Turkey — We landed in Istanbul May 16 for work and to visit family and friends. We traveled to Ankara, then went southeast to villages near Kayseri, then back to Istanbul for an international anthropology conference before visiting the port city of Izmir for a few days, traveling inland again to the textile center […]
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
DePaul Students Sit-In for Academic Freedom
Upset over DePaul University‘s denial of tenure to Professors Norman Finkelstein, and Mehrene Larudee, and after a meeting between 30 student leaders and DePaul President Fr. Dennis Holtschneider at his office, students have taken action to defend academic freedom which is under attack at the nation’s largest Catholic institution. After an unsuccessful meeting where their […]
Antena 3 and YouTube Censor Debate on Non-Renewal of RCTV License [Antena 3 y YouTube censuran un debate sobre la no renovación de la concesión a RCTV]
Todos los grandes medios de todo el globo alzaron su voz contra el gobierno democrático de Venezuela por la no renovación de la licencia de la televisión RCTV. Las continuas irregularidades en su funcionamiento y, el apoyo al golpe de estado no eran obstáculos para conservar su frecuencia, ya que la “libertad de expresión” de […]
The US and the 21st Century
Introductory Note: This essay is an adaptation and reworking of a historic 1963 document of the Students for a Democratic Society. Its original was mimeographed in several thousand copies and distributed jointly by the SDS National Office and the newly-created Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP). America and the New Era was intended to be […]
Stand Still and Rot
The Eclipse of Art: Tackling the Crisis in Art Today by Julian Spalding (New York: Prestel, 2003) Scoffing at tradition is nothing new; neither is shocking the public. To skewer the bourgeois (without gutting him entirely, and thereby losing his patronage) is something every artist must do, if only to prove his revolutionary bona fides. […]
“We Are Already Dead”: Avraham Burg Attacks the Jewish State, the “Zionist Ghetto” [“Nous sommes déjà morts” : Avraham Burg attaque l’Etat juif, “ghetto sioniste”]
“Avoir défini l’Etat d’Israël comme un Etat juif est la clef de sa perte. Un Etat juif, c’est explosif, c’est de la dynamite.” Ces propos sont ceux de l’ex-président de la Knesset de 1999 à 2003 et ex-président de l’agence juive, Avraham Burg. M. Burg n’a jamais mâché ses mots, mais, dans un entretien publié […]
Just Got Kicked in the Shins by an Israeli Soldier
Frankly, the last time a boy kicked me in the shins was . . . well never, because even in grade school I think we were all taught not to do that. I am, after all, a 5 ft 1 inch girl in flip-flops with her hands above her head, wearing a pink shirt, […]
A New War on the Planet?
During the last year the global warming debate has reached a turning point. Due to the media hype surrounding Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, followed by a new assessment by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the climate skeptics have suffered a major defeat. Suddenly the media and the public are awakening […]
Disabling Law — the Judicial Assault on Worker Rights
Seventeen years ago, James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) fought for the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Now Sensenbrenner is trying to repeal the “judicial amendments” that have destroyed the ADA. The ADA is not the only workplace law to suffer from judicial amendments. In the Civil Rights Act of 1991, Congress legislatively overruled judicial […]
Support the Lawsuit of Vietnamese Agent Orange Survivors against Dow Chemical! All Out on June 18th!
3 million Vietnamese people and tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers are affected by Agent Orange — a chemical weapon used by the U.S. government during the Vietnam War which causes cancer, other life-threatening illnesses, and serious birth defects in children — even those born several generations after the war. U.S. veterans received some compensation […]
Saadia Toor and Kourosh Shemirani on Liberal Imperialism and Women and Queers in Iran
Listen to Saadia Toor (Assistant Professor, Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, College of Staten Island) and Kourosh Shemirani (of the Queer Iranian Alliance) on Doug Henwood’s Behind the News (WBAI, 99.5 FM, 31 May 2007) on liberal imperialism and how Western leftists should think about the conditions of women and LGBTQ people in Iran and […]
Today’s Haunting Specter (or What Needs Doing)
An attractive social democrat, Ségolène Royal, just lost the French presidential race to a neoliberal candidate, leaving French leftists debating the causes of their failures and what to do about them. The center-left in Italy recently defeated the staunch neo-liberal, Sylvio Berlusconi. Yet its incapacities to define a new and different social program or mobilize […]
A Light Within (the Heart of Empire): The 2007 US Social Forum
What happens when hundreds or even thousands of small and not-so-small organizations come together to meet, dialogue, and present their ideas over the course of a long weekend? The World Social Forum (WSF), an annual gathering of tens of thousands of people from over 100 countries, has provided this space for those able to […]
With Defenders Like Nazanin, Who Needs Enemies?
Perhaps you remember when Amnesty International’s journal printed as its lead story a laudatory review that liberal author Margaret Atwood wrote about Reading Lolita in Tehran. Neither Amnesty nor Atwood nor Jacki Lyden, who promoted the twisted account of life in Iran on National Public Radio, bothered to mention the author’s close ties to warmongers […]
In Favor of Democracy in the Media, for the Legitimate Right of the Venezuelan Government to Decide Who Shall Broadcast on Its Airwaves [A favor de la democracia en los medios, por el derecho legítimo del gobierno venezolano a disponer del espacio radioeléctrico]
A mediados de los años setenta, los países no alineados reclamaron un Nuevo Orden Mundial económico e informativo. Esa decisión provocó con el tiempo la retirada de Estados Unidos de la UNESCO. Durante muchas décadas, apenas cinco grandes monopolios retuvieron el control de los flujos informativos. Es solamente ahora cuando la exigencia de entender la […]
General Federation of Iraqi Workers — Against the Occupation of Iraq?
This month, US Labor Against the War, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and other organizations are sponsoring an “Iraq Labor Tour” in various U.S. cities. One of the featured speakers represents the Iraq Federation of Oil Workers, which spearheads opposition to privatization of Iraqi oil and demands immediate U.S. withdrawal. However, the tour also […]
The G8 Summit, Heiligendamm, and the Curse of Kempinski
The protest demonstrations have already begun, well in advance of the G-8 summit — and they are already sending strong messages. The big summit meeting on June 5th and 6th in the seaside resort of Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast aims at winning a row of Brownie points for Angela Merkel and improving the images […]
Nahr El-Bared Refugee Crisis Growing in Lebanon
While the intense fighting between the Lebanese Army and Fateh el Islam escalates in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared, the humanitarian situation of the Palestinian refugees — both within the camp itself and the tens of thousands who had previously fled the camp — continues to be dire. The majority of the […]
Traveling Rutgers University Students Share Their Views on Developments in Venezuela
We, a delegation of students from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, were in Caracas this Saturday at a peaceful demonstration. Imagine a protest that was more of a celebration than an angry mob. Imagine ordinary citizens without ulterior agendas or motives celebrating the right to self-determination in the face of economic imperialism. But, […]
The Barn and the McMansion
My drive to work every day usually includes a little zig and zag “shortcut” through the outer reaches of Bethlehem, New York, a suburb south of Albany. I like this section of the route, because there is a working farm, there are open fields, a creek, and other pockets of the natural world hanging on […]
