McQuaig: Mission Not Yet Accomplished
3 Jan 2008
In the lovely, historic halls of the Rayburn building on Capitol Hill, I am closing in on Dennis Kucinich. The slight, boyish-looking congressman from Ohio is walking briskly by himself, without attracting the slightest attention.

Ahmad: What’s Behind Benazir Bhutto’s Assassination?
3 Jan 2008
Benazir Bhutto, the “life chairperson” of Pakistan’s largest and most popular political party, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), is now dead. Her assassination took place while she was campaigning for national and provincial assembly elections, scheduled for January 8.

Abunimah: Is Democracy an Existential Threat?
3 Jan 2008
As two of the authors of a recent document advocating a one-state solution to the Arab-Israeli colonial conflict, we intended to generate debate. Predictably, Zionists decried the proclamation as yet another proof of the unwavering devotion of Palestinian – and some radical Israeli – intellectuals to the “destruction of Israel”.

Lamrani: Hugo Chávez, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the King of Spain
3 Jan 2008
The XVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State, held in Chile from November 8-10, was the object of an intense debate setting Latin America at odds with Europe and Spain in particular. An incident occurred between Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on one side, and Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and King Juan Carlos de Borbón on the other, which had a broad repercussion in the international media.

Mitterrand: Danielle Mitterrand’s Open Letter to European Leaders: Bolivian Democracy in Mortal Danger
3 Jan 2008
Just as Europe has learnt and cruelly paid for it, democracy needs to be ceaselessly alive, reinvented and defended as much in our democratic countries as in the rest of the world. No democracy is an island.

Bybee: Barack to the future?
3 Jan 2008
In the fall of  2004, Barack Obama made a memorable campaign appearance at sun-dappled Washington Park in Milwaukee, talking movingly about the bleak future of Maytag workers with whom he’d met in Galesburg, Illinois, whose jobs were heading off to Mexico. p class=”MsoNormal” styl.

Friel: The New York Times Hires William Kristol.
3 Jan 2008
Just in time for election year, the New York Times announced on December 29 that it had hired William Kristol as an op-ed page columnist, with the first column scheduled to appear on January 7, 2008. The Times’ editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, responding to early critics of the move, said that the Times “is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual—and somehow that’s a bad thing.

Kozloff: Return of the Faux Liberal: Congressman Jerrold Nadler
3 Jan 2008
It’s now been five months since I penned an article for Web site Counterpunch regarding New York Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s stonewalling on Cheney impeachment.  At the time, though I knew it would be a strong uphill battle, I figured that Nadler might come around and move on impeachment proceedings once and for all.

Dangl: Fear and Loathing in Bolivia: New Constitution, Polarization
3 Jan 2008
“Let’s go unblock the road, compañeros!” a man in an old baseball cap yells as he joins a group of people hauling rocks and tires from a central intersection in Cochabamba. This group of students and union activists are mobilizing against a civic strike led by middle class foot soldiers of the Bolivian right.

Grossman: Remember The ‘80s:
2 Jan 2008
In the coming year, we will see a deluge of observances of the 40th anniversary of 1968. TV specials, t-shirts, conferences, websites and reunions will mark this defining year in U.

Ramonet: Africa says no – and means it
2 Jan 2008
The unimaginable has happened, to the displeasure of arrogant Europe. Africa, thought to be so poor that it would agree to anything, has said no in rebellious pride.

Weisbrot: A Lesson From the Last, and Next, Recession
2 Jan 2008
In the baseball-and-sex classic Bull Durham Susan Sarandon accidentally calls out the wrong name in the heat of passion and makes a remarkably quick recovery. She asks her partner which he would rather have, her having sex with him and saying the other guy’s name, or vice versa? In the movie, it seems to work; for the moment, at least, he doesn’t seem to realize that these aren’t the only two possibilities.

Kolko: Destabilizing the Islamic World
2 Jan 2008
An excerpt form Kolko’s 2002 book Another Century of War (New Press      Communism’s virtual disappearance  caused the geopolitical and strategic factors that produced alliances and coalitions after 1947 to decline and lose their justifications everywhere, but new ones have been more difficult to make.  The situation in the entire Islamic world is too unstable, the outcome of the changes that are occurring within it unknowable.

Goodman: Musharraf Still Stands
2 Jan 2008
Benazir Bhutto and her supporters who died with her during the suicide attack Dec. 27 are the latest victims of decades of dangerous U.

Engelhardt: Journey to the Dark Side: The Bush Legacy
2 Jan 2008
“Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” – Emma Lazarus, 1883 If you don’t mind thinking about the Bush legacy a year early, there are worse places to begin than with the case of Erla Ósk Arnardóttir Lilliendahl.

Street: Goodbye Dennis:
1 Jan 2008
Barack Obama has excluded himself from the progressive coalition by the statements he’s made, unfortunately.  He’s a lot smarter than his public statements, which are extremely conciliatory  to concentrated power and big business.

Grossman: REMEMBER THE ‘80s:
1 Jan 2008
In the coming year, we will see a deluge of observances of the 40th anniversary of 1968. TV specials, t-shirts, conferences, websites and reunions will mark this defining year in U.

solo: Varieties of imperial decline : rearguard success, strategic defeat.
1 Jan 2008
“from 1920 to 1960, Venezuela was the leading world exporter of oil and here, through our Caribbean sea passed thousands of boats loaded with oil: but they left nothing to benefit the peoples of the Caribbean, the sister peoples of Latin America. Today revolutionary Venezuela places this wealth, above all, at the disposal of our sister peoples of the Caribbean and of Latin America: not for the North American empire.

Zirin: Taking Back Sports in ‘08
31 Dec 2007
In the Big Lebowski, John Goodman’s character, Walter Sobchak, says: “You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me.” I recalled the genius of Goodman when my editor here at SI.

Avnery: The Beilin Syndome
31 Dec 2007
MEPHISTO, the demon who bought the soul of Faust in Goethe’s monumental drama, describes himself as “a part of that force which always wants the bad and always creates the good.”   Yossi Beilin, who resigned this week as chairman of the Meretz party, is Mephisto’s opposite: he always wants the good and all too often creates the bad.

Jarrar: Bush, Maliki Break Iraqi Law to Renew U.N. Mandate for Occupation
31 Dec 2007
On Tuesday, the Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pushed a resolution through the U.N.

Chalabi: The internal struggle for the Iraqi oil law continues
31 Dec 2007
A year has passed since the landmark deadline of December 2006, which was ‘publicly’ imposed by the IMF, the Iraqi Study Group (ISG), the US administration and the International Oil companies (IOCs) on the Iraqi government to deliver the long awaited Iraqi oil law.   But it still seems that we are no closer today to seeing the new law approved than we were back in December 2006.

Albert: New Site Q&A
30 Dec 2007
There have been numerous questions from users, from many directions, about the new Z Communications Upgrade as well as our financial situation, aims, methods, etc. These questions have been more than reasonable, and patient, especially given that we are asking for people’s support and given that Z is a political project and therefore responsible to a broader community and movement.

Solnit: The Growth of Local Power Is a Bright Spot in Seven Bleak Years of Bush
30 Dec 2007
(December 28, 2007 )The centre cannot hold, and that’s the good news in the United States these days. Quietly, doggedly, cities, regions, counties and states have refused to march to the Bush administration’s drum when it comes to climate change, the environment and the war.

Glick: Ending the 2007 Fast
30 Dec 2007
(Dec. 21, 2007) Two days ago, December 19th, Congress’ last day of work for this fall, following the House’s vote in support of $70 billion in no-strings-attached money for the  wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, as a result, in support of an appropriations bill for 2008 that includes almost $30 bil.