Archive | Commentary

In a recent PBS interview with Bill Moyers, journalist Chris Hedges discussed protest for social change.  “Revolt,” he said, apropos of salvaging a collapsing world, “is all we have.  It is our only hope.” I agree.  So would my friend Tito Gerassi, who believed all his life in revolution.  And, since rising unemployment is part […]

Whatever electoral calculations drove Mitt Romney to choose Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate, the choice also has a deeper meaning.  Ryan’s arrival at the top of the Republican Party represents the rise of the most vocal and visible proponent of austerity in US politics today.  Ryan represents the US parallel to the regimes […]

A jackpot for the capitalist class at the EU casino. . . . Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print

I would like to start off by saying that I am not a journalist.  However, I do know that there are some common practices in journalism involving privacy.  Some investigative journalists use hidden camera footage to raise awareness of issues of vital public interest when there is no other means of obtaining information about them.  […]

Several thousand union and non-union workers came together in Manhattan the afternoon of July 24 for an unusual display of solidarity between people who until the 2008 economic crisis had often seemed to belong to completely different social classes. The event, the “New York Workers Rising Day of Action,” brought out a mix of low-wage […]

  “The remains of the human beings, each weighing 70, 80, 90 kg when alive, fit into just five 20-kg plastic bags.  I mean, even their bones had burned down.  I am a lawyer and I have seen many autopsies after murders and accidents, but I have never seen anything like this.  Even their teeth […]

  Professor Tadeusz Kowalik (1926-2012) was a noted Polish economist who played a major role in Polish economic debates for more than a half century.  A graduate of the University of Warsaw, Kowalik was a student of the distinguished Polish Marxist economist Oskar Lange and like his teacher, was a prominent advocate of market socialism […]

See, also, “Rojava Revolts: The Politics of Kurds in Syria” (MRZine, 24 July 2012). | Print

  Testimony of Rev. Ismael Moreno Coto, S.J. for the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearing on “Worldwide Threats to Media Freedom,” 25 July 2012 Standing up for freedom of expression is, without a doubt, one of the most uncomfortable experiences in life; and in a country like Honduras, it means living with anxiety, insecurity, […]

  Montevideo From his usual table at Café Brasilero downtown, leaving the cold weather of southern winter outside its large window, Eduardo Galeano insists that “the grandeur of humanity lies in small things, quotidian things, done every day, what’s done by the nameless without knowing that they are doing it.” So, his answers mingle with […]

For more information, follow the hashtags #Rojava and #TwitterKurds. | Print

My wife’s uncle, Adil, was shot and killed in cold blood in a Damascus street.  He had no blackmail money.  He was poor.  So he was shot.  He was shot by killers financed and organized by the USA and Turkey, in particular by Barack Obama and Turkey’s prime minister and prime collaborator, and their equally […]

Communiqué The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, in the name of the Bolivarian government and the Venezuelan people strongly condemns the terrorist attack perpetrated today in the city of Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic, causing more deaths of civilians and high-ranking officials of the Syrian government. The Bolivarian government wishes to […]

Bob “No Strike” King, the president of the UAW, is leading the charge for a Constitutional amendment to protect collective bargaining in Michigan.  My guess is that King is angling for an appointment from Governor Snyder.  A spot on the bench, hell, even the Michigan Supreme Court is not improbable if this Constitutional con job […]

Each bullet hole on the downtown Asunción, Paraguay light posts tells a story.  Some of them are from civil wars decades ago, some from successful and unsuccessful coups, others from police crackdowns.  The size of the hole, the angle of the ricochet, all tell of an escape, a death, another dictator in the palace by […]

NEW YORK, N.Y. — In what promises to be a real boost for the U.S. presidential incumbent, a team of doctors has devised a “miraculous” new method of brain surgery that purportedly will enable thousands of radical leftists, progressives, and revolutionaries to vote — on purpose — for Barack Obama in the fall election. The […]

  The situation in the country has exacerbated to the point now it started threatening the social fabric and national sovereignty, which we and the national forces of democratic opposition sought to avoid compromising. However, the authority neglected the social fabric and national sovereignty and placed them in the field of conflict to reaffirm the […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. Mark Weisbrot, “Mexico Still Far From Fair Elections” (9 July 2012). | Print

(For Justin Hero Cassell) I heard a foolish man say the other day that everything of interest on the island of Montserrat can be seen in two days.  I kept my own counsel and did not talk of either his mother or his lineage.  But the truth is this, friend: It takes a week at […]

Bundestag Speech, 29 June 2012 Mr. President!  Dear colleagues! “Billions in taxes have been squandered.  Those who bear responsibility revealed themselves to be marionettes.  The part of the puppet master was performed by just the type of managers recently spoken of in loftier terms: investment bankers.” What the Handelsblatt wrote about the nationalization of the […]