Archive | Commentary

On August 6, 34-year-old immigration detainee Hiu Lui Ng died in Rhode Island, in severe pain from a fractured spine and terminal cancer which went undiagnosed and untreated over the year he spent in federal lockups.  Valery Joseph, another immigration detainee, died of an apparent seizure at the Glades County Detention Center in Florida on […]

  You’ll be familiar with the story.  An evil or crazy (the two are interchangeable) maniac is trying to destroy the American way of life, sowing destruction in an American city, blowing up American buildings, killing American citizens.  We stand amidst the rubble, watching the firemen, wondering what happened.  This man is demented, unreasonable; he […]

As a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, I could not have been more proud to learn last June that I had earned a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States. As a child, I would wonder how televisions, computers, and washing machines actually worked.  I took this fascination to the Islamic University of […]

October 3-6, 2008 San Francisco The Women’s Building, 3543 18th St. Speakers Embattled civil liberties attorney Lynne Stewart Activists and scholars from Central America, China, Australia, and the U.S. Key topics Multi-racial organizing in a society divided by racism The dynamic leadership of youth and queers Women of color and immigrant women spark a labor […]

In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities.  On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called “Moles Wanted.”   Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful […]

(WASHINGTON D.C., 9/2/08) The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today welcomed the release of Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a former Florida professor who has been in federal custody for more than five years.  A judge ordered him freed on bail to await trial for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury. SEE: “Sami Al-Arian Freed […]

Amidst all the journalistic brouhaha about a new cold war, most analysts are missing out on the real crisis that has been crystallized by Saakashvili’s imprudent excursion into South Ossetia.  The very existence of NATO has been put into question. To understand that, we have to go back to the beginning of NATO as an […]

  Jamaica became independent from Britain in 1962.  After almost a decade of “democratic socialist” experimentation in the 1970s, it was made a “model state” for Reaganism and neoliberalism in the Caribbean and Central America during the 1980s, having already undergone an IMF structural adjustment program in 1977.  As a result of economic and political […]

Deteriorating economic and social conditions in Mexico have generated mounting social problems.  Private enterprises in Mexico and the government they control cannot manage, let alone solve them.  Huge demonstrations are rocking the country with more to come.  One chief cause of Mexico’s problems is the turmoil and decline in the US economy.  Rising US unemployment […]

Anyone looking for a good movie about traitors can skip the new Don Cheadle vehicle Traitor.   Despite all the action movie hype, it won’t be around long, anyway. Traitor is not a movie about traitors, or a sensitive post-mortem on why people might become “traitors.”  That old chestnut “The Man without a Country” is […]

  Which is better — craft unions or industrial unions?  The debate is as old as the labor movement itself, and one that resists simple answers. Craft unions organize workers along occupational lines.  Industrial unions join everyone who works for one employer, or one industry, into one union. The argument surfaces in the dispute between […]

EXCLUSIVE POLL.  As the crisis between Russia and Georgia intensifies, 56% of the French want France to seek compromise with Moscow, according to a CSA-Le Parisien–Aujourd’hui en France poll to appear in the Saturday edition. Asked about the position to adopt towards Russia, only 27% advocate a hard-line position after Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s declaration […]

Anti-Muslim material — the short film Fitna and the Danish cartoons spring to mind — usually raise hell when they first appear. They also raise some interesting questions. The propagandists have certainly enjoyed their handiwork.  Vilifying the enemy flavor of the month always wins vigorous rounds of applause (and money) from the right quarters.  The […]

  As the election draws closer, we will hear more and more about the politics of Jesus, as liberals and conservatives jockey to place the shining halo of Christianity over their own heads.  Without saying it, they will imply, “Jesus would have voted for me!” Putting aside for a moment the rudeness of regularly forcing […]

I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, light for every intellect.  I am convinced that the human history has not yet begun — that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric.  I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is diffused […]

This US election year, an unprecedented number of voters will likely head to the polls to cast their ballots in an exercise that should take just a few minutes to complete.  But what about the rest of the minutes left in the year?  Author and activist Chris Carlsson has some suggestions for social change beyond […]

  The question of responsibility for the conflict in the Caucasus didn’t trouble us for long.  Less than a week after the Georgian attack, two French commentators, experts on all things, pronounced it “obsolete.”  An influential American neo-conservative had set the tone for them.  Knowing who started the conflict is “not very important,” Robert Kagan […]

Being the only “policeman” who “has ever risen to so much influence in India,” Indian National Security Adviser MK Narayanan seldom minces words in revealing the designs of the Indian State for “national security.”  He recently pronounced the focus of the state’s strategy against leftist militancy in the country.  In an interview with the Straits […]

When University of Texas faculty members opened the local Austin newspaper in mid-August, many were surprised to read that that their institution was raising funds for an endowed chair to honor Charlie Wilson, described charitably by the paper as “the fun-loving, hard-living former East Texas congressman portrayed by Tom Hanks in last year’s ‘Charlie Wilson’s […]

For some, Barack Obama’s stature as a man of the Left has fallen precipitously, like late autumn leaves shed by branches bowing to the will of winter. Disappointment has often been self-inflicted.  Supporters have dipped their pens deeply into the inkwell of Obama’s inspiring story and written their own lines on Afghanistan, oil drilling, or […]