Subjects Archives: Literature

  The dark Danube is covered with White flowers, white flowers, white flowers. And the melody asks for memory Of the past, the past, the past. But like a flock of birds Our songs’ simple words vanish. You are walking into the fire, Yugoslavia Without me, without me, without me. For that night under a […]

John Gibler, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, 356 Pages, City Lights Publishers (January, 2009). Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, calls Mexico home, as do millions of impoverished citizens.  From Spanish colonization to today’s state and corporate repression, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, by John Gibler, is written from […]

  “Look on us, Look on them. Who looks more like you? Us! We have McDonald’s and soon H&M. They don’t even have a Subway-type chain.” “Support US! Hate THEM!” Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country) is a satirical Israeli television program.  H/T to Norman G. Finkelstein.

February 3, 2009 Dear All, Last week, with initial hesitation but finally strong conviction, I endorsed the Call for a U.S. Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel.   I’d like to offer my reasons to friends, family and comrades.  I have tried in fullest conscience to think this through. My hesitation: I profoundly believe in […]

34 year-old Kashif ul-Huda runs TwoCircles.net, the leading Indian Muslim news and features web site.  In this interview with Yoginder Sikand he talks about his work and reflects on Indian Muslims and the media. Q: What made you set up TwoCircles.net?  What was your source of inspiration? A: I come from a working class family […]

please keep in mind as you prepare to pass sentence you may at some time be in need of a presidential pardon and I may, understandably, be reluctant to grant it. Dennis Brutus is a South African poet.  Active against Apartheid, he was arrested in 1963 and imprisoned for 18 months on Robben Island.  After […]

Babylon has fallen, has fallen Yea, Babylon has fallen Woe!  Woe!  Woe! Towers that soared into clear blue are at blocks of stone settled into earth all gone, all shattered ground into scattered dust Babylon has fallen, has fallen Yea, Babylon has fallen Woe!  Woe!  Woe! Now hordes of warring barbarians literate, skilled in killing […]

“This is one local aspect* of a problem which is actually global.” — Dennis Brutus Farewell the Nightingales Walking the streets of the Shah’s Tehran I was conscious of lurking Savak — cries of tortured victims hung in the dusk even as I lingered over buttered long-grain rice in a dim bistro’s magic cave: That […]

“After throwing a shoe at the US Consulate in Durban today to wish the Bush regime good riddance, I remind myself that this sentiment of disgust has occurred repeatedly.  In 1987, it was Reagan in the White House, tomorrow it will be Obama, but the problem is not the person, it is the system.” — […]

“Egypt is playing a tawdry role in the current agony of the Palestinians; but it is not new, sadly.” — Dennis Brutus Remembering Egypt  Solitary I walked the sands beside the Pyramids hot soil beneath my feet: ageless the cloudless skies aeons above invisible stars: men laboured in dusty rags parched reeds wilted in shallows […]

Among the signatories are some very well-known artists, musicians, and writers such as Dror Burstein, Ala Hlehel, Yitzhak Laor, Yehudith Levin, Avi Mograbi, Michal Naaman, Salman Natour, Judd Ne’eman, Aharon Shabtay, and Arik Shapira (Israel Prize Laureate) and university professors such as Yossef Grodginski, Uri Hadar, Hannan Hever, Orly Lubin, Adi Ophir, Yehuda Shenhav, and […]

  I see you being dropped off.  I stop the movement of my scope and then I center the crosshairs on you . . . and on you waving the driver goodbye.  He drives away . . . leaving you behind at the place where three roads meet, behind the date grove on the other […]

Tomorrow (Saturday, January 3, 2009), two big protests will be held in Israel The killing in Gaza continues.  Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, thousands injured, air strikes have caused utter devastation, and entire families are left homeless.  Civilians in the south of Israel are being held captive by a government which lies to them […]

Introduction The sirens of oppression I referred to in my first collection (1963) were still present in South Africa in 1989, as they seem to be as well in Gaza in 2009 thanks to Israel’s bombing spree.                                     […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

Hakan Ozoglu. Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries.   Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004.  xv + 186 pp.  $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7914-5993-5. Identifying Kurdish nationalism as “one of the most explosive and critical predicaments in the Middle East,” the author notes that “the subject regrettably […]

  Child of the Sit-Downs: The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger, by Carlton Jackson, WKU Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History.  Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2008.  256 pages, $39.00 (cloth). This wonderful book is a most welcome biography of Genora Dollinger, labor reformer and feminist.  Genora (her husband told Dr. Jackson that she […]

I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, light for every intellect.  I am convinced that the human history has not yet begun — that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric.  I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is diffused […]

This US election year, an unprecedented number of voters will likely head to the polls to cast their ballots in an exercise that should take just a few minutes to complete.  But what about the rest of the minutes left in the year?  Author and activist Chris Carlsson has some suggestions for social change beyond […]

Lloyd D. McCarthy, “In-Dependence” from Bondage: Claude McKay and Michael Manley Defying the Ideological Clash and Policy Gaps in African Diaspora Relations (Africa World Press, 2007). Claude McKay and Michael Manley may seem like strange bedfellows for a study in 20th-century politics.  Though both born in Jamaica, a generation apart, they could hardly have pursued […]