Archive | Commentary

Today at dawn, New York City police surprised a gang of free market fanatics just before they could set off a massive dynamite explosion that would have blown away the entire northern wall of lower Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.  The gang members, clad in black Armani ski masks and tasteful Christian Dior jogging suits, fled […]

Dear friends, Today was Land Day in Palestine and around the world.  Hundreds of events were being held in honor of our Land that so many trespassers now live on.  The first land day in 1976 set a trend of defiance and resistance.  Different groups mark the day differently.  Demonstrators in Hebron were attacked by […]

I think that what we’re going through now — which is really just starting, we’re nowhere in the middle of it yet either, I think — is much bigger and more extensive than the Great Depression.  There are particular difficulties of fixing it because of the fact that it is bigger, it is more global, […]

  Chestnut Hill, MA — After administrators at Boston College forced the cancellation late Friday afternoon of an academic lecture featuring Professor Bill Ayers, student organizers of the event have decided that the show will go on — off-campus.  Student groups and faculty at Boston College drew criticism from a right-wing talk radio show host […]

Letter from the legitimate president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to Secrectary of State of the Government of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton on the occasion of her visit to Mexico in March 2009.  Translation by Dan La Botz.  Spanish language original follows. Federal District, Mexico March 25, 2009 Mrs. Hillary Clinton […]

Private capitalism (in which productive assets are owned by private individuals and groups and in which markets rather than state planning dominate the distribution of resources and products) has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to flare out into overproduction and/or asset inflation bubbles that burst with horrific social consequences.  Endless reforms, restructurings, and regulations were all […]

For the last week I have been with the JanaMukti Sena, the People’s Liberation Army, mostly with the Kalyan/Anish Memorial Brigade of the 3rd division. This is the People’s Hospital.  Set up by the People’s Army, it now serves both them and the public.  It has many facilities, including a pharmacy, an operating room for […]

Berlin, London, and Rome Berlin, Frankfurt, London, Paris Vienna

  HAVANA, 26 March (IPS) — While the work of women filmmakers in Latin America and the Caribbean has made its presence undeniable, their work still suffers from certain invisibility in a medium where men have traditionally had hegemony. The “Women in the Contemporary Audiovisual Media” Web site, created by the New Latin American Cinema […]

  Iranian director Soudabeh Moradian films the daily life of her country, as she sees it, as she lives it, without comment.  A new episode of her chronicles of Iran is broadcast on ARTE.tv each week. Watch five episodes — “The Bus Driver,” “In Front of the University of Tehran,” “To Be 24 Years Old […]

The system isn’t in crisis, the system is crisis! Manifesto Can we oust the bankers from power? Can we get rid of the corrupt politicians in their pay? Can we guarantee everyone a job, a home, a future? Can we establish government by the people, for the people, of the people? Can we abolish all […]

Sofie from Norway Asks What Iranians Would Think about Her Art Project of Having a Woman Pose in Burqa in the Red Light District of Amsterdam Sara in Iran Compares Her Project with Sofie’s Sofie Asks Iranian Women: “Are You Protected in a Burqa?” Sara Answers Sofie’s Question Couscous Global makes and broadcasts movies of […]

This video was first released by EuroPalestine on 11 March 2009.

John Maynard Keynes was once irritated by a half-witted critic: “When the facts change, I change my mind.  What do you do, sir?” In 2004 I wrote in the London Review of Books, “this is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as occurred with the 1992 jihad […]

Questions to Young Iranians Young Iranians Discuss Iran’s Government Young Iranians Debate Israel, America, and Iran’s Nuclear Program Young Iranians Debate Obama and Ahmadinejad Couscous Global makes and broadcasts movies of young people in debate all over the world.  The project originated in the audience’s responses to Couscous and Cola, a documentary TV series about […]

Patrick Cockburn is the Baghdad correspondent of the Independent and the author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. How do you interpret the latest election results in Iraq? Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister, has obviously done well and so has his […]

On the Idea of Communism, Birkbeck Institute, 13-15 March 2009, £100 / £45 (!) Videos by Big Casino Slavoj Žižek Alain Badiou Jacques Rancière Slavoj Žižek Program bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/files/communism-programme.pdf Alternative Program cinestatic.com/infinitethought/2009/03/alternative-schedule.asp Reports on the “On the Idea of Communism” Conference David Broder, “Report of Conference ‘On the Idea of Communism’” (The Commune, 15 March 2009) […]

  The Venezuelan minimum wage, including the value of food vouchers, will reach $636 in September this year, when the process of raising it by 20% gets completed; the second highest minimum wage in South America is Argentina’s $310 per month. The anti-crisis measures announced by the Bolivarian government last Saturday, although affecting Venezuelans negatively […]

The media landscape in the US is changing rapidly.  As all forms of journalists face massive layoffs, analysts fear that journalism’s role as a counterforce against the powerful is in jeopardy.  For progressives and radicals working in media, it’s important to not only question what format news will come in, but also how to approach […]

A visit to Western Europe in early March provided some slightly different — if unsettling — insights into global economic arrangements and their socio-cultural co-ordinates.  As the crisis unfolds, people everywhere are questioning current economic institutions and processes, and naturally enough their fears, insecurities and concerns also affect their visions for the future.  The fundamental […]