year produced a forceful reaction in the German media. In the main, the leading journalistic organs of the Republic dismissed it as an insolent populist gesture. In the words of […]

COMMENTARY Looking Back on ’68 Managing the present Kristin Ross The problem with the past is that it is unpredictable. This may be one reason why French president Nicolas Sarkozy has recently generated a series of bizarre decrees – the precise legal status and implementation of which are uncertain, if not unimaginable – that attempt to manage the memory […]

‘This is what you should think’, ‘This is what you shouldn’t think’, ‘This is what’s possible or impossible, old or new, relevant or irrelevant.’It is within this murky inverted present and swamp of bad memory that the various social movements that make up the slow reassertion of the radical Left in France have had to […]

It is hardly news that history has its blind spots, hidden even from those attentive to its most neglected byways. These are often within emancipatory struggles that are swiftly disregarded once their fervour fades. When disputed legacies originate in confrontational, often anarchic challenges to the prevailing order of just about everything, systematic accounting tends to […]

Commentary Beware electocrats Naomi Klein on South Africa Ronald suresh roberts With the Karl Marx epigraph at the front of his Orientalism (‘They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented’) Edward Said meant to caution not only against callow imperialists but also against benignly orientalist protectors who trample upon native political agency in the most […]

Commentary The hungry of the earth Raj patel The price of food is soaring. The ability of the world’s poorest to pay for it isn’t. The results are predictably catastrophic. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has explained that the people starving and taking to the streets in countries like India and […]

Commentary Between imperial client and useful enemy Pakistan’s permanent crisis Justin podur Pakistani scholar–activist Eqbal Ahmed, who died in 1999, had a canny ability to predict events. In a 1974 article for the Journal of Contemporary Asia, he suggested that Pakistan was headed towards a police state structure because of the class and ideological composition […]

On 30 October 2007, Giovanna Reggiani, a 47-year-old Italian woman, was robbed and murdered in a deserted area of northern Rome. The man accused of murdering her was a Romanian Roma, Nicolai Romulus Mailat, who had been living in one of the ‘unauthorized’ settlements in Rome. The media immediately reported horrific stories of torture and […]

2008, www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/les-roms-craignent-une-contagion-de-la-vague-de-racismeitalienne_546904.html?p=2. [archive] 5. ^ European Network Against Racism, Press Release, 19 May 2008, http://cms.horus.be/files/99935/MediaArchive/pdfpress/2008–05–19%20anti-Roma%20events&20Italy.pdf. 6. ^ Il Giornale, 5 September 2008. 7. ^ ‘Italy Reassures EU that Fingerprinting Gypsies is Legal and Not Racist’, International Herald Tribune, 24 July 2008, www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/24/europe/EU-EU-Italy-Roma.php. [archive] 8. ^ www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/ital-a06.shtml. [archive] 9. ^ ERRC et al., ‘Security a la […]

Commentary The war against pre-terrorism The Tarnac 9 and The Coming Insurrection Alberto toscano On 11 November 2008, twenty youths were arrested in Paris, Rouen and the village of Tarnac, in the Massif Central district of Corrèze. The Tarnac operation involved helicopters, 150 balaclava-clad anti-terrorist policemen, with studiously prearranged media coverage. The youths were accused […]

Commentary symposium No New Deal is possible Antonio negri John Maynard Keynes was a gentleman – that is, an honest bourgeois, not a pettybourgeois like Proudhon, or an ideologue, but an easy man – and when political economy was still concerned with the political ordering of market and society every classical economist knew this. Keynes […]

Commentary Reckless trials? The criminalization of the sexual transmission of HIV Daniel monk In 1998 a report by the Home Office concluded that it would be contrary to the public interest to criminalize the reckless transmission of HIV. Moreover – and in keeping with received academic opinion – it also suggested that under the existing […]

Commentary Lash out and cover up Austerity nostalgia and ironic authoritarianism in recession Britain Owen hatherley Britain has reacted strangely to the crisis of neoliberalism. The country’s seemingly endemic nostalgia, particularly for the Second World War, has long been exploited by Thatcherites and Blairites; but its recent political use shows, in an especially acute form, […]

On 8 July 2005, the day after the London bombings, the International Association of Chiefs of Police issued its new guidelines on the detection and prevention of suicide bombings. The IACP is the primary organization through which senior police executives across the globe try to coordinate their powers and practices, and it does this through […]

Commentary ‘New providers’ The creation of a market in higher education Andrew mcgettigan At the end of 2009, the Labour government commissioned a review panel, led by John Browne, formerly chief executive of the London-based oil and gas multinational BP, to report on the financing of higher education in England. Its basic remit was to […]

On Saturday 13 June this year, hours after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Ministry of the Interior announced his landslide victory as Iran’s president and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the religious head of state, prematurely and unconstitutionally embraced these results, Tehran and several other major cities became the stage for spontaneous, sporadic and widespread protests. Despite the government’s arrest […]

Commentary The global moment Seattle, ten years on Rodrigo nunes What are we to make of an anniversary that no one celebrates? The year 2009 may be remembered for many things: the greatest capitalist crisis in over a century, the first year of the Obama presidency, the transformation of the G8 into a G20 (and […]

Comment Rentier capitalism and the iranian puzzle dariush m. doust The word ‘Iran’ usually signifies unpredictability, offering either raw material for the narratives of news agencies, or a fascinating enigma. Recent events have once again underlined the fact that the 1979 Iranian Revolution is still poorly conceptualized. To state the obvious: the outcome of the […]

Commentary the Question of caster semenya Mandy merck Caster Semenya, the South African runner, won the 800 metre gold medal at the World Championships. What did Pierre Weiss, head of the world athletics governing body, say in response to questions about her sex?The Times Sport Quiz, 26 December 2009 What indeed? The question of Caster […]

Comment Hey! can’t you smile! Women and status in philosophy Babette babich What is the status of women in philosophy today? Before asking this question it is important to recall that when one speaks of status one speaks of prestige or value. Questions of status have nothing, by nature, to do with ‘truth’, objective or […]