Although Occupy Wall Street protesters have so far resisted attempts by the Democratic Party to co-opt their movement, a New York City “General Assembly” was bamboozled by what may be a State Department and/or NED initiative aimed at granting legitimacy to Egypt’s flawed election process. According to a November 16 story in Ahram Online and […]
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News updates or analysis.
Shale Gas and Climate Change — A Burning Issue
On November 6th, thousands of protesters staged a colorful encirclement of the White House in Washington D.C., protesting against the Keystone XL pipeline project and against expansion in extraction of tar sands oil. Within just four days after this bold direct action, Obama ordered a thorough review of the pipeline plan and suspended decision-making on […]
The Forgotten
The text in the painting reads the lyrics of a traditional Iraqi folk song: “Those who have forgotten us, when will you remember us? When will we cross your mind? When will you help our situation? Love, you have left us with no explanation; you shut the doors in our face and abandoned us. […]
The Scream
Rajoy Won Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela. Cf. “Polls say that seven out of ten voters for the victorious People’s Party do not have much confidence in . . . PP” (Ancelmo Gois, “Direita, volver,” 21 November 2011); “Right away, the risk premium of the Spanish debt rises and the stock market tumbles, […]
Gone with the Wind
“As God is my witness, I will never vote for the lesser evil again.” Emma Gascó (from Sevilla, Spain) is a journalist and cartoonist. She is a co-blogger (with Martín Cúneo) of Los Movimientos Contraatacan. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print
The Mystery of Invisible Terrorists
“Ten murders traced to neo-Nazi terrorists!” More and more ugly facts splashed through the German media, with echoes around the world. Politicians from the “respectable” parties expressed shock and surprise. In 2007 a German policewoman had been shot to death and her colleague badly wounded. The murder weapon was now found in a partly burned-out […]
Picturing the Arab League
Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela. Cf. “Given the impossibility of obtaining UN approval for an attack on Syria or Iran, it’s clear as the Qatar sky what’s going on. Arm and finance a group of revolutionaries and get them to start an uprising. When the state cracks down, get the opposition to call […]
Labor, Organized (#N17)
Thirty years before the birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, President Reagan fired enough striking air traffic controllers to fill a protest march across the Brooklyn Bridge (11, 345 PATCO members, to be exact). And in the three decades since Reagan famously said “if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they […]
Debunking the Greek (and European) Crisis Narrative
In a recent debate the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination treated cutting the deficit as the panacea that would address the European crisis and prevent the United States from having a similar fate. This diagnosis is wrong but it is unfortunately not unique to the Republicans in this country. In fact, it is this […]
Political Crisis in Italy and Greece: Marx on ‘Technical Government’
In recent years Marx has again been featuring in the world’s press because of his prescient insights into the cyclical and structural character of capitalist crises. Now there is another reason why he should be re-read in the light of Greece and Italy: the reappearance of the ‘technical government’. As a contributor to the New […]
Qatar, Al Jazeera, and the Arab Spring
The leader of al-Nahda movement, Rachid Ghannouchi, made his first visit to a foreign country after the first post-revolution Tunisian elections. His choice was the State of Qatar. Analysts see many messages in this gesture but some Tunisians are troubled by the invitation he had extended to the Emir of Qatar. Although many do not […]
Lessons from a Long History of Dissent: From the Early Twentieth Century to Occupy Wall Street
World Peace Forum Teach-In, Vancouver, Canada, November 12, 2011 (Modified from Notes) We are at what social theorists call a “historic moment,” in which real change suddenly seems possible. It is therefore all the more important to learn from past struggles. One of the first lessens of a long history of dissent from the early […]
Occupy Your Education: A Note to Students about Changing the World
The current Occupy Movement has captured people’s imagination and refocused the national discussion on issues of economic injustice, social stratification, and corruptions of American democracy. Contrary to what some people might think, the Occupy Movement is not composed solely of “young, idealistic college kids.” People of many different ages, ethnicities, and ideological persuasions are […]
The Occupy Wall Street Uprising and the U.S. Labor Movement: An Interview with Steve Early, Jon Flanders, Stephanie Luce, and Jim Straub
The Occupy Wall Street uprising has taken the nation by storm, beginning in the Financial District in Manhattan and then spreading to cities and towns in every part of the country and around the world. The anger over growing inequality and the political power of the rich that has been bubbling under the surface for […]
Occupy Wall Street Evicted by NYPD (LiveStream)
CALL NOW: NYPD 646-610-5000; New York City Mayor’s Office 212-788-7550, 212-513-6300; NYC Mayor 212-639-9675; NY Governor 518-474-8390 For more information, follow the hashtag #OWS on Twitter. var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print
The Bonus March and #OccupyWallStreet
Millions for the bankers and the large corporations but nothing for the ex-soldiers, not even their back pay. — theme song of the 1932 Bonus Marchers The bankers got bailed out; we got sold out — chant heard at Occupations in 2011 Mass occupations protesting the obscene levels of corporate greed and the abject prostitution […]
Rape, Drug Overdoses, and Suicide in Occupy Movement — What Does Democracy Look Like?
A series of crimes and tragedies in the Occupy movement — a rape in Philadelphia, drug overdoses in Portland and Vancouver, a suicide in Burlington — have led the media to scrutinize our movement more closely and have led the authorities in several cities to use such developments as an attempt to shut it down. […]
Massive Syrian Demonstrations in Defense of Syria against “the Arabs of America”
All over Syria, 13 November 2011 Cf. “There were massive demonstrations in Syria in support of the lousy regime, but they were totally ignored in the Arabic and Western press. It does not fit the agenda” (As’ad AbuKhalil, “Demonstrations in Syria,” Angry Arab News Service, 13 November 2011); “Confirmed: Biggest rallies in #Syria‘s history. A […]
Harvard Students Join the Movement
Over the last 10 days, Harvard students twice stopped business as usual at this richest of all US private universities. An Occupy Harvard encampment of tents followed a large march of many hundreds through the campus protesting Harvard’s complicity in the nation’s extreme inequality of income and wealth. A week earlier some 70 students walked […]
Ennahdha-Qatar-United States: Dangerous Liaisons
For his first post-election trip, Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahdha party, visited the Emir of Qatar. No surprise — he has to thank his sponsors and reassure them on their investments. This visit is worrisome, since Ennahdha is now the leading political force in Tunisia. It is clear that the party is […]
