Archive | Commentary

We DO have a chance to reverse this in committee, but we urgently need to make phone calls TODAY. The Supplemental Appropriations bill is scheduled to be marked up in full committee Thursday at 9 am. The list of Members of the full Appropriations committee is given below.  If your Congressional representative is not on […]

On Saturday, March 17, 2007, my mom, son, ex-wife, and I will be joining the March on the Pentagon.  Cindy Sheehan will be there.  I’m wondering if other MR people will be there, too.  If so, would you like to march together, and perhaps even socialize before or after the protest? The organizers advise us […]

JASMINE AND STARS: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran by Fatemeh KeshavarzBUY THIS BOOK Fatemeh Keshavarz, author of Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran, on how literature can be used to create or destroy stereotypes. Q: How did Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran come to be? A: You […]

  I have been very puzzled by how many on the left and in the liberal media seem to imagine that the situation in Iraq and the Middle East is bad for the Imperialists.  They are having a heyday with the so-called WOT. . . . It is going very well for them . . […]

7 March 2007 On 10 March 2007 in Baghdad a stillborn regional conference will convene in which the Iraqi people will again be absent, their resistance not represented.  Instead, a defeated US occupation will continue attempting to write the fate of the Iraqi people, conspiring with an undemocratic Security Council, as well as neighbouring and […]

  Tune in to Out-FM this Monday the 12th of March at 11:00 AM on Pacifica Radio WBAI at 99.5 FM and at www.wbai.org. Brad Taylor hosts a discussion with CUNY- Staten Island Professor Saadia Toor and Kourosh Shemirani of Qiam (Queer Iranian Alliance) stemming from the discussion event hosted by Professor Toor at CUNY’s […]

Folks often ask, rather cynically, where are the students protesting the war?  Well, the answer is that they are there — on their campuses and in the dorms — organizing speakers, rallies, and teach-ins.  The fact that folks off campus do not hear about these events does not mean that they aren’t happening.  What it […]

  NOTE: The paper below was written in the early months of January 2001.  While the paper’s anticipation of the centrifugal forces pulling at the labor movement and the possibility of international unions “literally leaving the AFL-CIO” unfortunately proved prescient of the Change to Win split, it has been even more difficult than anticipated to […]

February 14, 2007 To:  The Honorable Immigration Judge, I’m a 2nd grade Two-Way Spanish Immersion (TWI) teacher at Rosa Parks school in Berkeley.  Today is Valentine’s Day.  It was my last day with one of my top students, Gerardo Espinoza.  His father, Felipe Espinoza Senior, received an order of deportation and is moving the family […]

Part I Combine the strengths of the environmental and anti-war movements to defeat U.S. Middle East policy, end the Iraq War, and join the global community in the common struggle for a sustainable future. Communities Uniting for Climate Action Now! This April 14th, tens of thousands of Americans will gather all across the country at […]

Ibrahim Çiçek, Chief Editor of Turkish socialist newspaper Atilim Starting September 8, 2006 and during the several following months, over 120 socialists, communists, and other people of leftist orientation have been arrested by the Turkish Anti-Terror Police Department.  Among them are journalists, including Ibrahim Cicek, the Chief Editor of weekly revolutionary socialist newspaper Atilim www.atilim.org, […]

(PU)  Amid growing concern over military losses in Iraq and reports that the US might broaden its presence in the Persian Gulf by attacking Iran, President George W. Bush today called an emergency press conference at the Pentagon.  His purpose, he said, was to alert Americans everywhere to the “nondisputable” fact that, regardless of her […]

Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin University of California Press Every city has its cemetery.  But the greatest have mass graves.  Beneath St. Petersburg lies a virtual hecatomb — the remains of conscript laborers who died draining the Neva marshes for the palaces of Peter’s courtiers.  The Belle Epoque structures of […]

Key to a new organizing strategy is for the UAW to hire and train an “army” of member-organizers. With the recent loss of many experienced members in the Big Three, this could be a good way to put talented union members to work.  Photo: Jim West As the UAW prepares for this summer’s negotiations with the […]

  I had the great fortune of attending the 79th Academy Awards following my nomination as producer for a film in the Best Documentary Feature category.  At the Awards ceremony, most categories featured an introduction that glorified the filmmakers’ craft and the role it plays for the film audience and industry.  But when comedian Jerry […]

Stephen Fleischman, A Red in the House: The Unauthorized Memoir of S.E. Fleischman.  New York: iUniverse, 2004.  366pp, $24.95 paperback. This review is late in coming because it has taken a couple of years for me to understand who this Fleischman fellow is, with the tough, brilliant commentaries on various issues in CounterPunch and elsewhere.  […]

When I ask Canadian trade unionists and activists fighting against lower labor and social standards about their political vision, they often refer to European welfare states, notably Sweden.  The Swedish social system, their reference implies, proves that there is an alternative to the neo-liberal politics of boosting profits at the expense of working people.  It […]

All roads may have once led to Rome, but, for the Palestinian people, all roads lead to checkpoints.  The latest checkpoint to block the Palestinians is not manned by Israel but the ostensible mediator of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Quartet (which is composed of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United […]

Cada poder hegemónico en cada tiempo establece los límites de lo normal y, en consecuencia, de lo natural.  Así, el poder que ordenaba la sociedad patriarcal se reservaba (se reserva) el derecho incuestionable de definir qué era un hombre y qué era una mujer.  Cada vez que algún exaltado recurre al mediocre argumento de que […]

Perhaps the fastest growing new “wealth-management” tool in the US is the reverse mortgage.  The Federal Housing Administration insured 76,351 such mortgages in 2006 compared with 43,131 in 2005.  Industry officials expect around 120,000 reverse mortgages to be signed in 2007.  In 1990, only 150 reverse mortgages were arranged.  Traditional mortgages were the crucial means […]