Archive | Commentary

  WHEN: Friday, April 20 – Sunday, April 22 (schedule below) WHERE: Cooper Union, New York, NY TICKETS: RIGHT HERE There are communities around the world that have stopped waiting for the systems around them to change.  They are engaged in alternative practices right now — in economics, safety, media and communications, politics and more. […]

Recent developments in the West African Republic of Mali are raising serious concerns about the possibility of yet another U.S. intervention.  On March 22, one month before a scheduled presidential election, a military coup toppled the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré.  Quickly taking sides, the regional 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) […]

  This is a 10-minute film dedicated to freedom fighter Louis Reyes Rivera.  Rivera was a member of the 1969 occupation of City College, which was led by students of color and won open admissions.  He spoke to Students United for a Free CUNY at the AME Church in Harlem on October 27, 2011 before […]

Canada’s federal and provincial governments are falling in with other Western countries in delivering austerity budgets that foist costs of the global capitalist crisis onto the backs of workers and the poor.  Canada’s federal government is trying to package its latest austerity budget as something that must be done to reduce government debts and deficits […]

  Spring 2012.  Merkel and Sarkozy rush from summit meeting to summit meeting, in order to save the euro.  The yellow press smears the people of Greece.  The struggle over a solution to the crisis is intensifying dramatically: by early 2013, an authoritarian-neoliberal alliance of business lobby groups, the financial industry, the EU Commission, the […]

  In Iran, we have a saying: “Women are like tea . . . the hotter the water, the stronger they get.” Mahtab Mansour is a filmmaker based in Paris, France. | Print  

There are significant numbers of people in the wealthy countries who believe that the great issues of resource depletion and global environmental pollution are caused primarily by the huge number of people on the globe — currently about 7 billion — and that things will only get much worse with the anticipated increase to about […]

Terror, political persecution, arbitrary detention, and militarization have long dominated Colombia.  State-mediated killings now run into the tens of thousands.  More than four million rural inhabitants have been displaced from sustenance-providing land.  In the face of seemingly endless suffering, however, there is now a better chance for peace in Colombia. Having recently announced that its […]

The 66-day hunger strike of Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan brought overdue attention to Israel’s practice of detaining Palestinians for lengthy periods without criminal charges.  It also brought attention to the same practice in other countries, including the United States, where, as Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald pointed out, indefinite detention is “now firmly in place” for […]

  We are calling for massive protests in Frankfurt this May against the crisis regime of the European Union.  We are activists representing a multitude of movements and struggles from different European countries and elsewhere, who have risen up in the past months and years to protest the assaults on our freedoms, jobs, and livelihoods […]

On March 11, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans headed to the polls in the first major contest between parties of the right and left since the leader of the latter, Mauricio Funes, was elected president three years ago. Like mid-term congressional elections in the U.S., voting for municipal officials and national legislators in El Salvador […]

In recent weeks, there has been a notable shuffle in the positions of key external players in the Syrian crisis.  Momentum has quite suddenly shifted from an all-out onslaught against the Assad government to a quiet investigation of exit strategies. The clashes between government forces and opposition militias in Baba Amr were a clear tipping […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print

  Zahera Shalabi is the sister of Hana Shalabi, a 29-year-old woman from the village of Burqin in the Jenin district in Palestine.  On February 16, the Shalabis’ home was raided and Hana was arrested.  She has since been in Israeli prison under what is called Administrative Detention, held without charge or trial, like over […]

“Yugoslavia was in debt to the IMF. . . .  There was a conflict in the six republics of Yugoslavia: who is going to pay the debt?  Who is going to pay the debt was also a conflict between developed parts and undeveloped parts of Yugoslavia. . . . [In] this huge debate about who’s […]

  “We have staged a perfect war.  We’ve got everyone fighting, but very few now know exactly who is the enemy.” Juan Ramón Mora is a cartoonist in Barcelona.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print  

On the evening of February 7, Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of DC public schools and the public face of the opaquely funded StudentsFirst, addressed an audience of some four thousand people at the Paramount Theater in Oakland.  The lecture was divided in three parts.  First, Rhee introduced herself and described her leadership of the DC […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print

After 37 days of the strike, the Bticino-Legrand workers’ demands were partially met and they returned to work.  But Islam and his co-workers still haven’t received fixed contracts.  And the management remains the same.  And the laws remain the same — in favor of investors.  Let us realize our right to work with honor.  Let […]

“I’m digging this freestyle frm @MistahFAB at Invisible Children, #Kony & US media Hype designed to steal nat resources.” — Davey D Mistah F.A.B. is an American rapper.  Follow him at .  Cf. “Do I have a better answer?  No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s […]