Archive | Commentary

The recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that paralyzed Swift and Company across the heartland of America were part of Endgame, a massive immigration enforcement operation launched by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003.  Ultimately, it promises to be the biggest police operation in U.S. history.  The stated objective of Endgame is […]

Así como en teología el mismo Cristo sirve para justificar la acumulación de capitales o para suprimir al prójimo en nombre del amor, así también la historia de los oprimidos sirve para crear mitos e ideoléxicos incuestionables, a la medida del poder de turno: el patriotismo, la libertad, la salvación del mundo,nuestro derecho de aplastar […]

When supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez rallied in the Teresa Carrena theatre in Caracas to celebrate their presidential election victory on December 15, 2006, “there were cheers in the back half of the theatre,” writes Michael Lebowitz, “but few in the high-priced seats.” This was not because Chávez spoke of going forward to socialism […]

Romanticized, demonized, celebrated, denounced — among activists in the United States and Canada, academia is all of these things. It is a gate-keeping institution that shapes and is shaped by relations of power and privilege. It is a site of intense struggle: those who are structurally excluded battle for access, while those who study there fight for affordable and relevant education, and those who work there demand dignity, respect, and living wages. It is a place both where people develop radical politics and transformative visions and where people seclude themselves in insular, disconnected ivory towers. These contradictions are stark. Yet radicals have tried to make use of the academy. Since the 1960s, in particular, graduate school has become an attractive pathway for many activists, but also often an isolating and depoliticizing one. This is still true today, as radicals active in a variety of movements are choosing to go to grad school.

Several weeks ago, with much media fanfare, the James Baker-Lee Hamilton Committee submitted to President George W. Bush its long-awaited, bipartisan report on the U.S. war in Iraq.  On balance, the report provided Bush with a face-saving strategy for pulling out all U.S. combat forces by the beginning of 2008.  The Baker-Hamilton report favors an […]

Passing the grim marker of 3,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq briefly focused Americans’ attention on the war.  But we live in a big country with lots of malls. To be sure, the death of 3,000 soldiers is tragic and sickening, yet we are a nation of over 300 million and most families have not […]

Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa are not names familiar to most Americans.  The longest-serving political prisoners in the United States, these two former Black Panthers have spent more than thirty-five years behind bars for a crime they did not commit — the 1970 murder of Omaha, Nebraska, police officer Larry Minard. The American media […]

February 17, 2007 New School New York City All welcome! SDSers at the New School, led by Patrick Korte, will be hosting and joining in the events of February 17, an all-day conference to confirm a sister organization for the revived Students for a Democratic Society: the Movement for a Democratic Society.  The program is […]

Le Bureau politique du Parti Communiste libanais a tenu une réunion extraordinaire afin de débattre de la situation économique qui prévaut dans le pays et des mesures prises dernièrement par ce qui reste du gouvernement de Fouad Sanioura en préparation à la troisième conférence qui se tiendra, le 25 janvier, à Paris. Il a publié […]

The war that Western powers — primarily US, Israel and Britain — began against the Islamic world after September 11, 2001 is about to enter a new more dangerous phase as their early plans for “changing the map of the Middle East” have begun to unravel with unintended consequences. Codenamed “the war against terror,” the […]

This August, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), a network of over 140 worker centers that organize mostly immigrant day laborers, entered into an agreement that would allow worker centers to apply for membership with local and state federations of the AFL-CIO.  The agreement could signal a new chapter in the way organized labor […]

In today’s world, the US government’s use of torture and complicity in its clients’ use of it is part of the headlines on a regular basis.  Yet very few US citizens believe that methods like waterboarding, beating, and electrical shocks could be — and have been — used on US citizens.  Indeed, revelations concerning US […]

Aussitôt achevées ses études de sociologie, elle s’est précipitée sur le cinéma.  Sans doute achevée pour y trouver des moyens vivants d’interroger notre société et de porter un regard sur les choses mais surtout les êtres, mettant en valeur ceux qui émergent en dépit des modèles formatés. Vous vous êtes signalée par un docu-fiction sur […]

Members of the Service Employees (SEIU) in Northern California are demanding just immigration reform.  That’s not too surprising.  For the past two decades, SEIU has been one of organized labor’s strongest advocates for immigrant rights. This campaign, however, pits SEIU members not against anti-immigrant employers or politicians, but against their union’s top officials.  Dubbing their […]

P. Profesor Dieterich, ¿Usted inventó el concepto “Socialismo del Siglo XXI”? R. Sí. Lo elaboré a partir de 1996.  Fue publicado junto con la teoría correspondiente en forma de libro, a partir del 2000 en México, Ecuador, Argentina, Centroamérica, Brasil, Venezuela y, fuera de América Latina, en España, Alemania, la República Popular de China, Rusia […]

“Freedom House is an independent non-governmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world.” — Freedom House Freedom House is a small but influential organization based in Washington and New York with more than 120 offices around the world and an annual budget of US$19 million.1  Calling itself “America’s oldest human rights group,” […]

Do the last verbal exchanges between Saddam Hussein and anonymous men a few seconds before his execution prefigure a new conflagration of violence between Sunnis and Shi’is in Iraq?

Was it only two days ago that we read the exultant news stories and saw the frenzied TV news coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein?  I know that I had to turn off CNN in revulsion as the evening progressed. President Bush took time off from his chainsaw assaults on the underbrush of his […]

  GLADYS: Harry had a wonderful life! PERCY: And he had a wonderful death, too! GLADYS: We arrived in Burlington, Thursday evening, December 29th to be with Harry.  Taking care of Harry, in addition to his son Fred and daughter-in- law Amy, was his devoted home helper and amanuensis, Joan Ladoucer. I was with Harry, […]

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