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What Is behind the Bush “Oil Addiction” Remark in the “State of the Union” Speech?
Much is being made of George W Bush’s road-to-Damascus conversion on the need for alternative energy. “America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world,” Bush said in the annual State of the Union speech given by US Presidents at the beginning of the year. Enthusiasts for renewable energy […]
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The State of Bush: A Man Obsessed
The Bush “State of the Union” speech said more about the speaker than the issues. Working people from coast to coast issued a collective groan as the wildly popular American Idol program ended, and the annual State of the Union program began. Millions and millions of viewers found the remote and tuned out, in search […]
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Kenneth Timmerman’s Iranian “Democracy” and the “Intelligence” Summit
While George Bush, the man who controls the trigger of the world’s greatest nuclear arsenal, expresses his fear that a “non-transparent” and nuclear Iran might use its non-existent nuclear weapons to blackmail the world, and his Secretary of State tells the media that the time for talking with the regime in Tehran is over, a […]
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The Nuclear Attack against Iran, the Aggression against Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, and Socialism of the XXIst Century [El ataque nuclear contra Irán, la agresión contra Cuba, Venezuela y Bolivia, y el Socialismo del Siglo XXI]
El futuro de la Revolución Bolivariana en América Latina se ve más brillante desde que Evo Morales participa en la construcción del Bloque Regional de Poder (BRP) de América Latina, en lo que será probablemente el año más peligroso para la humanidad desde el fin de la “Guerra Fría”: el año del ataque de la […]
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Getting to the Point of No Return: A Conversation with Andre Vltchek
Andre Vltchek Andre Vltchek is a Czech-born American writer who has written for Der Spiegel, Asahi Shimbun, the Guardian, and many other international papers. He has reported on the violence of the neo-liberal order from all over the globe, but especially from Indonesia, about which he has made a ground-breaking documentary: Terlena: Breaking of a […]
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Say Anything
A short time ago, Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein wrote a column starting, “I don’t support our troops.” It was a well-reasoned piece by most standards, though Stein unthinkingly repeats the urban legend about “peaceniks” spitting on troops returning from Vietnam. For his honesty, he received a hundred “hate e-mails” on his (unpublished) personal […]
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The Answering Machine
Paul Krell, UAW spokesperson, is not a person. Paul is an answering machine. Which explains why he can’t return calls and always says the same thing, i.e., “The UAW has no comment.” Since the UAW does not have a spokesperson per se, I don’t have to be concerned about stepping on anyone’s toes. Thus, I […]
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King’s “Revolution in Values” Revisited
I. A Brooklyn federal court in March 2005 dismissed a civil suit filed on behalf of millions of Vietnamese against U.S. chemical companies charged with war crimes for having supplied the military with Agent Orange. The dismissal was on technical grounds, not on its merits; the contention that the chemical defoliants used during the […]
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Dismantling the Central American Gangs and Recovering a Lost Generation
Guatemala City, Guatemala Carlos, my driver, was a former federal policeman. He weighed a good two hundred pounds and was well over six feet. He was assigned to me by a local businessman whom I knew in Guatemala City after I explained that I wanted to visit some areas where I could see gang activity. […]
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Fifteen Years of War — And Who’s Better Off?
“I’ve told the American people before that this will not be another Vietnam, and I repeat this here tonight. . . . I’m hopeful that this fighting will not go on for long and that casualties will be held to an absolute minimum. This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made […]
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Liberating Truth, Understanding Illusions: An Interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is no armchair theorist. She was and is on the front lines of struggles for social justice at home and abroad. An acclaimed author, Dunbar-Ortiz is also a professor of ethnic studies at California State University, Hayward. Her substantial body of work includes Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the […]
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North versus South:Expect More Global Apartheid — and SA Collaboration — in 2006
Unless political elites change strategy and tactics in 2006, North-South relations will continue to degenerate. By the end of last year, opportunities ranging from rock concerts to summits and trade negotiations were lost. South Africa’s role in this failure of global nerve was substantial. Three leading politicians of South Africa — Thabo Mbeki, Alec Erwin, […]
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Washington and Wall Street Look Southward . . . for Barrels of Oil
On January 1, 2006, thirty-two private oil companies in Venezuela lost their contracts to operate independently. The replaced contracts were given to the oil companies by the pre-Chavez government in Caracas during the 1990s, the latest in a series of oil agreements that were much more beneficial to the oil companies than they were to […]
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A Means to Effect the Peaceful Overthrow of a Tyrant
The summer 2005 revelations by former FBI assistant director W. Mark Felt that he was the source known as Deep Throat that helped bring down Richard Nixon has revived talk among certain US residents regarding the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney. While I have great reservations about the likelihood of such an event […]
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What’s Ahead in 2006 on the Political Action Front?
It won’t be a very happy New Year for working people in 2006 . . . at least until November. For working people, the coming year promises to be loaded with danger on the political action front. Many political battles remain unfinished from 2005, with President Bush and his Republican Congressional majority determined to continue […]
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Contraindications: A Review of Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s Blood on the Border
To many of us in the United States, the US contra war against the Nicaraguan government in the 1980s seems like very long ago. Since the CIA-manufactured defeat of the revolutionary government in Managua — a defeat engineered through mercenary war, media manipulations, CIA and Special Forces covert ops, drug-running and arms smuggling by people […]
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“Damage Control”: The Corporate Media’s Service to the Empire
In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky posit that the “‘societal purpose’ of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state” (p. 298).1 Lately, however, the media has been taking […]
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A Children’s Song for Our Times
Santa came riding a tank Riding a tank came he With cannon guns and beating drums With soldiers, jeeps and marching feet Santa came riding a tank Riding a tank came he Who brings gifts on a tank? What gifts do tanks bring? Ask the children of Iraq They know And now so do we […]
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From a US Resistance Primer: A Conversation with Randy Rowland
Randy Rowland I just got off the phone with Randy Rowland in Seattle. For those readers who don’t know, Randy was a a GI resister and a member of the Presidio 27 — one of the first acts of GI resistance to the Vietnam War. When I spoke with him, Randy had just returned from […]
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Rising Tensions on the Rails
The threatened New York City Transit strike is just the latest sign of a growing labor-management confrontation across the US railroad system. While the workers of Transit Workers Union 100 battle off attacks on their pensions and health care, Bush Administration hirelings on the Amtrak Board prepare to launch an assault on the national passenger […]