Archive | April, 2008

  • Historic Elections in Nepal

    Surprising even the Nepalis themselves, the Constituent Assembly elections went quite smoothly, considering the great tension in the country.  According to The Himalayan, only 33 of the total of 20,889 polling stations had to postpone polling to a later date, due to various forms of irregularities. The turnout was much higher than expected, more than […]

  • Bush, millionaires, consumption, and under-consumption

    No one requires additional proof of the growing hatred that drives the slaughter in Iraq, a country where 95 percent of the population is Muslim —of these, over 60 percent are Shiites and the remainder Sunnis—or the killings in Afghanistan, where over 99 percent of the population is also Muslim —80 percent Sunni and the remainder Shiite. The two nations are also made up of nationalities and ethnic groups of diverse origins and locations.

  • Against the Term “Moderate Muslims”

    Several months ago, an English sociologist told us that she was commissioned by her government to conduct a survey of “moderate Muslims.”  The survey was about what a score of Muslim leaders in Great Britain thought about the fight against terrorism, the place of Islam in Europe, religious fundamentalism, etc.  According to the sociologist, not […]

  • Time to Question the ICE Raids

    According to an article in today’s Los Angeles Times, “L.A. Mayor Chides ICE for Workplace Immigration Raids,” Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa “has asked the federal government to review its immigration enforcement priorities, warning that work-site raids on ‘non-exploitative’ businesses could have ‘severe and lasting effects’ on the local economy.” Villaraigosa “said ICE should spend […]

  • Letter from Nepal, Wednesday, April 9th

    Today’s news is dominated by the death of seven Maoists from police fire in Lamahi in Dang, western Nepal.  It’s difficult to discern what actually happened through the predominantly anti-Maoist media, but what is certain is that there were no casualties for the police — the result that speaks for itself.  The killings came just […]

  • The End of Osheroff’s Dance: Lessons from a Life of Resistance and Love

    As Abe Osheroff’s body slowly began to betray him in his 80s and 90s, one of his favorite lines was, “I have one foot in the grave but the other keeps dancing.” That dance ended on Sunday, April 6, when the 92-year-old Osheroff died of a heart attack at his Seattle home. Osheroff is remembered […]

  • Letter from Nepal, Saturday, April 5th

    After ten years of civil war and one and a half years of jittery peace, the Nepali people will be electing a constituent assembly for the first time in their history.  The motive force behind the people’s war, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) reached a deal with the main parliamentary parties on a nationwide […]

  • Egypt: Aish Baladi vs. Pizza Hut

    April 6, 2008 — The subsidized “country bread” of Egypt costs less than a single U.S. cent per loaf.  Not surprisingly, this product has seen heightened demand over the last few months as the price of unsubsidized loaves on the streets of Cairo has increased by nearly 30%.  Even though Egypt imports roughly 7 million […]

  • Pledge of Commitment: People of Faith with Palestine in Struggle

      Pledge of Commitment: People of Faith with Palestine in Struggle Our world is in crisis.  We face a growing, more aggressive empire with an insatiable appetite for consuming the resources of our world, subverting justice and humanity by its desire to strengthen its global hegemony; destroying the environment; feeding racist ideologies and practices of […]

  • Confronting the Economic Crisis: The New Deal at 75 — Lessons for Today

    When I was growing up in the 1950s, a photo of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932-1945) still hung in the homes of some family members and friends.  Our only four-term president was remembered by them as the leader — and even the savior — of the country.  Those like my parents, who experienced the Great […]

  • Call for Class Solidarity from Egyptian El Mahalla Workers

    6 April 2008 — The government’s police attacked the Mahalla workers’ strike.  Since the night of 5 April, so many worker leaders have been arrested.  Police besieged the city.  The strike couldn’t start in the morning.  In the afternoon, workers, their families, and the unemployed started demonstrations.  Police have attacked brutally with real bullets and […]

  • Bush, war and the tooth-and-nail struggle for survival

    In the reflection titled “Bush in Heaven,” published by our newspapers this past March 23, I affirmed that Bush would get up to his old tricks during the NATO meeting in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, from April 1 through 3.

  • The Sadrist Revolt

    The Student Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to take time out of his rebellion for studies.  The increasingly popular Iraqi nationalist and Shi’i religious leader, it was reported late last year, is seeking the title of Ayatollah (“Sign of God”).  Muqtada’s Iraqi supporters presently confer on him the title of Hujjat al-Islam (“Proof of Islam”), although […]

  • People’s History of American Empire

    Labor and political cartoonist Mike Konopacki — close friend and collaborator of UE’s cartoonist Gary Huck — has produced a brilliant book-length graphic adaptation of a major portion of Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of the United States. Created in collaboration with Zinn and historian Paul Buhle, Konopacki’s A People’s History of American Empire tells, in pictures and text, the story of U.S. government and corporate policies of controlling other people’s countries — from the seizure of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba in the Spanish-American War, to George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But it also shows that U.S. foreign policy is and always has been inseparable from domestic policies that have stolen land from and massacred Native Americans, crushed workers’ movements, and employed racism and immigrant bashing to divide and conquer working people.

  • Leading Presidential Candidates Out of Step on Health Care

    “Do you support national (single-payer) health care insurance?” Click on the chart for a larger view. Sources: U.S. General Public: An AP-Yahoo! News survey of more than 1,800 people conducted Dec.14-20, 2007, by Knowledge Networks. U.S. Physicians: “Support for National Health Insurance among American Physicians: Five Years Later.” A survey of over 2,000 physicians, by […]

  • Interview with Mike Marqusee, Author of If I Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew

    IF I AM NOT FOR MYSELF: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew by Mike MarquseeBUY THIS BOOK Your book is subtitled “Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew.”  Were you always an Anti-Zionist? No. I grew up, in the 1960s, in a left-wing household in a largely Jewish New York suburb — where Israel was seen as a […]

  • To Protest Indefinite Detention, Sami Al-Arian on Hunger Strike: New YouTube Video Describes His Case, Highlights His Plight

      April 2, 2008 — The Department of Justice under the Bush administration continues to manipulate the legal system to keep Dr. Sami Al-Arian imprisoned indefinitely. Sami Al-Arian, a computer engineering professor from Tampa, Florida, was arrested on charges of supporting a designated terrorist organization in 2003.  Al-Arian proclaimed his innocence and maintained the charges […]

  • The Arab Conscience

    الضمير العربي أنا رافضة أنا هيمنتك تحت ستار الحرية أنا رافضة رأيك نصحك بإسم الديموقراطية الحرية مش منحة تتفضل بيها علي إرادتنا تمحي المحنة إصحي يا أمة يا عربية The Arab Conscience (Al Dameer Al Arabi, directed by Ahmad Al Arian), a sequel to The Arab Dream (Al Hilm Al Arabi, 1998), premiered on Zoom […]

  • Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King, Jr. — Forty Years On

    April 4, 1968 was the day when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee.  He had been working with the Memphis sanitation workers in their struggle for better working conditions and a union.  The night before his assassination, he gave his speech that ended with the words “But I want you to know […]

  • Nicaragua: A Sharp Left Turn

    MRZine must be commended for its recent publication of Mike Friedman’s interview with Nicaragua’s Comandante Mónica Baltodano.  It is especially welcome because there has been a dearth of information and analysis about Nicaragua in the English-language world ever since the 1990 electoral defeat of the revolution.  That in some ways is puzzling because the actions […]