Archive | May, 2013

  • #OccupyGezi

      31 May 2013 This is our Tahrir. Friday evening.  This is probably the busiest street of Ankara at this time of the week.  It’s busy today, too — not with traffic, but with thousands of demonstrators. On the surface, everything has only to do with a public park, which is slated to be demolished […]

  • Facing Off: The Integration of Capital v. the Integration of Peoples in the Americas

    João Pedro Stédile, second from left, speaks to the Peasant Movement of Papay in Haiti.  Photo: Beverly Bell. João Pedro Stédile is an economist, co-founder and co-coordinator of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil, and leader among Latin American social movements.  He gave the following talk to hundreds of Haitian farmers at the 40th […]

  • From Afghanistan, “Thank You, Bradley Manning”

    May 29, 2013 A few evenings ago, as the sky began to darken here in Kabul, Afghanistan, a small group of the Afghan Peace Volunteers (APVs) gathered for an informal presentation about WikiLeaks, its chief editor Julian Assange, and its most prominent contributor Bradley Manning.  Basir Bita, a regular visitor to the APV household, began […]

  • Crises of Capitalism and Social Democracy

      John Bellamy Foster is best-known as author of Marx’s Ecology (2000; in which he corrects the popular misapprehension that Marx did not ‘get’ environmental limits), and as editor of Monthly Review (monthlyreview.org), the journal founded by Marxist economist Paul Sweezy in the late 1940s.  In his latest book, The Endless Crisis (2012; written with […]

  • Afghan Activist Fahima Vorgetts: Resisting the 1% in Afghanistan, With One Women’s Cooperative at a Time

    May 27, 2013 When she was 24 years old, in 1979, Fahima Vorgetts left Afghanistan.  By reputation, she had been outspoken, even rebellious, in her opposition to injustice and oppression; and family and friends, concerned for her safety, had urged her to go abroad.  Twenty-three years later, returning for the first time to her homeland, […]

  • Gay Liberation and the Taboo on Male Homosexuality

    The following comments were made at a panel on the topic “Sexual Taboos and the Law Today” May 19 at a conference titled “Which Way Forward for Psychoanalysis?” and sponsored by the Society for Psychoanalytic Inquiry at the University of Chicago.  While Freud and psychoanalysis were a focus on the event, other themes running throughout […]

  • Making History: Heroes and Organizers

    The last couple of weeks, I have been reading and grading hundreds of high school essays.  The students were asked to write about a person in the past whom they would like to meet and what questions they would ask them, given the opportunity.  It was gratifying to learn that, along with the predictable smattering […]

  • The Revolution Against Homophobia in Cuba

    “I think that the freedom that we have . . . is the freedom not to repeat things, it is the freedom to discover what is the path we have to build within our context, our history and culture, our aspirations, our sense of belonging, our ideology, what we love most.” — Mariela Castro Espín […]

  • Interdom at Eighty: Reflections in Russia, on Dreams Old and Renascent

    Russia, as travelers have noted over the centuries, is immense.  Most of it is far from large bodies of water.  And yet, in a first visit after many years, I came upon some unusual islands right in the heart of the country.  But they were not islands in the geographic sense.  Some were children’s islands. […]

  • Bradley Manning Blows Chance to Have Gay Wedding

    Gay greetings, LGBT-town!  I’m your out-and-proud lesbian pundit.  You may recognize me from my latest blog entry, “How Gay Was My Condo.”  Today, I bring you a hard-hitting work of in-depth political analysis re: Private First Class Bradley Manning.  It seems some malcontents on the Board of San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade have suggested Private […]

  • International Crisis Group Against Venezuela

    The International Crisis Group (ICG) sells itself as “working to prevent conflict worldwide” but there is one country where their mission looks more like promoting rather than preventing conflict.  Exhibit A is their report on Venezuela, released on Friday. There is a lot wrong with this report — most of it reads like a statement […]

  • Immigrant Workers Are Organizing in New York — With or Without Immigration Reform

    Some 50 to 60 union meat cutters and their supporters turned out on the afternoon of April 6 for a noisy protest against what they said was a lockout by Trade Fair, a chain of nine small supermarkets based in Queens, New York. Standing in a picket line on a busy sidewalk outside a Trade […]

  • Economic Development and Rana Plaza

    The official death toll from the April collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which housed clothing factories, has now passed 1,100.  How exactly will the staggering costs of that overwhelming tragedy be figured?  Will they count as part of capitalism’s contribution to economic development across Asia, Africa, and Latin America? In capitalism’s […]

  • Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

      We went on “Israeli Independence Day” to Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, to celebrate the “ethnic cleansing” along with the people of Israel.  We distributed maps prepared by Zochrot documenting the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the beginning of Zionism to 67.  Reactions?   The “best” you can find on the Zionist streets. Here […]

  • From Al-Araqib to Susiya: Forced Displacement of Palestinians on Both Sides of the Green Line

    On Nakba Day, 15 May 2013, Palestinians will mark the passing of 65 years since the massive forced expulsion of Palestinians from their national homeland.  The Nakba commemorations demand reflection not only on the “catastrophe” of the loss of life, land, and property in 1948, but also on Israeli policies that are still dispossessing Palestinians […]

  • On a Long March: Sanjay Kak’s Red Ant Dream

      Red Ant Dream / Maati Ke Laal (2013) 120 minutes; English version, with subtitles Direction: Sanjay Kak Photography: Ranjan Palit, Sanjay Kak and Setu Sound Design: Madhu Apsara Writers: Sanjay Kak and Tarun Bharatiya Editing: Tarun Bharatiya www.redantdream.com You are far away from the sterile atmosphere of much of academia with its politically correct […]

  • Interview with Francisco Louçã, Economist and Leading Member of Portugal’s Left Bloc

    Francisco Louçã.  Photo by Paulete Matos. Francisco Louçã is an economics professor at Lisbon’s Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão.  He is the author of numerous books and essays including Ensaio para uma Revolução [Rehearsal of a Revolution]; As Time Goes By — From the Industrial Revolution to the Information Revolution, with Chris Freeman; Portugal […]

  • A New Pakistan?

    “These people who are commonly known as leaders view politics and religion as that crippled, lame and injured man, displaying whom our beggars normally beg for money.  These so-called leaders go about carrying the carcasses of politics and religion on their shoulders, and to simple-minded people who are in the habit of accepting every word […]

  • Jobs and Freedom: The March on Washington and the Freedom Budget

    Many prominent civil rights figures were socialists — believing there was a link between racial justice and economic justice.  As socialists they wanted decent jobs for all, an end to poverty, decent housing for all, decent education for all, human rights for all, rule by the people (democracy) over our political and economic life. Such […]

  • Interview with Hong Kong Dockworkers Leader

    The battle of the Hong Kong dockers, as Union of Hong Kong Dock Workers (UHKDW) Secretary Wong Yu Loy reveals, was important not only because of the rarity of strikes in Hong Kong, or because it was a pitched battle with Hong Kong’s wealthiest corporate magnate, but also because of the way corporate globalization set […]