Archive | Commentary

Iranians largely express satisfaction with their government.  Two out of three say that Iran is generally going in the right direction, though a plurality is dissatisfied with the Iranian economy.  Half say they trust the government to do what is right most of the time, while another quarter say they trust it at least some […]

Surprising even the Nepalis themselves, the Constituent Assembly elections went quite smoothly, considering the great tension in the country.  According to The Himalayan, only 33 of the total of 20,889 polling stations had to postpone polling to a later date, due to various forms of irregularities. The turnout was much higher than expected, more than […]

According to an article in today’s Los Angeles Times, “L.A. Mayor Chides ICE for Workplace Immigration Raids,” Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa “has asked the federal government to review its immigration enforcement priorities, warning that work-site raids on ‘non-exploitative’ businesses could have ‘severe and lasting effects’ on the local economy.” Villaraigosa “said ICE should spend […]

Several months ago, an English sociologist told us that she was commissioned by her government to conduct a survey of “moderate Muslims.”  The survey was about what a score of Muslim leaders in Great Britain thought about the fight against terrorism, the place of Islam in Europe, religious fundamentalism, etc.  According to the sociologist, not […]

Today’s news is dominated by the death of seven Maoists from police fire in Lamahi in Dang, western Nepal.  It’s difficult to discern what actually happened through the predominantly anti-Maoist media, but what is certain is that there were no casualties for the police — the result that speaks for itself.  The killings came just […]

As Abe Osheroff’s body slowly began to betray him in his 80s and 90s, one of his favorite lines was, “I have one foot in the grave but the other keeps dancing.” That dance ended on Sunday, April 6, when the 92-year-old Osheroff died of a heart attack at his Seattle home. Osheroff is remembered […]

After ten years of civil war and one and a half years of jittery peace, the Nepali people will be electing a constituent assembly for the first time in their history.  The motive force behind the people’s war, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) reached a deal with the main parliamentary parties on a nationwide […]

  Pledge of Commitment: People of Faith with Palestine in Struggle Our world is in crisis.  We face a growing, more aggressive empire with an insatiable appetite for consuming the resources of our world, subverting justice and humanity by its desire to strengthen its global hegemony; destroying the environment; feeding racist ideologies and practices of […]

April 6, 2008 — The subsidized “country bread” of Egypt costs less than a single U.S. cent per loaf.  Not surprisingly, this product has seen heightened demand over the last few months as the price of unsubsidized loaves on the streets of Cairo has increased by nearly 30%.  Even though Egypt imports roughly 7 million […]

When I was growing up in the 1950s, a photo of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932-1945) still hung in the homes of some family members and friends.  Our only four-term president was remembered by them as the leader — and even the savior — of the country.  Those like my parents, who experienced the Great […]

6 April 2008 — The government’s police attacked the Mahalla workers’ strike.  Since the night of 5 April, so many worker leaders have been arrested.  Police besieged the city.  The strike couldn’t start in the morning.  In the afternoon, workers, their families, and the unemployed started demonstrations.  Police have attacked brutally with real bullets and […]

The Student Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to take time out of his rebellion for studies.  The increasingly popular Iraqi nationalist and Shi’i religious leader, it was reported late last year, is seeking the title of Ayatollah (“Sign of God”).  Muqtada’s Iraqi supporters presently confer on him the title of Hujjat al-Islam (“Proof of Islam”), although […]

Labor and political cartoonist Mike Konopacki — close friend and collaborator of UE’s cartoonist Gary Huck — has produced a brilliant book-length graphic adaptation of a major portion of Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of the United States. Created in collaboration with Zinn and historian Paul Buhle, Konopacki’s A People’s History of American Empire tells, in pictures and text, the story of U.S. government and corporate policies of controlling other people’s countries — from the seizure of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba in the Spanish-American War, to George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But it also shows that U.S. foreign policy is and always has been inseparable from domestic policies that have stolen land from and massacred Native Americans, crushed workers’ movements, and employed racism and immigrant bashing to divide and conquer working people.

IF I AM NOT FOR MYSELF: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew by Mike MarquseeBUY THIS BOOK Your book is subtitled “Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew.”  Were you always an Anti-Zionist? No. I grew up, in the 1960s, in a left-wing household in a largely Jewish New York suburb — where Israel was seen as a […]

“Do you support national (single-payer) health care insurance?” Click on the chart for a larger view. Sources: U.S. General Public: An AP-Yahoo! News survey of more than 1,800 people conducted Dec.14-20, 2007, by Knowledge Networks. U.S. Physicians: “Support for National Health Insurance among American Physicians: Five Years Later.” A survey of over 2,000 physicians, by […]

  April 2, 2008 — The Department of Justice under the Bush administration continues to manipulate the legal system to keep Dr. Sami Al-Arian imprisoned indefinitely. Sami Al-Arian, a computer engineering professor from Tampa, Florida, was arrested on charges of supporting a designated terrorist organization in 2003.  Al-Arian proclaimed his innocence and maintained the charges […]

الضمير العربي أنا رافضة أنا هيمنتك تحت ستار الحرية أنا رافضة رأيك نصحك بإسم الديموقراطية الحرية مش منحة تتفضل بيها علي إرادتنا تمحي المحنة إصحي يا أمة يا عربية The Arab Conscience (Al Dameer Al Arabi, directed by Ahmad Al Arian), a sequel to The Arab Dream (Al Hilm Al Arabi, 1998), premiered on Zoom […]

MRZine must be commended for its recent publication of Mike Friedman’s interview with Nicaragua’s Comandante Mónica Baltodano.  It is especially welcome because there has been a dearth of information and analysis about Nicaragua in the English-language world ever since the 1990 electoral defeat of the revolution.  That in some ways is puzzling because the actions […]

April 4, 1968 was the day when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee.  He had been working with the Memphis sanitation workers in their struggle for better working conditions and a union.  The night before his assassination, he gave his speech that ended with the words “But I want you to know […]

The US media and party election machines have once again transformed the run-up to the US elections into a melodrama.  Across the country, party candidates have been swaggering across stages, surrounded by stars and stripes and CNN logos, to spew out the latest piece of propaganda that the spin doctors have managed to conjure up.  […]