Archive | Commentary

Paul Ginsborg is Professor of Contemporary European History, University of Florence and a frequent public commentator on politics and life in Italy.  His books include A History of Contemporary Italy, Society and Politics 1943-1988, Italy and Its Discontents: Family, Civil Society and the State, 1980-2000, and the bestselling biography Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony. He […]

  Here we publish an interview with Farian Sabahi, an Italian-Iranian professor at Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Turin.  A professional journalist, Sabahi has been writing for Corriere della Sera for several months.  She was a guest of LibrInTerra on the 26th of March, presenting her two books Storia dell’Iran [A History […]

On Memorial Day this year, many veterans marched in local parades and remembered what it was like to be in the military.  A number of Veterans For Peace members saw this picture in the May 24 edition of the Juneau Empire and made the comments that follow it. Alaska Army National Guard Staff Sergeant Michael […]

Catch Dat Beat, a unique, only-in-New-Orleans theatrical event, played for one weekend last month at Ashe Cultural Arts Center.  It sold out its several hundred seats every night and will re-open in June at a bigger venue, a 900-plus seat auditorium at Walter L. Cohen High School.  The play, directed by music producer Lucky Johnson, […]

C. Wright Mills created the concept of a “power elite;” he imported the term “New Left” from Europe to the United States, and he was among the first to catch the phrases “paradigm” and “postmodern.”  A global thinker in a square era, he was everything postwar America was not: radical, original, and hip.  His work […]

JOHANNESBURG, 26 May 2009 (IRIN) — Food prices will rise again by 2015, when economies are expected to have recovered from the global recession, pushing up demand once more, says a recent UN report. 2008 is seen as the year of food crises, prompted in part by high fuel prices, but these started declining as […]

  Hazel Dickens, Bill C. Malone.  Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens.   Music in American Life Series.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008.  Illustrations.  ix + 102 pp.  $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-252-03304-9; $17.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-252-07549-0. One of the foremost voices on behalf of working people in country music recently […]

The Israeli government took this week a new measure in its attempt to suppress democratic rights in Israel.  The government has approved a bill banning all commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, under penalty of Imprisonment.  The bill is yet to pass in the Israeli parliament, subject, for now, to heavy criticism from many […]

Pop psychology has long had a term for the political marriage between LGBT people and the Democrats — it is a dysfunctional relationship. The Democrats court the votes and money of gays and lesbians, but offer few gains and a stunning share of abuse in exchange.  For those LGBT activists wooed by the Democrats, ditching […]

The Israeli cabinet has voted yesterday (Sunday, May 24, 2009) in favor of a racist proposal to ban Nakba commemorations.  Many Arab-Palestinians commemorate the proclamation of the state of Israel as Nakba, the Arabic word for disaster. In the proposal, anyone participating in the commemoration of 15 May 1948 could face a three-year prison sentence.  […]

Would Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu say the magic words “two states” after his meeting with President Obama?  All Israel held its breath.  (He didn’t).  The gap between the two is wider than those words could ever have bridged, however.  Obama, I believe, sincerely — perhaps urgently — seeks a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a […]

  Civil rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen is finally a free man after spending two years in jail. This video was released by IBN on 26 May 2009.

  Saman Salour was born in Boroujerd, Iran in 1976.  His last feature film Lonely Tune of Tehran was screened during the Directors’ Fortnight a the Cannes Film Festival last year.  “The Final Match” was made as part of Art for the World’s “Stories on Human Rights” on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of […]

  En route to the Cannes Festival, where he is to present his latest film (Looking for Eric), Ken Loach stopped by in Marseilles on the 16th of May.  On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the great miners’ strike in Britain, the NPA 13 and the Païdos Library invited the English director, whose […]

  Hany Abu-Assad is a Dutch-Palestinian filmmaker, whose 2005 film Paradise Now won the 63rd Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film award among other awards.  “A Boy, A Wall and A Donkey” was made as part of Art for the World’s “Stories on Human Rights” on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal […]

This much is clear: not in a long time has capitalism been so critically questioned in the US and “socialism” so widely debated as a social alternative.  The left can and should seize this moment.  One part of doing that is to formulate a new program — including a new definition of socialism — that […]

One of the central paradoxes in economic theory relates to the hostility that financial interests in a modern capitalist economy systematically display towards any policy of enlarged State expenditure financed by borrowing, even though such expenditure increases capitalists’ profits and wealth. Let us suppose that the government undertakes a larger borrowing-financed public expenditure programme, and […]

  Hello, friends — I’m writing you on behalf of Felice Gelman, who is now in Cairo.  She is leading a group of 14 people who will try to get into Gaza.  The group will arrive in Cairo on Sunday and then, hopefully, will get to the border of Egypt and Gaza at Al Arish […]

  Part 1 Part 2 Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jr., the son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, is the author of In the Shadow of a Saint: A Son’s Journey to Understand His Father’s Legacy (2001).  Omoyele Sowore is a Nigerian human rights activist and the publisher of Sahara Reporters.  This interview was produced for Sahara Reporters and brought […]

  “For fifty years, crude oil has been flowing from under the feet of the people of the Niger Delta.  For fifty years, they have been promised that this would mean a better life.  This promise has never been kept.  Now, the people have had enough.” Sandy Cioffi is a Seattle-based film and video artist.  […]