Archive | Commentary

Ninety-seven years back, via Giovanni Battista Morgagni, number 25, was a more modest lodging house, home of a quietly discreet pensionante called Antonio Gramsci.

In most major media accounts of settler terror against Palestinians, Israeli settler-vigilantes invariably escape critical categorization beyond the moniker of “extremist.”  Portrayals of these perpetrators of violence invariably focus on the theme of fanaticism while presenting these figures as unsavory if misguided fringe elements in Israeli society.  Such characterizations are naïve and incomplete. 

Again the USA marked Veterans’ Day. Now all leading German parties also want such a “Veteranentag”—to honor all those past patriots who wore uniforms, voluntarily or not, and certainly to inspire many more reluctant young men or women to put on army boots and shoulder arms.… Not so many may recall that the earlier “Armistice Day” marked the end of World War One.

The list of negative things one can say about Joe Biden gets longer by the day.

If I were in Israel today I might well have fears from above, but immensely worse ones if I were in Gaza. Or the West Bank. As for Trump, I do still have fears of a come-back, despite his legal troubles. But my fears for world peace: are they unfounded, perhaps nightmare products of an upset stomach?

Mohammed El-Kurd is an award-winning poet, writer, journalist and organizing from Jerusalem, Occupied Palestine. He is the Palestinian correspondent for The Nation and a Civic Media Fellow at the University of Southern California. Mohammed will talk about the representation and misrepresentation of Palestinians in the U.S.

When looking at the current geopolitical moment, it is a rather painful exercise to figure out what role Europe—and the remnants of its progressive force—can play. Can Europe become a somewhat progressive force for the good of the world, or is the entire continent destined to be consummated by the NATO-led appetite for war?

Central Africa Forest Initiative (CAFI) was established in 2015 to protect the huge rainforests of the Congo Basin, which span six Central African countries: DR Congo, Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

As President Biden visited Israel, and the Palestinian death toll in Gaza passed 3,300, the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights released a legal and factual analysis of Israel’s unfolding genocide against the Palestinian people and U.S. complicity. The emergency briefing paper came on the heels of the U.S. veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning both Hamas’s attack on Israel and all violence against civilians and calling for humanitarian access to Gaza.

Critical reflections on the Australian 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum and the Israel-Palestine War in the context of British settler colonialism and imperialism.

…Zionism is the ideology that fuses creation of (ancient) Jewish collectivity with claims to (modern) sovereignty over land allegedly promised by God to Jews and their descendants.

One accusation still seems to lack an adequate response: Is the U.S. working class inherently anti-degrowth because it would mean a massive loss of jobs?

FIFTY years back, Pinochet’s coup destroyed Allende’s government and the structure of liberal democracy in Chile. Allende died with a machine gun in his hands, defending his attempt to build socialism in Chile against the combined power of the U.S. and the forces of reaction in Chile, including the military.

Delhi police on Tuesday raided the offices of news media company NewsClick. The news media house has been under investigation for allegedly receiving funds from China.

Foster explains Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism and how the concept of “metabolic rift” highlights the alienation between humans and nature caused by capitalism’s focus on profit over sustainability.

The working class makes the world go round. The working class should not be positioned as the most vulnerable in need of help, but as those who labour and deserve a just distribution of the fruits of their labour.

Long Live Weelaunee.

Never before has society had the ability it does today to bring together different communities and resources in order to produce new knowledge. It is social, universal labour, and its private appropriation as intellectual property under capitalism stands in the way of liberating the enormous power of the collective to generate new knowledge and benefit people.

The war in Ukraine, a horrific tragedy for the people of that unhappy country, fateful as well for many young Russians and potentially menacing for all the world, with burnished weapons of every size and destructive power waiting in silos or submarines for a slip, a blunder, a provocation.

The relationship between Chile, the curtailment of its socialist reforms, and the ongoing processes in other countries in the region and in the Global South more generally have been systematically erased in Chile, from official historiography and media narratives alike.