Archive | Commentary

Furious though it may be, the current debate over health care in the US is largely irrelevant to charting a path for poor countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.  That is because the US squanders perhaps 10 to 20 times what is needed for a good, affordable medical system.  The waste […]

Sometimes history repeats itself — the first time as tragedy and the second time . . . as another tragedy.  The horrendous fire that just killed 112 workers, mostly young women, at the Bangladesh garment factory echoes the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City in 1911 that killed 146 workers, again mostly women.  Both […]

For farmers small and large?  For the tens of millions of food-consuming households, poor or just getting by?  For the governments and bureaucracies of small countries who want to import less and grow more?  For the organic cultivators on their small densely bio-diverse plots?  Or for the world’s large food production, trading, and retail corporations, […]

  Here is the full-text of what I said — as also, what I wanted to say but restrained myself because of the time constraint or because of my diffidence — at the book release of Gautam Navlakha’s Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion (Penguin Books, 2012), organised by Sanhati at the Gandhi […]

Opening Plenary, “Media and War: Challenging the Consensus” Conference, Goldsmiths, London, UK, 17 November 2012 Seumas Milne: We’ve seen the rise of a new, revived form of liberal interventionism, or humanitarian interventionism, in the last couple of years, and the key to it is the idea that there mustn’t be too many boots on the […]

No, it wasn’t shredded wheat.  This shredding was not of breakfast food and has been much harder to digest; it was evidence on serial murder!  The related biliousness is all the more painful due to a worrisome new survey of rightist hatred in Germany.  But first some background. For a year now the case of […]

“We won’t go!  Morsi will go!” Mosireen is a non-profit media collective in Cairo, Egypt.  For more information: ; and . | Print

A highrise building No external fire escapes (Locked doors?) 112 dead workers Wal-Mart, Sears, and others have offshored the working conditions of the early twentieth century Safety.   Always No Safety Michael Ceraolo is a poet based in Cleveland, Ohio, the author of Cleveland Haiku and Euclid Creek. | Print

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print

Nicaragua’s adoption this year of a sweeping law for prevention and punishment of violence against women marks an important gain for women’s rights in this Central American country, says Sandra Ramos, founder and director of the “Maria Elena Cuadra” Movement for Working and Unemployed Women (MEC). Addressing a meeting at Casa Maíz in Toronto on […]

With over 100 now reported killed by Israeli airstrikes, and a further 700 injured, the attack on Gaza is already starting to resemble the 2008-9 ‘Operation Cast Lead’ massacre.  A ground invasion is feared, and Israeli politicians are again trotting out the usual Zionist crowd-pleasers about the need to “bomb Gaza back to the Middle […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print

  In Turkey 10,000 Kurdish political prisoners are now on hunger strike.  64 of them have entered their 65th day while 79 more have passed their 54th day. The file above, prepared by the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes. | Print  

  Najaf, Iraq, November 11, 2012 I returned from Baghdad last night.  Over coffee this morning, I filled the father of my host family in on my trip.  I told him it was wonderful to see everyone, but I only heard sad stories. A few minutes ago a fierce wind rose, blowing the trees and […]

A storm is brewing in Southern Europe.  In Greece on November 6 and 7 another general strike will take place.  On November 14 Portuguese, Cypriot, Spanish, and Italian trade unions intend to go on strike in opposition to the austerity policies of the European Union.  Belgian and British trade unions, as well as the European […]

Squaw Point today (photo by David Thorstad)Silent City (photo by David Thorstad) In 1904, the Ojibwe village at Thief River Falls, in northwest Minnesota, was removed to the Red Lake Indian Reservation to the east, much diminished after the tribe’s cession of 256,152 acres between the reservation and Thief River Falls (known as the eleven […]

NYPD to Racially Profile White Males New York, NY — Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced today in a joint press conference that, following a recent study on race and “going-postal” homicides, the New York City Police Department will revamp its Stop and Frisk crime prevention policy by instructing officers to stop […]

Decent news to begin with: Near Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate a memorial was finally unveiled to mark the murder of approximately 500,000 Roma people (often called Gypsies) in Nazi death camps.  The decision to erect it was made in 1992, the year a pogrom in the East German city of Rostock was unleashed when Roma refugees […]

Centennials, bicentennials, and other historical anniversaries — not to mention annual holidays — play a major role in the legitimation of power relations.  And they can be sharp ideological battlegrounds like Columbus Day.  This year is the two hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812, an inconclusive two and a half-year war with Great Britain […]

Dear friends, In the coming period we will again be facing a familiar enemy that many of you have and continue to battle.  International Financial Institutions (IFIs) like the IMF have long had a hand in plundering the Egyptian economy and dispossessing the Egyptian people.  We aim to resist these institutions and their depredations, but […]