Archive | Commentary

“Yo no diría que lo que han hecho es una traición, es incultura.  Y le digo esto porque al que traiciona no se le perdona”, dice el revolucionario Teófilo Stevenson, el boxeador aficionado más grande de todos los tiempos, acerca de la deserción de Guillermo Rigondeaux y Erislandy Lara por un contrato de medio millón […]

  The Pueblo Revolt, which began on 10 August 1680 under the leadership of Po’pay, was the most successful example of American Indian resistance to colonialism in North America, liberating the Pueblo people from Spanish colonizers for over a decade.  Po’pay, A True American Hero, produced by the Pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh and Skalalitude Productions […]

At the end of those air raid shelters was our shelter.  I went in, hoping to find my brother, but I couldn’t find him.  I got out of the shelter. Then, little Kyoko called my name. “Mi-chan, Mi-chan,” the voice of a girl said.  I asked, “Who are you?”  The voice said, “It’s Kyoko.” Coming […]

Message of Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Special Rapporteur, on the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples Geneva, 7 August 2007 As we celebrate the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People on 9 August this year, the focus of attention for many of […]

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN by Tariq AliBUY THIS BOOK The Pirates of the Caribbean identified by Tariq Ali in his slender volume titled the same are Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and of course, Fidel Castro, the “Old Man,” of Cuba. These three men and the movements they lead, according to Ali, […]

  NEW DEPARTURES IN MARXIAN THEORY by Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff BUY THIS BOOK Being a Marxist requires considerable gumption — especially in the United States.  Those who take Marxism seriously in a hostile intellectual and political environment are only too aware of this struggle.  At worst, interest in Marxism is perceived […]

Let us refer to a famous poem by Mao that stirs excitement among us all: “A cuckoo is crying in the midnight until she throws up blood; she believes that her crying can bring the east wind back!”  We deeply hope our respected leaders will stir up the east wind! General Secretary Hu Jintao and […]

International Statement for a Middle East Free of All Weapons of Mass Destruction Despite the unfolding tragedy in Iraq and the dangerously spiraling crises in the Middle East, another war of an unprecedented scale, this time against Iran, is looming near.  The environmental and human cost of this war would, by comparison, dwarf the suffering […]

Sermon delivered August 5, 2007, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. It may be the fate of humans always to believe that we live at the most important time in history, that our moment is the decisive moment.  But even factoring in this tendency toward collective self-centeredness, it is difficult to ignore that today we face […]

Ed Bruno is the national organizing coordinator for the National Nurses Organizing Committee, a labor union founded by the California Nurses Association in 2004.  Currently, the NNOC is on the ground in Texas, organizing nurses.  The CNA drew national attention when it won a political victory over California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005.  He tried […]

What will it take to shine a spotlight on the vast income gap between the very rich and everyone else in the US today, in the way that Michael Moore’s film Sicko exposes the injustices of privatized health care?  Ten years ago, on August 4, 1997, when 185,000 UPS workers went out on strike, they […]

حسن جمعه عواد الاسدي رئيس اتحاد نقابات النفط Hassan Juma’a Awad al Assadi, President of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), spoke to over 200 people at Friends Meeting House in London on Wednesday, 18 July 2007.  The IFOU represents 26,000 workers across Iraq.  They have struck three times against the privatization of Iraqi […]

Iran is the new Nazi Germany and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Hitler.  Or so Israeli officials have been declaring for months as they and their American allies try to persuade the doubters in Washington that an attack on Tehran is essential.  And if the latest media reports are to be trusted, it looks […]

Two soldiers in Paraguay stand in front of a camera.  One of them holds an automatic weapon.  John Lennon’s “Imagine” plays in the background.  This Orwellian juxtaposition of war and peace is from a new video posted online by US soldiers stationed in Paraguay.  The video footage and other military activity in this heart of […]

Farid Esack, a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, is the author of Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression and On Being a Muslim: Finding a Religious Path in the World Today.  A former national commissioner on gender equality appointed by President Nelson Mandela, Esack was active in the […]

The July 2007 elections ended with results beyond the expectations of most observers.  We will watch for possible coming earthquakes. To explain the AKP’s election victory, in addition to the AKP’s own tactics and policies, exogenous factors should be taken into consideration.  These include the large vacuum at the centre right and center left of […]

Ayub Nuri, a Kurdish man from Halabja, was a fixer for the Western media in Iraq (he is now based in New York City, having received a scholarship from Columbia).1  A fixer, in the words of Nuri, is “a journalist’s interpreter, guide, source finder and occasional lifesaver.”2  Local fixers, more or less, shape what foreign […]

  A public university sociology department has recently announced the discovery of the most toxic element yet known to social science.  This new element has been named Capitalisium (Cp).  Capitalisium is a very volatile, dynamic, and toxic element, containing 1 positron, 1 neutron, and 1 huge electron along with boards of electrons, various vice electrons, […]

  Rutgers Students Visit Hugo Chavez Jason Bellifemini is one of the Rutgers students who recently visited Venezuela and co-authored “Traveling Rutgers University Students Share Their Views on Developments in Venezuela” (MRZine, 4 June 2007).  Bellifemini has put together an interactive Web site, with many photo albums, to share his and other Rutgers students’ experience […]

Islamabad, Pakistan July 23, 2007 Farid Esack here (that Muslim guy from South Africa).  I am still around in Islamabad — my last few days — and I am still enjoying it as my two-month sojourn here draws to a close.  Islamabad is not quite Pakistan, certainly not Karachi, where I lived for eight years […]