Archive | Commentary

Three all-German congresses were held this past weekend, all important but very different. The bad news first: The beautiful old city of Bamberg hosted the national congress of the National Party (NPD) — the main neo-Nazi party.  All attempts to bar it from the city’s Congress Hall foundered on a Bavarian court decision, since the […]

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s May 21 announcement that Israel and Syria will soon begin indirect negotiations in Istanbul, mediated by the Turkish government, should not have surprised anyone.  As Olmert told the Israeli daily Ha-Aretz (May 22, 2008), “exchanges [with Syria] have been ongoing for a long time.”  What seems to have changed is […]

Hillary Rodham Clinton was not a liberal, but the news media seldom realized it when surrounded by campaign placards and press kits, as a throng of reporters in the Oval Office were on this bright, cold day in January 2009. “Fiddle dee dee, I can’t tell you people apart,” chirped Hillary, her blue eyes fluttering […]

It is 14th Jeth, 2065, [Tuesday, May 27th, 2008] in Nepal, the day before the Constituent Assembly is to convene and declare Nepal a full Republic.  The king remains in his palace.  The form of the new government, who will lead it, whether the old parliamentary parties will join in a Maoist-led government or, as […]

  Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in American folk music who performed extensively and tirelessly for audiences on two continents for 38 years, died Friday of congestive heart failure in Nevada City, California, a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he lived for the last 21 years with his wife, Joanna Robinson, a […]

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Date: Wed, June 18 Time: 6pm – 8pm Place: Busboys and Poetswww.busboysandpoets.com 2021 14th St NW Washington, DC 20009 “An extraordinarily important and provocative reflection on the limitations of self-reform and reinvention within the American labor movement.  The authors provide readers with a unique first-hand view of internal debates, personalities, and decision-making processes but also […]

  19 May 2008: Friends, this is simply an account of what I saw and experienced in a twenty four period.  It might be incomplete.  It is not an analytical piece as such, but I hope a small step towards trying to understand what had taken place in this city, in this country that I […]

  David A. Bell.  The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.  x + 420 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index.  ISBN 978-0-618-91981-9. The concept of “total war” is not a new one to historians, particularly those of the twentieth century.  For many, the […]

Hezbollah is the big winner in the accord on Lebanon signed in Doha, Qatar. But everyone — including Washington — is welcoming this asymmetrical compromise. Why? Hard bargaining is underway. . . .

In the Middle East, neither the worst nor the best is ever certain. But what happened in Doha, the capital of Qatar, on Wednesday, at 3 o’clock in the morning, is a historic event. The accord putting an end — for now — to the political crisis that tore Lebanon for the past eighteen months (and many more in fact) contains a tough lesson for the West: its weakened friends in Beirut had to bend themselves to the force of Hezbollah and its allies Amal, another Shi’i party, and the Christians led by Michel Aoun. The Party of God will enter the government without laying down its arms, as a minority with veto power.

  Action Alert for Sami Al-Arian As we speak, the US government is manipulating the justice system to keep the high-profile prisoner Dr. Sami Al-Arian imprisoned indefinitely. Despite having never been convicted of any crime whatsoever, and despite being an upright citizen who dedicated his life to improving America, Dr. Al-Arian has been imprisoned since […]

I couldn’t stop my head from cocking to the left for a moment when my grandmother, while watching John Wayne on the television, said that the Old West should have sunk for all the lead he fired into the ground. And it is probably true, given just how many black-hatted ne’er-do-wells would outlive their ninety […]

1 Mayis 2008, İstanbul | | Print

It is fair to say that the anti-war movement in the US is moribund.  A movement that put a million people in the streets a month before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and has drawn as many as half-a-million protesters to protests as recently as January 2007 has failed to mobilize anything even near […]

  As everybody in our country knows, the Congress of South African Trade Unions has been at the forefront of the campaign to create jobs and eradicate poverty.  For years we have fought to ensure that this struggle is taken seriously and remains at the centre of the national agenda. COSATU has done everything in […]

The relative decline in violence in Iraq that Bush, McCain, and other supporters of the war have attributed to the “surge” appears to have reversed.  Al Qaeda and others in the Sunni resistance began stepping up their attacks at the beginning of the year and Moqtada Al Sadr’s Mahdi Army has been battling US and […]

To: The Administration of Brown University On April 22, Brown University student Molly Little threw a pie at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in protest of his pro-war, pro-corporate views, and the prominence he receives in promulgating those views while others are suppressed.  Friedman received no injuries from the fluffy pie, and resumed his […]

Attention all unions, workers, and rank and file activists working in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice: You are invited to a three-day conference to help build and share strategies to support the movement for Palestinian rights in our workplaces, our unions and our communities. Friday, May 30 to Sunday, June 1, 2008 in […]

  For the first time in a generation or more, SEIU is facing a substantial movement by internal dissidents seeking to push through democratic reforms.  This push has a two-fold character. One prong is the very public resignation by Sal Roselli, the head of United Healthcare Workers — West (UHW), the third largest local in […]

Marjane Satrapi’s film Persepolis must have made George Bush and his new ally Nicolas Sarokzy quite happy.  After all, despite Satrapi’s rhetoric against the two leaders, her film’s core argument is one that Bush and Sarkozy have long been busy constructing: the evil state versus the wonderful people. Aesthetically, Persepolis is a refreshing and beautiful […]