Archive | Commentary

A letter to the leaders of Iran, the UK and the US, spearheaded by the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and signed by numerous other Iranian-American organizations, urges these countries to give diplomacy a chance.  The text of the letter can be found below: […]

In October 2006, internationally renowned Columbian artist Fernando Botero exhibited an important and jarring collection of new work at Manhattan’s Marlborough Gallery.  A visible departure from his whimsical robust figures popular in the international art market, Botero’s Abu Ghraib series (2004-05) of paintings and drawings are overtly political, haunting and difficult to confront.  The series […]

AN UNBROKEN AGONY: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President by Randall RobinsonBUY THIS BOOK Randall Robinson has written the story of a great tragedy of recent times — the violent overthrow of Haiti’s elected president and government on February 29, 2004.  An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a […]

A Message from Howard Zinn on behalf of the Committee for an Open Discussion of Zionism Dear Friend: As you may have heard, in late August of this year, The University of Michigan Press, after receiving a series of complaining and threatening emails and letters from an ultra-Zionist group called StandWithUs, an offshoot of Campus […]

Last year, I agreed to speak to a Jewish youth group about my organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, and our opposition to Israel’s occupation.  My talk was to follow one from a member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which calls itself “America’s pro-Israel Lobby.” A week before, a shaken program leader said the […]

In 1978, then United Auto Worker (UAW) President Douglas Fraser, frustrated with corporate America’s new aggressiveness, accused US business of waging a “one-sided class war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society.”  In response, he warned, […]

On Sunday, the 30th of September, yet another blow was struck against the advocates and beneficiaries of neo-liberalism in Ecuador and Latin America when Rafael Correa‘s coalition won the majority of seats in the Constituent Assembly.  With this, Correa and his allies have secured the driving seat in the process of rewriting Ecuador’s constitution, which […]

  The Curve was a club on Lower Main Road in Observatory, a neighborhood with pretensions of being the home of bohemian Cape Town.  “A strange place,” was how Ntone Edjabe, a DJ whose long sets of Fela-tinged Afrobeat were the highlight on Saturday nights, described The Curve.  What made it unique, according to Ntone, […]

How do we mitigate climate change?  A fashionable suggestion is technologically intensive carbon sequestration.  That, however, is an excessively expensive and probably technically impossible method of capturing significant amounts of carbon.  Another popular suggestion for sequestering carbon is planting trees. A more traditional method — building up the soil — which is better for the […]

The Democrats and Republicans are united in the belief that Iran poses a risk to US interests in the Middle East and must therefore be reined in.  Iran is too irrational to be trusted with nuclear weapons, cry the warmongers who only half a century ago dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Iran is […]

In debates about whether or not the United States should withdraw all troops from Iraq, a frequently mentioned factor is the need to prevent civil war and genocide.  That denies the realities on the ground: we have already ensured a civil war and committed genocide.  The time for “prevention” has passed.  But there is another […]

THE UNIVERSITY IN CHAINS by Henry A. GirouxBUY THIS BOOK Henry Giroux’s The University in Chains is a crisp, powerful book about the crisis in American higher education.  Basically, the university has been buffeted by the three forces that have defined the US under the Bush administration (and, for that matter, for some time before): […]

  Andre Gorz, philosopher of freedom, sociologist of work, ecologist and democratic socialist, trade union adviser, journalist and for a time editor of Nouvelle Observateur and Les Tempes Modernes, took his life at 84 on the 24th of September together with his wife Dorine, 83, who was suffering from a degenerative disease.  On the 25th […]

On August 12, one of Haiti’s best-known and respected advocates of human and social rights, Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, disappeared.  The Haitian National Police later confirmed that he was kidnapped. There has been no communication with alleged kidnappers since the early days of his disappearance.  As the silence continues, it seems increasingly evident that his disappearance […]

IDEAS FOR ACTION by Cynthia KaufmanBUY THIS BOOK After considering the long train of outrages committed by the current regime — an administration so callous, so degraded, that some European commentators have taken to calling George W. Bush a “gangsta bitch” (Dick Cheney is, of course, Bush’s “Original Gangsta”) — it’s nice to know that […]

The ultracons have it all wrong and the neocons are glad that they do. The straw dog that the ultracons are beating to death in print and on the Internet is the chimerical North American Union, purported to be a supranational state that intends to override the sovereignty of the United States and subject all […]

  As Columbia only very recently announced, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be speaking in Roone Arledge auditorium this Monday.  A number of students and student organizations have already announced plans for a protest rally the same day.  We are not among them.  We do not endorse Ahmadinejad or his views, many of which are […]

Today’s two most conspicuous global flashpoints — the Middle East and Latin America — have widely exposed the fact of US imperialism and highlighted some of its limitations.  Adding the apparent cracks in US economic hegemony seems to indicate an empire in decline.  Yet a more cautious assessment would recall that the earlier defeat in […]

Congratulations, peace-lover!  You have just purchased your first three-inch-high Top U.S. Military Commander! These little Commanders make delightful pets — provided they are no more than three inches tall.  Otherwise, these unruly pests can attack sovereign countries, overrun entire populations, and get hold of fissionable material, possibly blowing up the world. We don’t think it’s […]

12th September 2007 CALL FOR SOLIDARITY Dear sisters, You may have heard about the strike in Novamed in Turkey/Antalya.  Novamed is one of the factories of Fresenius Medical Care located in Germany.  All the workers who have gone on strike are female workers.  Their working conditions are very bad and male-dominated (patriarchal).  For example: female […]