Subjects Archives: Culture

  The East Palestine Archipelago Above: Imagined map by Julien Bousac, graphically illustrating the Palestinians’ difficulty in getting around.  All the zones of the West Bank occupied by Israel are pictured as the sea.  Left: The legend of the map in English. Source: L’Atlas, Un monde à l’envers, Paris: Le Monde diplomatique, 2009. Download the […]

  Students and community members near the UC Berkeley campus were surprised one weekend to see a series of bus shelter billboards asking, “What country uses live ammunition against unarmed children?”  Below a photo of identically dressed schoolboys in front of a barbed wire fence is the answer: Israel. The guerrilla ads replaced ads which […]

On May Day, still under the impression of the parade, the colors of our flag, today a symbol in the eyes of the world, and the youthful, intelligent and enthusiastic faces of our students, who closed the parade of that overflowing river, the words of the poet, repeated so many times that day, came to my mind:

  Alfredo Jaar: There are two thinkers, Italian thinkers, that I admire greatly: Antonio Gramsci and Pier Paolo Pasolini.  I was invited for a series of exhibitions in Italy last year, and I wanted to make homage to both men.  In the world of culture today, I miss Gramsci, and I miss Pasolini.  I miss […]

  “The class struggle, which is always present to a historian influenced by Marx, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined or spiritual things could exist.  Nevertheless, it is not in the form of the spoils which fall to the victor that the latter make their presence felt. [. […]

  “We know today is an important day in Argentina, which marks the 33rd anniversary of the military coup d’état.  We’d like to dedicate the following song to all the victims who suffered, to those who lost their loved ones, to those who were imprisoned and tortured, to those who were disappeared. . . .  […]

  See, also, Shubhranshu Choudhary, “‘All Idiot Farmers Commit Suicide’” (Down to Earth, 15 April 2009). This program was broadcast by Press TV on 16 April 2009.

  Default: The Student Loan Documentary is a feature-length documentary chronicling the stories of borrowers from different backgrounds affected by the student lending industry and their struggles to change the system. No matter when their loans were taken, many borrowers now find themselves in a paralyzing predicament of repaying two, three, or multiple times the […]

  Pieter Fleury is a Dutch filmmaker.  North Korea: A Day in the Life (2004), written, directed, and produced by Fleury, with cooperation of the Ministry of Culture of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, won the Amnesty International Award at IndieLisboa 2005 and received a “Special Mention” at the FIPA Biarritz 2005 among other […]

  Obama did what was expected, dispensing good luck charms for all.  What he left behind is a state of delirium, a la the Hunchback of Notre Dame: “He gave me water.” Even though some of Obama’s gestures during the visit — such as Obama reminding the young people he was chatting with of the […]

  On March 28, Palestinians and international activists gathered to protest the long-time closure of Shuhada Street in Hebron, leaving one arrested and five injured. The protest was attended by about 50 local and international activists, including MK Mohammad Barakeh of Hadash and Palestinian Legislative Council member Sahar Qawasmi.  Giving a passionate and fiery speech […]

  Chestnut Hill, MA — After administrators at Boston College forced the cancellation late Friday afternoon of an academic lecture featuring Professor Bill Ayers, student organizers of the event have decided that the show will go on — off-campus.  Student groups and faculty at Boston College drew criticism from a right-wing talk radio show host […]

  Iranian director Soudabeh Moradian films the daily life of her country, as she sees it, as she lives it, without comment.  A new episode of her chronicles of Iran is broadcast on ARTE.tv each week. Watch five episodes — “The Bus Driver,” “In Front of the University of Tehran,” “To Be 24 Years Old […]

  On Thursday, the 19th of March, about 30,000 teachers and students took to the streets of Barcelona to march against the education policies of the Government of Catalonia. The unions charged that the New Law of Education, like the Bologna Plan, aims to open the door to the privatization of education. The demonstrators demanded […]

  James Renton.  The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance 1914-1918.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.  xi + 231 pp. ISBN 978-0-230-54718-6; $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-230-54718-6. The word “masquerade” is not one to be used lightly by historians.  Obviously, James Renton is aware of this, and he strives to justify his choice of […]

This year sees the 20th anniversary of the death of Raymond Williams, one of the towering socialist thinkers of the past century.  A superb biography — Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale — has just been published by Dai Smith.  He charts Williams’s passage from the Welsh border country, where his father was a railway signalman, […]

  Sitting in the shadow of an elegant carbet, feeling the trade wind, Roger de Jaham, age 60, lets his Creole accent lilt, talking about the blow that he recently suffered: “For the first time in my life, a man whom I greeted told me: ‘I don’t shake the hand of a béké.”  The man […]

  “Supporting the Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination is a duty of Israeli communists.” The Communist Party of Israel (CPI) and its front Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) were the only political forces in Israel that confronted the massacre perpetrated by the Tzahal (IDF), the Israeli armed forces, in Gaza last January.  Regrettably, […]

  Roy Chaderton, Venezuela’s Ambassador to the Organization of American States, speaks of numerous members of the Jewish community who have supported the struggles of peoples against imperialism and Zionism, and he rejects any attack against the Jewish people. Watching television footage of one of the necessary and legitimate protests against the Israeli Embassy in […]

  Introduction Please sign the following statement, which we hope to be able to publish soon in Israeli newspapers.  Donations to help pay for publication can be sent via PayPal by clicking here. We encourage organizations to sign by sending us email. Jews Call on Israeli Soldiers to Stop War Crimes We Jews in the […]