Archive | Commentary

When George Bush began trying to justify the occupation of Iraq by invoking the “lessons” of Vietnam, I had the urge to send him a copy of the new documentary War Made Easy featuring Norman Solomon.  That’s hardly surprising — no doubt we’ve all had the occasional desire to try to educate our president. Then […]

Foreign countries are awash in dollars because they sell so much more to the US than they buy.  Increasingly, their governments use some of those dollars to establish and operate investment funds.  The funds buy shares in companies around the world.  Sometimes they buy companies directly.  Called “sovereign investment funds,” the IMF estimates that they […]

The Fairmont Conference In late September 1995, five hundred of the world’s economic and political leaders met in San Francisco’s prestigious Fairmont Hotel upon the invitation of an institution headed by Mikhail Gorbachev.  The conference was financed by some American super-rich, possibly in gratitude to Gorbachev’s “services rendered” in the ex-Soviet Union.  The task required […]

  In the big business media’s “two years after Katrina” coverage, there was one glaring omission — the story of the utter bankruptcy of the so-called Black leadership, in particular, the Black Democratic Party establishment.  Nothing confirms that story better than the brief appearance in New Orleans on August 29 of President George W. Bush.  […]

In a recent assessment, Stephen Zunes affirms the misconceptions of a segment of the progressive community about Iran’s internal politics, the range of U.S. options in that country, and the frequency with which Western powers invent and/or corrupt civil society movements.  After a review of past American interference, he enumerates and rejects Washington’s hostile choices […]

It was a good day to ride your bike in the Big Apple.  New York City cabbies launched a two-day strike on September 6, leaving the city’s streets quiet and would-be passengers scrambling.  Taxi workers were protesting a plan to install new technology into the city’s yellow cabs, a move they said would hurt both […]

Sept. 5, 2007.  Hundreds of Professor Norman Finkelstein‘s supporters try to escort the fired teacher onto campus of DePaul University in Chicago.  Finkelstein, denied tenure by pro-Zionist administration because of his questioning of Israeli foreign policy, gives a statement (excerpts) after his final meeting with University officials.   Produced by Labor Beat.  Labor Beat is […]

Jose Maria Sison has been a leading figure of the Philippine national democratic revolution for almost 40 years.  He is one of the pioneers who revived the anti-imperialist movement in the Philippines in the early 1960s, and he was elected chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968 when it was refounded on […]

Following a large demonstration in support of academic freedom this morning, Professor Norman G. Finkelstein met with DePaul University officials and reached a settlement in his tenure dispute. Professor Finkelstein agreed to resign, effective immediately.  He reminded the assembled supporters that the denial of tenure to Professor Mehrene Larudee remains “an open wound” at DePaul. […]

St. Louis — His government broke his heart but it could not break Air Force veteran Charles Powell’s spirit.  Fighting back tears, the 64 year-old vet stood tall and resolute in front of 400 of his comrades, describing in verse the final steps of a painful disillusionment. Each summer during the national convention of Veterans […]

Iran and the US both deploy sanctions against each other’s citizens; Iran is criticized but the US seems to get away with it. On a sunny day in Washington, DC, my imaginary American scholar, Hannah Esfandiari, was sitting in her Kalorama-located house, opening a letter she had just received from Tehran, Iran. It was a […]

Thanks to the Watergate scandal, Michael Moore’s documentary SiCKO was able to report some history of the Kaiser Permanente health maintenance organization (HMO).  It’s history that Kaiser would prefer you do not know. Moore included tape of President Nixon and chief aide John Erlichman discussing what would become the HMO Act of 1973.  Based on […]

  28 August 2007 Bolivia is living through a time of political transition where the verbal masks used prolifically by the television, radio, and press to cover up reality and, as [Uruguayan write Eduardo] Galeano would say, lie in what they say and lie even more in what they don’t say. We live in a […]

Since the 1990s, the U.S. government made overtures to the Indian Government for a military alliance.  When the Bush administration came to power it wanted India to be a part of its missile defence shield.  Since 9/11, the Indian and U.S. navies and Special Forces have conducted a number of joint exercises in the Indian […]

A Ramallah l’enfant éventré par une bombe à fragmentation me regarde les yeux mi-clos comme pour me dire « Pourquoi ? » In Ramallah the child blown apart by a fragmentation bomb looks at me with his half-closed eyes as if to say “Why?” This poem was posted to assawra by Djamal Benmerad, an Algerian […]

August 31, 2007 — The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today said US imperialism, the Dutch government and the Arroyo puppet regime are ganging up on CPP founding chairman and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Senior Political Consultant Jose Maria Sison.   Sison was arrested last Tuesday on trumped-up and politically motivated murder […]

In early August I had the good fortune to attend the 2007 Postal Press Association National Editors’ Conference in Reno, Nevada.  I presented a workshop on “Linking the Past to the Present,” a way to think about what we can learn from the labor movement of the past and how editors can incorporate such insight […]

A rising chorus of business gurus is singing the praises of a new solution to the U.S. auto industry’s ongoing crisis: one big health care trust for all the Big 3’s workers.  According to the proposal’s cheerleaders, by making giant one-time pay-ins, the Big 3 auto makers can slice off an estimated $116 billion worth […]

An argument at a summer fair in the small town of Muegeln, between Leipzig and Dresden, ended with a mob of fifty drunken young men wielding knives and other weapons and shouting “Foreigners Get Out!” chasing eight men from India — longtime residents in Muegeln — across the town square.  The Indians, some badly wounded, […]

27 August 2007 In July 2007, a group of labour leaders from the U.S. issued a statement opposing the growing international campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The statement was signed by a number of presidents from unions including the American Federation of Teachers, the American Postal Workers Union, the Communication Workers […]