Archive | Commentary

Following Egypt’s refusal to allow the Gaza Freedom Marchers to enter Gaza, the more than 1,300 peace-and-justice activists are setting out on foot.  Despite police blockades set up throughout downtown Cairo in an attempt to pen the protesters in and prevent them from demonstrating in solidarity with Palestinians, the internationals are unfurling their banners and […]

In the early 1970s the shah, via his intelligence organisation SAVAK, the CIA and the Israeli MOSSAD, sponsored a sustained “covert war” of Iraqi-Kurdish factions under the leadership of Mustafa Barzani against the Ba’thist leadership in Iraq which led to bombings of oil installations in Kirkuk and other infrastructural facilities with civilian use and subsequently […]

Click here to send a letter to the Egyptian government using our web form! A year after Israel’s vicious “Operation Cast Lead” assault against the Gaza Strip, which left over 1,400 Palestinians — including 355 children — dead, thousands more wounded and tens of thousands of homes destroyed while devastating Palestinian health care, educational and […]

I’m not at all somebody who wants to enshrine Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order as the new centerpiece in the old “what Marx said” religion.  But, really, I do stand by my conclusion that Baran and Sweezy’s 1966 book was the #1 social science book of the century, Marxist […]

Egyptian security forces have detained approximately 25 American citizens inside and 7 or 8 American citizens outside the US embassy compound in Cairo, Egypt. Gathered in Cairo as part of the Gaza Freedom March, a coalition of over 1400 internationals from over 40 countries, the US marchers went to the American embassy to beseech their […]

Within weeks of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, its leadership, with the enthusiastic support of black and mestizo Cubans, took steps to dismantle the most visible forms of racial discrimination on the island.  Within a couple of years the Revolution dismantled the economic underpinnings of racial oppression that had its roots […]

Dear Supporters of the Cuban Five, The year 2009 is coming to an end — it was a difficult one for the Cuban Five and their families.  On June 15, the U.S. Supreme Court, without any explanation, ignored the international call of 10 Nobel Prize winners, parliaments, members of the religious community, intellectuals, human rights […]

  On December 31, 2009, a march and demonstration is planned in the Gaza Strip to protest the occupation and siege of the territory.  Tens of thousands of Gazan residents, joined by hundreds of marchers from the U.S. and around the world, are expected to take part in this historic act of civil disobedience. The […]

The government of Egypt is taking a spectacularly hard line against international solidarity efforts in support of civilians in Gaza on the one-year anniversary of the Israeli invasion, blocking peace marchers from the U.S., Canada, and Europe from even approaching the Egyptian border with Gaza and blocking an aid convoy that has the support of […]

  Sunday 28 December 10.35am. Aqaba, Jordan The compound where our convoy members gather during the day, here in Aqaba, is full of activity.  In exactly an hour, more than 30 of us will begin a hunger strike in protest at Egypt’s refusal to allow the convoy entry onto its soil. Everyone else is making […]

Because it traces its origins to the Enlightenment tradition, the left has tended to conceive of itself as a “progressive” force, steering the course of History toward a more or less inevitable higher stage of development as the right tries to conserve traditional society from the onslaught of modernity.  Today, the term “progressive” is applied […]

  Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? out recently from Zer0 Books.  As a blogger he writes K-Punk.  Capitalist Realism is one of the most acute diagnoses of contemporary politics as it is played out in one small island off the coast of Europe.  After skewering the marketisation of […]

I noted a couple of weeks ago the urgency of the condemnations being levelled at Iran (what The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss called the beginning of “the stupid season”). The hysteria appears to be mounting. Just a few of the latest incidents: We’ve been leaked the news that Barack Obama is almost powerless to stop Israel […]

“This is an embedded film. We decided to be ’embedded within the ambulances’ opening an imaginary dialogue with those journalists who embed themselves within armies.” — Alberto Arce

Sunday, December 27 — The Egyptian security forces detained a group of 30 internationals in their hotel in el-Arish and another group of 8 at the bus station.  They also broke up a memorial action commemorating the Cast Lead massacre at the Kasr al Nil Bridge. At noon on 27 December, Egyptian security forces detained […]

World-renowned political organizer and one of Africa’s most celebrated poets, Dennis Brutus, died early on December 26 in Cape Town, in his sleep, aged 85. Even in his last days, Brutus was fully engaged, advocating social protest against those responsible for climate change, and promoting reparations to black South Africans from corporations that benefited from […]

The United States has had four presidents who received the Nobel Peace Prize.  I haven’t checked, but I presume that’s a record for heads of state.  All four have left their imprint on Latin America, “our little region over here that has never bothered anybody.”  That’s how Secretary of War Henry Stimson described the hemisphere […]

In The Taming of the American Crowd: From Stamp Riots to Shopping Sprees, I argue that unlike the kind of crowds that have surged across the pages of American history and unlike crowds in certain other parts of the world, today’s American crowds seldom even figure in the news.  We have crowds of shoppers, spectators, […]

We are making a public entreaty to Mubarak to let the Gaza Freedom March into Gaza.  Text below. — Max Ajl OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT MUBARAK FROM THE GAZA FREEDOM MARCH December 26, 2009 Dear President Mubarak; We, representing 1,362 individuals from 43 countries arriving in Cairo to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, are […]

The New York Times published an op-ed today that calls for war against Iran. Alan J. Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin, argues that the unraveling of the uranium enrichment agreement proves that the United States must conduct air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent […]