Subjects Archives: Media

“It’s a well-established fact,” reports the New York Times Book Review, “that Americans are reading fewer books than they used to.”1  According to the National Endowment for the Arts, more than 50% of those surveyed haven’t cracked a book in the previous year.  In labor circles, the percentage of recent readers may be even smaller.  […]

  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 […]

  HAVANA, 26 March (IPS) — While the work of women filmmakers in Latin America and the Caribbean has made its presence undeniable, their work still suffers from certain invisibility in a medium where men have traditionally had hegemony. The “Women in the Contemporary Audiovisual Media” Web site, created by the New Latin American Cinema […]

For the last week I have been with the JanaMukti Sena, the People’s Liberation Army, mostly with the Kalyan/Anish Memorial Brigade of the 3rd division. This is the People’s Hospital.  Set up by the People’s Army, it now serves both them and the public.  It has many facilities, including a pharmacy, an operating room for […]

  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 […]

The media landscape in the US is changing rapidly.  As all forms of journalists face massive layoffs, analysts fear that journalism’s role as a counterforce against the powerful is in jeopardy.  For progressives and radicals working in media, it’s important to not only question what format news will come in, but also how to approach […]

  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 […]

On Tuesday March 17th I wrote: “The Classic was organized by those who administer the exploitation of sports in the United States…” I immediately added: “The three best teams in the Classic and the Olympics, Japan, Korea and Cuba, were placed in the same group so that they might eliminate each other. Last time, they placed us in the Latin American group; this time in the Asian group.

  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 […]

Thirty years ago, Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed equity and social justice as the Revolution’s main objective.  His successor, Ayatollah Khamene’i, continues to refer to social justice as the Revolution’s defining theme.  Similarly, Presidents Khatami and Ahmadinejad, though they are from very different political persuasions, placed heavy emphasis on social justice in their political rhetoric.  Yet the […]

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.

  Part 1 Part 2 Cf.  Kamran Rehmat, “Swat: Pakistan’s Lost Paradise” (Al Jazeera, 27 January 2009); “‘Peace March’ in Pakistan’s Swat” (Al Jazeera, 19 January 2009); Sanjeev Miglani, “Pakistan Islamists in a Deal with China Communists: a Sign of the Times?” (Pakistan: Now or Never?  19 February 2009); Patrick Goodenough, “Turn to China, Islamists […]

  Joel Kovel holds the Alger Hiss chair in social studies at Bard College and is the author of Overcoming Zionism among other titles.  He has recently been informed by the college that his contract will not be extended beyond July 1.  In the statement below, he argues that the termination is due to his […]

  “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, […]

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 […]