Archive | Commentary

Dear New Yorker Magazine: You’ve got your nerve, printing Seymour Hersh’s article, “The Iran Plans: Would President Bush Go to War to Stop Tehran from Getting the Bomb?”  I have just thrown my April 17 issue of your so-called publication across the room, breaking the little shepherdess in my Hummel collection — so you owe […]

[This essay is the second installment of “Stolen Birthright: The U. S. Conquest and Exploitation of the Mexican People” by Richard D. Vogel. Read the first installment here.] La guerra de Estados Unidos en México La guerra de Estados Unidos en México de 1846-1848 fue la primera guerra estadounidense de agresión en contra de una […]

[John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s essay “The Israel Lobby” (London Review of Books 28.6, 23 March 2006) rekindled the smoldering controversy over the relations among US foreign policy, Israel, and the Israel lobby in the United States.  Norman G. Finkelstein‘s comment on the controversy below provides a very useful analytical perspective on the subject. — […]

Un espíritu del pasado está penando en América.  Pero ese espíritu no es un fantasma — es la emergencia de millones de mexicanos y méxicoamericanos, descendientes de los desterrados, a quienes se les negaron sus patrimonio en el suroeste de los Estados Unidos, y quienes están creciendo en poder y tienen hambre de justicia. La […]

The “Save Darfur” rally today was aired on C-Span.  The rally was small — only several thousands according to Reuters (“Thousands March to Stop Darfur Killing,” 30 April 2006).  And the crowd in attendance was overwhelmingly white.  But, boy, it was a professionally-staged photo op, with celebs, politicos, and exiles from Sudan at the podium […]

On April 30, 1970, Richard Nixon told the world that US forces were invading the country of Cambodia.  Within twenty-four hours of his announcement, the streets of many cities and towns around the United States and elsewhere were filled with angry protests against the US action.  On May 4, National Guard troops opened fire on […]

On March 6, over 50 union members from several unions and activist allies picketed the headquarters of the AFL-CIO in Washington, DC., to demand that the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center immediately break off all ties with the misnamed National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED is a leading component of the US Government’s efforts to maintain […]

Yoshie Furuhashi, “Who Wants Peace in Darfur?” (30 April 2006) It’s embarrassing that America — and the world — will be witnessing a PRO-WAR rally in Washington, D.C. on April 30 (a project of SaveDarfur.org) that is far more highly publicized than an anti-war one (that appears to be poorly organized) in New York City […]

“I don’t think the issue of enrichment right now, emotional as it is, is urgent. . . . So, we have ample time to negotiate a settlement by which, as I said, Iran’s need for nuclear power is assured and the concern of the international community is also put to rest.” “We have done our […]

[The revolution in Nepal has led to the recall of the Parliament dismissed by the King in 2002, which shall meet on Friday, April 28th.  The leading force of the revolution, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), control more than eighty percent of the country.  Baburam Bhattarai On April 26th, the CPN(M) agreed to call […]

The opening of the 39th Parliament of Canada on 3 April 2006 quickly revealed what should now be plain to all.  Under the Conservative Party leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canadians are faced with a government with an unambiguous right-wing agenda.  The outlines of the “Harperism” project can readily be discerned: there is a […]

We mince no words.  Time is of the essence.  Iraq is a human and political catastrophe, stark testament to the deceitful behavior of the Bush administration.  The dangers are clear and present, and too many human beings are dying for an ignoble cause.  The preemptive war launched against Iraq on March 20, 2003 stands illegal […]

Any serious and honest survey of the Maoist movement would convey the truth that its main agenda has been to establish essential democratic institutions that devolve political and economic power to the masses.   In every negotiation with the King and the parliamentary forces, the Maoists have asked for an unconditional constituent assembly, during whose election […]

A few years back, I was talking with a young socialist organizer about books.  He had just asked me why I wasted my time reading fiction when there was so much non-fiction that needed to be read.  Culture, I replied, reflects and illuminates a society just as much as, if not more than, history or […]

  The view south-east across the bay from the hills of Las Hadas, the hotel zone in Manzanillo is especially beautiful in the evening as the sun sets and the white painted hotels and restaurants stretching for several miles sparkle in the sun, behind the curving beach.  It’s a major Pacific port for Mexico and […]

It’s as if the spotlight that Hurricane Katrina cast on the inequities of disaster relief never happened. San Francisco’s high and mighty are in full-throated self-celebration of the City’s “rising from the ashes” of the April 18, 1906 earthquake and fire. Forgotten are people like my great-great grandfather Lee Bo-wen who immigrated to San Francisco […]

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard observed: Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation.  To begin with it is a play of illusions and phantasms: pirates, the frontier, future world, etc.  This imaginary world is supposed to be what makes the operation successful.  But, what draws the crowds is undoubtedly much more […]

While much of the left has been bemoaning the demise of the antiwar movement and fighting to reinvigorate the opposition to American warmongering that was so evident before the war began, millions of immigrants and their allies have poured into the streets to fight the racist stench emanating from Congress and demand real justice and […]

An insider’s analysis of what Corporate Bankruptcy Czar Robert Miller is cooking up for workers and communities in America by Delphi worker/UAW activist Gregg Shotwell, with an introduction by former UAW Executive Board Member, Jerry Tucker Gregg Shotwell is a machine operator for Delphi (formerly GM) — the world’s largest auto parts supplier.  He has […]

As labor activists from around the country and world converge on Dearborn, Michigan in early May for the Labor Notes Conference, it’s worth reflecting back on a year that has brought back hopes for a revitalization of the labor movement. Several months ago, the Wall Street Journal described an increase in strikes in the United […]