Archive | May, 2008

  Bolivia today lives under the most cruel and appalling xenophobic dictatorship of masters whose demented pride has been wounded. If you haven’t already seen it, watch this video. It happened on the 24th of May, in Sucre, the capital of Bolivia and crucible of the failed attempt at Bolivian mestizaje. Those who believed that […]

The dusty calles (streets) and campos (fields) in Immokalee, Florida are abuzz with the news of a fresh victory over a fast food giant: Miami-headquartered Burger King.  Those farmworkers/campesinos who remain in Immokalee — the tomato season there ended in April — will probably get their news through the low-powered radio station, Radio Conciencia, a […]

  Join us for a discussion of race, class, and the new economy with E. Paul Durrenberger, coauthor with Suzan Erem of On the Global Waterfront: The Fight to Free the Charleston 5. On the Global Waterfront, new from Monthly Review Press, tells the present-day story of longshoremen in Charleston, South Carolina, who successfully confronted […]

Solidarity Divided A Conversation and Book Signing with Bill Fletcher, Jr. Co-author of Solidarity Divided, University of California Press Date: Wed, June 18 Time: 6pm – 8pm Place: Busboys and Poetswww.busboysandpoets.com 2021 14th St NW Washington, DC 20009 Provoked by the continuing crisis of organized labor after the departure of the Change to Win coalition […]

The rhetoric about a “clash of civilizations” and a “war on Islam” has found its way easily into Arab intellectual discourse, where it has taken solid root, along with other similar “concepts” (or what I’d rather call “non-concepts” — like the term “terrorism” — since they are extremely vague and yet ideologically loaded) that were […]

Three all-German congresses were held this past weekend, all important but very different. The bad news first: The beautiful old city of Bamberg hosted the national congress of the National Party (NPD) — the main neo-Nazi party.  All attempts to bar it from the city’s Congress Hall foundered on a Bavarian court decision, since the […]

It is 14th Jeth, 2065, [Tuesday, May 27th, 2008] in Nepal, the day before the Constituent Assembly is to convene and declare Nepal a full Republic.  The king remains in his palace.  The form of the new government, who will lead it, whether the old parliamentary parties will join in a Maoist-led government or, as […]

Hillary Rodham Clinton was not a liberal, but the news media seldom realized it when surrounded by campaign placards and press kits, as a throng of reporters in the Oval Office were on this bright, cold day in January 2009. “Fiddle dee dee, I can’t tell you people apart,” chirped Hillary, her blue eyes fluttering […]

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s May 21 announcement that Israel and Syria will soon begin indirect negotiations in Istanbul, mediated by the Turkish government, should not have surprised anyone.  As Olmert told the Israeli daily Ha-Aretz (May 22, 2008), “exchanges [with Syria] have been ongoing for a long time.”  What seems to have changed is […]

It would be dishonest of me to remain silent after hearing the speech Obama delivered on the afternoon of May 23 at the Cuban American National Foundation created by Ronald Reagan. I listened to his speech, as I did McCain’s and Bush’s. I feel no resentment towards him, for he is not responsible for the crimes perpetrated against Cuba and humanity. Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor. I have therefore no reservations about criticizing him and about expressing my points of view on his words frankly.

  Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in American folk music who performed extensively and tirelessly for audiences on two continents for 38 years, died Friday of congestive heart failure in Nevada City, California, a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he lived for the last 21 years with his wife, Joanna Robinson, a […]

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Date: Wed, June 18 Time: 6pm – 8pm Place: Busboys and Poetswww.busboysandpoets.com 2021 14th St NW Washington, DC 20009 “An extraordinarily important and provocative reflection on the limitations of self-reform and reinvention within the American labor movement.  The authors provide readers with a unique first-hand view of internal debates, personalities, and decision-making processes but also […]

  David A. Bell.  The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.  x + 420 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index.  ISBN 978-0-618-91981-9. The concept of “total war” is not a new one to historians, particularly those of the twentieth century.  For many, the […]

  19 May 2008: Friends, this is simply an account of what I saw and experienced in a twenty four period.  It might be incomplete.  It is not an analytical piece as such, but I hope a small step towards trying to understand what had taken place in this city, in this country that I […]

Just a few days ago, a friend of mine sent me the text of a report from Gallup, the well-known U.S. opinion pollster. I started to leaf through the material with the natural lack of confidence given the lying and hypocritical information usually used against our nation.

It was a survey on education in which Cuba was included…

I couldn’t stop my head from cocking to the left for a moment when my grandmother, while watching John Wayne on the television, said that the Old West should have sunk for all the lead he fired into the ground. And it is probably true, given just how many black-hatted ne’er-do-wells would outlive their ninety […]

1 Mayis 2008, İstanbul | | Print

  Action Alert for Sami Al-Arian As we speak, the US government is manipulating the justice system to keep the high-profile prisoner Dr. Sami Al-Arian imprisoned indefinitely. Despite having never been convicted of any crime whatsoever, and despite being an upright citizen who dedicated his life to improving America, Dr. Al-Arian has been imprisoned since […]

Hezbollah is the big winner in the accord on Lebanon signed in Doha, Qatar. But everyone — including Washington — is welcoming this asymmetrical compromise. Why? Hard bargaining is underway. . . .

In the Middle East, neither the worst nor the best is ever certain. But what happened in Doha, the capital of Qatar, on Wednesday, at 3 o’clock in the morning, is a historic event. The accord putting an end — for now — to the political crisis that tore Lebanon for the past eighteen months (and many more in fact) contains a tough lesson for the West: its weakened friends in Beirut had to bend themselves to the force of Hezbollah and its allies Amal, another Shi’i party, and the Christians led by Michel Aoun. The Party of God will enter the government without laying down its arms, as a minority with veto power.