Archive | August, 2006

Upon returning from summer break, I found a surprising letter awaiting me written by three colleagues from another university, two of whom I’d known and worked with for decades.  The letter simultaneously informed me about a conference my friends were organizing and explained — with some anguish I think — that I would not be […]

After thirty-four days of relentless aerial bombardment and a ground invasion, Israel’s brutal assault on Lebanon’s civilian population has come to a halt, at least temporarily.  As the dust from the rubble of Lebanon’s ruined cities, villages, and infrastructure settles, and as bodies of victims are recovered and buried, and the human losses mourned by […]

To endorse the following statement, please send your name, location, affiliation and title (if any) to nyclaw@comcast.net, or NYCLAW, PO Box 3620166, PACC, New York, NY 10129. U.S. Out of the Middle East New York City Labor Against the War August 11, 2006 For weeks, Israel has turned Lebanon into a killing ground, slaughtering and […]

It was Jay Gould who once bragged that he could pay half the working class to kill the other half.  In American labor history, that often meant fomenting and exploiting racism to divide and conquer.  Apparently, CBS wants to give us a TV metaphor for it: it announced that the contestants on the upcoming season […]

  Paul LeBlanc Paul LeBlanc is what I have called an “organic intellectual,” a scholar and activist who has risen directly out of the working class.  Paul is the author of many books, including A Short History of the U.S. Working Class (Humanity Books, 1999) and Black Liberation and the American Dream (Humanity Books 2003), […]

When Harker sold off the hay ranches, the new owner, a super-rich businessman from Denver, kept Lester on as maintenance man.  This owner, Christopher Bane and his wife Audrey set themselves up in Harker’s old headquarters ranch and right away started drawing up plans for a big house on the sage bench across the creek […]

Gary Tyler, at one time the youngest person on death row, turned forty-eight years old this July.  He has spent thirty-two of those years in jail for a crime he did not commit.  The case of Gary Tyler is one of the great miscarriages of justice in the modern history of the United States, in […]

I was at a conference titled Build the Left, Fight the Right this past June.  The speakers and workshops at the conference ranged from the war in Iraq to the immigrant rights movement in the United States.  One of the most interesting (and there were many) and hopeful (in terms of a brighter future for […]

What Happened on May Day? On May 1, 2006, the largest strike in US history took place, with over a million people on the streets in a powerful show of force.  The May Day strike represented a culmination of waves of marches across the country demanding full, immediate legalization for all undocumented immigrants, workers’ rights […]

Matti Bunzl‘s work entitled “Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some Thoughts on the New Europe,” published in American Ethnologist (Vol. 32, No. 4, November 2005), is groundbreaking.  It is evident from the article, as well as the commentaries on it that appeared in the same issue, that, to understand contemporary Europe, we need to rethink some […]

With the exception of a couple years here and there, I grew up in Germany and attended German schools until I was 19 years old.  History teachers at the time were obsessed with helping our generation grapple with the questions: how could the Germans have let it happen?  How did so many get roped in […]

POST-9/11 SCIENCE: AMERICANS ARE WORLD’S ONLY HUMANS (PU) Just in time for the 5th anniversary of the World Trade Center disaster, scientists have discovered that United States citizens — alone out of every other people on planet Earth — possess qualities identifying them as homo sapiens. The finding was announced today at the Center for […]

Michael Steinberg, the author of The Fiction of a Thinkable World (published by Monthly Review Press), was interviewed by KKUP on 3 August 2006.  Click here to listen to the interview. Michael Steinberg reads from his book at Robin’s Book Store, Philadelphia (Photo by Loret Gnivecki Steinberg) Michael Steinberg is the author of The Fiction […]

King’s legacy dead as doornail America still run by Plantation Hillary proclaims, she a knowledgeable house slave who carried Massah George’s lies all the way to Baghdad and said it wasn’t even heavy. Stew Albert Photo by Robert Altman © 2006   Stew Albert, a co-founder of Yippies who died on 30 January 2006, published […]

  In an article published by the Mail & Guardian Online on June 27, titled “Iran Cannot Engage in Serious Talks with US,” I briefly explained some of the reasons why Iran would not be able to engage in serious talks with the United States or accept the European incentives package offered in exchange for […]

  CHICAGO — Hundreds of immigrant activists and supporters met in Chicago August 11-13 in a national strategy convention of the legalization-for-all wing of the movement. The event was the largest of at least three national gatherings of immigration activists held over the summer, and the one that was directly based on the “Calendar Coalitions,” […]

Photos by Wentong Lin Wentong Lin lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Today’s Liberation Day, one of the few holidays celebrated in both North and South Koreas, so it’s a good day to start boycotting Japan. Outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid his respects at Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine for war dead on Tuesday, the anniversary of his country’s World War Two surrender, a parting shot […]

Die Lösung Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbands In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen Auf denen zu lesen war, daß das Volk Das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe Und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit Zurückerobern könne.  Wäre es da Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung Löste das Volk auf und Wählte ein […]

Vietnam needs your help in the final stage of the process of normalization of relations between our two countries!  Legislation granting Vietnam permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) will be voted on very soon in the Congress. PNTR is the normal state of trade relations between the US and the vast majority of the world’s countries. […]