Commentaries Archives - Page 260 of 837

Don’t Negotiate with the Taliban

by Inge Fryklund | Dec 31, 2009

The Afghan problem can’t be addressed, let alone solved, by force. Nor can it be solved through negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. The conflict, after all, is not between two distinct segments of the population. Negotiation is an appropriate strategy when there is indeed a two-party conflict—as in a civil war—and both sides have support among different factions of the population. But neither the government nor the Taliban has much popular support. The problem is not the presence of the Taliban; it’s the absence of good governance.

Can Beijing and Moscow Help with Tehran?

by Ehsan Ahrari, John Feffer | Dec 30, 2009

The real test of President Barack Obama’s dealing with China and Russia will be whether he can persuade them to support U.S. pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear weapons aspirations. Obama is reported to have lobbied China on that issue during his recent visit. He also broached the topic with Russia in the recent past for the same purpose, but with little success. Iran denies wanting to join the nuclear club, but Washington has no faith in those denials.

Geneva Conventions Still Hold Up

by Kenneth Roth | Dec 30, 2009

What needs rewriting is not the Geneva Conventions but Israel’s abusive and illegal war strategy.

Two Poems

by Ravi Shankar, Melissa Tuckey | Dec 23, 2009

“South of Hebron” and “Two Sentences.”

The Art of Extraction

by John Feffer | Dec 23, 2009

The teacher assembles a collection of chocolate-chip cookies and toothpicks. This is how the elementary school children are supposed to learn about the costs associated with coal mining. Each cookie is a mining property. The students each receive $19 in play money, which they use to buy these properties. They examine the cookies closely to determine which ones to buy. They map their cookies. They buy mining equipment in the form of paperclips and toothpicks. Each minute spent extracting a chocolate chip costs $1. The chips that they do not surreptitiously eat can be sold for $2 apiece. When they are finished, the students must restore their property to its original condition using only their tools, a process that also costs money. Only after this labor can they determine their profits — and the costs of the mining process.

The Kurdish Closing

by Feryaz Ocakli | Dec 22, 2009

Turkey’s constitutional court banned the country’s only pro-Kurdish party on December 11. Likely to result in an increased number of ethnic conflicts across the country, the decision is both typical and paradoxical.

Obama and the Permanent War Budget

by William D. Hartung | Dec 22, 2009

It’s been a good decade for the Pentagon. The most recent numbers from Capitol Hill indicate that Pentagon spending (counting Iraq and Afghanistan) will reach over $630 billion in 2010. And that doesn’t even include the billions set aside for building new military facilities and sustaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Can Migrants Save the Global Economy?

by Debayani Kar | Dec 18, 2009

The global economic crisis has devastated workers around the world, none more than migrants whose daily wages are dependent on the whims of global financiers. Witness Dubai. Even before the meltdown of Dubai World, migrants whose labor literally built Dubai from the ground up suffered serious job losses with the onset of the global recession in 2008.

A Lesson on Nonviolence for the President

by Eric Stoner | Dec 17, 2009

In Oslo last week, President Barack Obama ironically used his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize to deliver a lengthy defense of the “just war” theory and dismiss the idea that nonviolence is capable of addressing the world’s most pressing problems.

Postcard From…Copenhagen

by Yifat Susskind | Dec 16, 2009

Last weekend, women farmers from Africa and Latin America gave President Obama a message that he can’t afford to ignore. In a letter delivered to the president and U.S. negotiators in Copenhagen, the women argued that the poorest, most disenfranchised people in the world hold the key to resolving the biggest global challenge of our time.