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When 20,000 American nazis descended upon New York City
In 1939, the German American Bund organized a rally of 20,000 Nazi supporters at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
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‘It being clearly understood…’: What the Balfour Declaration tells us about Israel
Few documents as brief as the Balfour Declaration have had as devastating an impact as this historical document. I do not want to minimize the European colonization of the Americas, an utterly ravaging catastrophe for the Indigenous peoples of these continents.
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A film from yesterday and an audience from today
With its theme a little-known event of over a century ago, the film was ancient in cinema terms, its rather unsuccessful premiere was way back in 1926 and the performance Monday evening marked an event even earlier than that, one which is rarely discussed and even less celebrated. Yet the theatre was sold out and […]
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From the old left to the new: perils of progressive parenting
When parents turn childhood into a left-wing boot camp, their kids are not likely to remain on the shining path of their own politics for long. In fact, when the personal gets too political, parent-child relationships can be poisoned with resentment, anger, and recriminations.
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In defense of old materialism
There was only once, in the final year of my PhD, that my supervisor and I butted heads. I had just submitted my fourth chapter for her review and, because I was living in another city at the time, she sent me an email saying we needed to speak on the phone urgently.
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The biggest impediment to Saudi women was never the driving ban
No matter their age, Saudi women are treated like minors — to the point that many require permission from their sons to work, study, or travel.
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Take a knee: The revenge of Colin Kaepernick
After Trump’s deranged demand that ownership purge NFL athletes who fail a loyalty test, it felt a little miraculous when, by a quirk of a game being played in London, Sunday morning dawned on the vision of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Baltimore Ravens arm in arm during the National Anthem. Standing with them was Shahid Khan, the league’s first non-white owner. I’d prefer no owners at all, but for now, it was a vision worth kneeling for.
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No, Antifa is not the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis
Comparisons between citizens fighting against fascism and tiki-torch wielding anti-Semites are absurd – and dangerous.
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Understanding the native roots of the constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador
Good Living is a philosophy promoted by Andean governments of South America, pioneered by Evo Morales (Bolivia) and Rafael Correa (Ecuador). It goes back to the roots of ancestral cultures of the region and posits a model for human life in harmony with nature.
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Venezuela’s Citgo provides free gas to Harvey rescue teams
Venezuela has provided free gas to rescues workers, firefighters and police in their efforts to help victims in areas affected by Harvey, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday.
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Charlottesville is America: the myth of the white supremacist tidal wave
However, white supremacy is not a tidal wave. And it isn’t a lurking storm that seeks to wreak havoc on the shores of the US either. That happened centuries ago, when English colonizers laid their claim to the North American mainland circa the mid to late 17th Century.
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Linguistic data analysis of 3 billion Reddit comments shows the alt-right is getting stronger
We’re witnessing the radicalization of young white men through the medium of frog memes. In order to see it, all you need to do is look at the words coming out of their mouths. The alt-right isn’t yet united, but it soon will be.
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Naomi Klein and Jeremy Corbyn discuss how to get the world we want
Naomi Klein interviews Jeremy Corbyn on his ideas of progression in Britain, the disgusting actions and speeches by President Donald Trump, and the triumph of the campaign.
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‘13th’ and the culture of surplus punishment
In one amendment, we have taken the land of the free to the land where 1 of 4 people are shackled and held as a slave.
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Are you ready to consider that capitalism is the real problem?
WIth 8 men holding the same wealth as 50% of the world, you have to wonder if there is something systamatically wrong with the way the world is. Capitalism is no longer ideal in the world we live in today. People are starting to realize this in the forms of inequality of wealth, food, resources. Now is the time to change that, and it can be done.
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Sweezy at sixty
I did not know that Albert Einstein was a socialist. Maybe I had known once, or more likely, never cared. But in 1949, when the great physicist and Nobel laureate declared his beliefs, in the innocuously titled “Why Socialism?,” a lot of people would have cared. Indeed, by 1953, Joseph McCarthy was after him, and people were sending hate mail to the Institute for Advanced Study asking that Einstein, a founding member of the research center, be sent packing.
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Empire Files: Abby Martin meets the Venezuelan opposition
Abby Martin goes on the deadly front lines of the anti government protests in Venezuela and follows the evolution of a typical guarimba—or opposition barricade. She explains what the targets from the opposition reveal about the nature of the movement and breaks down the reality of the death toll that has rocked the nation since the unrest began, and how a lynch mob campaign came after her and the Empire Files team for reporting these facts.
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A British PR firm spread “white monopoly capital” to distract South Africans from mounting corruption
It takes a certain level of cynicism to race bait South Africans to protect profits. It’s downright underhanded to hire a public relations firm to do it professionally.
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Wonder Woman is a hero only the military-industrial complex could create
For a while I have been pondering whether to write a review of the newly released “Wonder Woman,” to peel back the layer of comic book fun to reveal below the film’s disturbing and not-so-covert political and militaristic messages.
There is usually a noisy crowd who deride any such review with shouts of “Lighten up! It’s only a movie!”–as though popular culture is neither popular nor culture, the soundtrack to our lives that slowly shapes our assumptions and our values, and does so at a level we rarely examine critically.
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Toilet tales
Kakkoos (Latrine) is a Tamil documentary that is a powerful indictment of society’s apathy towards the thousands who are tasked with cleaning public toilets and sewers. The filmmaker Divya Bharathi talks about why she made a documentary and what is the task at hand, post its tremendous success.