Archive | Commentary

The Health Team for Nepal was formed in 2006.  The aim of the Health Team project is to help poor people in rural areas of Nepal.  The Health Team for Nepal cooperates with the medical department of the People’s Liberation Army in order to attain this goal.  The health team for Nepal consists of two […]

  Ahmad Sa’adat, General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, is one of over 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails.  These political prisoners, men, women and children, are activists, organizers, and political leaders of the Palestinian people. Sa’adat’s trial is scheduled to […]

A workingman and his wife are slow-dancing in the kitchen of their tenement apartment, with a portable Victrola beating time at 78 revolutions per minute.  The man stares over his partner’s shoulder at nothing in particular, while his partner, her head inclined, closes her eyes.  Neither one is smiling.  If the coal merchant’s calendar behind […]

L’Irak a créé la surprise, dimanche 29 juillet, en battant l’Arabie Saoudite 1-0 en finale de la Coupe d’Asie de football, à Djakarta. Le capitaine de l’équipe, Younis Mahmoud, a inscrit le but de la victoire à la 71e minute pour offrir à l’Irak un succès inespéré.  C’est la première fois que l’Irak, véritable sensation […]

  Herbert’s Hippopotamus is a search for the turbulent life in California of philosopher, writer, and activist Herbert Marcuse, visionary force for the youth and student movements during the 1960s and 1970s. Blending personal narration, archival news footage, staged imagery, and interviews, the documentary examines the media frenzy generated by Marcuse’s presence in Southern California […]

Debates concerning the “Socialism of the 21st Century” are experiencing an upswing at the moment.  However, this century will initially be rather one of capitalism than socialism.  Not because there is once more an economic recovery.  Prosperity and crisis alternate constantly in capitalism, but behind this up-and-down process are tendencies towards an extension and further […]

George Galloway gets suspended from the Commons even as the investigation into the Al-Yamamah deal (which may implicate the UK government in Saudi money laundering for terrorist cells: Simon Jenkins, “Who Exposed This Colossal Bribery? Why, the Feral Beast,” Guardian, 13 June 2007) gets scrapped.  Galloway notes: “The Serious Fraud Office investigation into BAe was […]

Harvey Pekar and Heather Robertson, Macedonia: What Does It Take to Stop a War? Illustration by Ed Piskor (New York: Villard Books, 2007), 121pp, $17.95, pbk. Readers who haven’t watched the award-winning 2003 film American Splendor may still recall a younger Harvey Pekar on the Tonight Show, attacking network-owner General Electric and being banished for […]

Le chef de l’Etat cubain par intérim, Raul Castro, s’est dit ouvert au dialogue avec le futur président des Etats-Unis, afin de pacifier les relations entre les deux pays, lors d’un discours à Camagüey, à l’occasion de la fête nationale cubaine, jeudi 26 juillet. La future administration américaine “devra décider si elle maintient la politique […]

  Oaxaca, 20 July 2007 — The struggle between the popular movement of rebellion and the government’s actions to totally crush it is at a critical point.  I believe the situation is extremely dangerous for many oaxaqueños.  Five days ago the governments (Oaxaca State and Mexican Federal — fully backed by the United States, I’m […]

  Music (“Peace Train”) by Yusuf Islam.  Lucas Gray’s Web site: www.lucasgray.com. | | Print

“Estados Unidos parece destinado a plagar la América de miserias en nombre de la libertad”.  Con esta profética frase de Simón Bolívar en 1826, el Libertador hizo la crónica anunciada de una historia de intervenciones, militares y políticas, disfrazadas unas y en forma abierta otras, con las cuales el gigante del norte impuso su dominio […]

LaborFest, held each July to honor the aspirations and struggles of working people, is a moveable feast that ranges across the San Francisco area and back and forth in time. Why San Francisco? San Francisco is union country and it is working people who established LaborFest and have hosted it for the past 14 years.  […]

Two of my friends were just beaten and arrested by Brooklyn police.  My friends, Michael Tarif Warren and Evelyn Warren, are African-American attorneys whose work consists, in part, of defending victims of police violence.  I want to tell you about how police punched and humiliated these good people on the corner of Vanderbilt and Atlantic, […]

Vladimir Putin has not been getting good press in the United States or even Western Europe in the last year or so.  He has been charged with being authoritarian, with attempting to recreate Russia‘s imperial control over its neighbors, and with reviving Cold War obstructionism in the United Nations. So it is with some surprise […]

الأيقونة حنظلة هو المخلوق الذي ابتدعته، لن ينتهي من بعدي بالتأكيد، وربما لا أبالغ اذا قلت أنني أستمر به من بعد موتيناجي العلي Handala, the creature I invented, will certainly not cease to exist after me, and perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that I will live on with him after my death. Naji […]

“Containing Russia: Back to the Future?” by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov was published on the Web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation on 19 July 2007.   The account of Lavrov’s conflict with the journal Foreign Affairs, which follows his essay, was published on the same Web […]

After practicing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Solomon Islands, Nauru, and East Timor, the Australian Government is invading and occupying outback Aboriginal communities with soldiers and police. Conservative Prime Minister John Howard declared a “national emergency” on June 21 over sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory.   The trigger was said to be […]

Imperial rulers and violently fixated Cuban exiles need Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program to accelerate learning processes and not continue to repeat mistakes.  Hey, on Cuba policy, it’s only been 48 years! Fidel Castro, in contrast, learned fast.  He used Washington and Miami to improvise material for three chapters in future releases of Machiavelli’s […]

  هويت من ياس با همراهي امين براي اعتراض به فيلم 300 Yas lives in Tehran, and he wrote “My Identity / Hoviate Man” in protest against the film 300.  At YouTube and elsewhere on the Net, you can find many different videos his fans made for this song: e.g., <www.iranclip.com/player/1266> <www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6G9-bx7Kbc> <www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvczxoKNaWk> <www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnr1zFWgGWk> <www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmgCuID4CYc> […]