Subjects Archives: Media

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a writer, teacher, historian, and social activist, is Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies at California State University. You have been deeply involved in Indigenous peoples’ activism in the United States.  What is the current situation of Indigenous people in the US economically and politically? Decolonization is a difficult and long-term […]

Introduction by Geoffrey Gunn It is probably a cliché to observe that tropical rain forests host the greatest known concentrations of bio-diversity on the planet.  Together, the three great global equatorial biozones are central Africa, the Amazon basin, and the Indonesian archipelago, including southern Sumatra Island, and the even more remote tin-rich offshore island of […]

  For more information about the education crisis and the 4 March 2010 strike and day of action to defend public education in California, go to <checkingeducation.com>, <defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/>, or <www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=184333923808>. | | Print  

  For Gabriel Péri and d’Estiennes d’Orves, as well as Guy Moquet and Gilbert Dru The one who believed in heaven The one who didn’t Both loved a beauty Imprisoned by soldiers Which climbed the ladder? Which stood guard below? The one who believed in heaven? The one who didn’t? What matters the name of […]

  The essential point of M. Shahid Alam‘s book, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism, comes clear upon opening the book to the inscription in the frontispiece.  From the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi, the quote reads, “You have the light, but you have no humanity.  Seek humanity, for that is the goal.”  Alam, […]

I studied with Howard Zinn at Boston University. He was my dissertation advisor, mentor, friend, tennis partner and a pillar of support for me during the eight grueling years when I fought a civil rights battle with Harvard University. Zinn’s passage is a great loss to all who knew him directly or indirectly, including the millions of people in America and around the world who were impacted by his revisionist American history written from people’s rather than elite’s point of view, his exemplary peace activism, as well as his literary works. The “old solider of the left,” as he was once described by the New York Times, was a hero of the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement who spoke at thousands of rallies and sit-ins against the war in Vietnam, as well as America’s invasions of Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., always at the forefront of American peace movement.

  Kids Love Peace Outdoors ICY and SOT are artists in Tabriz, Iran.  More videos by ICY and SOT may be viewed at <vimeo.com/icyandsot>. | | Print  

  Today is my daughter Leila’s fourth birthday, and while this occasion brings my thoughts back to the day she was born, the past 24 hours have otherwise been full of fairly devastating news. If the left can admit to having icons, then two of them have just died.  Yesterday it was the great historian […]

  This article is a modified and developed version of a chapter from Social Class in Contemporary Japan: Structures, Socialization and Strategies, edited by Ishida Hiroshi and David H. Slater, Routledge, 2009.  For a brief outline of the book’s arguments, please see <japanfocus.org/data/Social_Class_5.htm>. Introduction: The “New Working Class” of Urban Japan Tomo was a first-year […]

  This study compared The New York Times‘ and The Moscow Times‘ coverage of the political movements in three former Soviet republics.  Data analysis revealed a clear pro-movement pattern in The New York Times’ reporting.  The U.S. newspaper used more pro-movement sources than pro-incumbent sources.  Overall, The New York Times depicted the protesters favorably and […]

  Open and Collective Proposal: To Build a Transnational Network Since its beginning, edu-factory has tried to be a place of political discussion and communication, a site of the free circulation of knowledge and networking at the global level.  In the “double crisis” (i.e., the global economic crisis and the crisis of the university in […]

  The office workers did not know, plodding through 1963 and Marshall Square station in Johannesburg, that you would dart down the street between them, thinking the police would never fire into the crowd. Sargeant Kleingeld did not know, as you escaped his fumbling hands and the pistol on his hip, that he would one […]

  Celebrating Bologna?  We don’t think so. International Call for Participation On March 11 and 12, 2010, the education ministers of 46 European countries will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Bologna process in Vienna and Budapest. Given the current situation in many European universities and the ongoing protests for the freedom of education, this […]

For at least a month now in Ecuador there has been a battle over regulation of the media.  It has been in the front pages of the newspapers most of the time, and a leading daily, El Comercio, referred to the fight as one for “defense of human rights and the free practice of journalism.” […]

“The Iranians have always figured out how to beat the system. . . . Even Iranians who are opposed to this government, even Iranians who are opposed to the Islamic Republic, don’t really wanna return to being a client state of the United States.” — Hooman Majd

  Monday, January 18th, 2010 6 to 7 pm, across from the Metropolitan Correctional Complex (MCC) 150 Park Row and Pearl Street, NYC On January 18th, as our nation commemorates Martin Luther King Day, for the slain civil rights leader who peacefully spoke out against war, racism, and injustice, members of THAW (Theater Artists Against […]

“This is an embedded film. We decided to be ’embedded within the ambulances’ opening an imaginary dialogue with those journalists who embed themselves within armies.” — Alberto Arce

World-renowned political organizer and one of Africa’s most celebrated poets, Dennis Brutus, died early on December 26 in Cape Town, in his sleep, aged 85. Even in his last days, Brutus was fully engaged, advocating social protest against those responsible for climate change, and promoting reparations to black South Africans from corporations that benefited from […]

The nuclear dispute between Iran and the United States is heating up. Iran made its proposal on December 12, having been in negotiation with the US and other powers since October 1.  Iran proposed exchanging 400 kilograms of its 3.5 percent enriched uranium for an equivalent amount of 20 percent enriched uranium to be used […]

  Manchester: Looking for the Light through the Pouring Rain, by Kevin Cummins, is a book of photographs of Manchester’s music scene over the last thirty years, with weighty prose by the likes of Paul Morley and Stuart Maconie, participants and witnesses all.  It was published in autumn 2009 in London by Faber. The photos […]