Loeb: Hillary Clinton and the Ghosts of 200630 Dec 2007Maybe Hillary Clinton’s right that going back to the candidates’ past illuminates their character. I’m not sure we need to know whether they spilled their milk in kindergarten, but let’s look at the 2006 election.
Castro: National Assembly Address30 Dec 2007Dear comrade Alarcón: Please read the following message, addressed to the National Assembly, when you open the morning session. A heartfelt embrace, .
Mishra: Whither Indian Constitution29 Dec 2007More than six decades have elapsed since India’s independence and almost fifty years of its becoming a republic. It is interesting to look back and see how far it has marched towards its declared goals.
Landau: Second letter from Europe29 Dec 2007(13 December 2007) For decades, tourism has grown as one of the fashionable ways to shop abroad or in a different city in your own country. Less than 200 years ago, people thought of travel as a way to enrich education.
ZBalkans: Another occupied factory in Serbia29 Dec 2007Workers are as of now in control of the factory. They are locked inside, in order to put pressure on the notorious Serbian Agency for Privatization to break a privatization contract that caused bankruptcy of the factory.
Fisk: They Don’t Blame Al-Qa’ida. They Blame Musharraf.29 Dec 2007Weird, isn’t it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi – attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives – and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were “extremists” and “terrorists”.
Ali: A Tragedy Born Of Military Despotism And Anarchy29 Dec 2007Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto’s behaviour and policies – both while she was in office and more recently – are stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the country once again.
Goldman: State Repression in Aotearoa / New Zealand28 Dec 2007In a wave of massive state repression in Aotearoa / New Zealand, 300+ para-military Police carried out dawn raids at houses around the country on Monday October 15th 2007, making 16 arrests. Search warrants were carried out in Auckland, Whakatane, Ruatoki, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington and other centres in the North Island, and in Christchurch in the South Island.
Jacobs: Transcending the Colonizer’s History28 Dec 2007Hamid Dabashi’s 2006 book on Iran turns conventional western scholarship on that country upside down. By rejecting the dynamic that counterpoises so-called western modernity to “Oriental” traditionalism, Dabashi creates a new historiography inspired by Edward Said’s scholarship and Fanon’s studies of colonialism.
Markland: The battle for Musa Qala: the war in a microcosm28 Dec 2007In early December, NATO and American troops led an assault aimed at retaking the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala, in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. While the operation was hailed as a success by NATO leaders, a closer look reveals a familiar but seldom-discussed story of American air strikes, civilian casualties, Afghan police corruption and the inability of foreign and Afghan troops to hold strategic ground.
Street: Why I’ve Focused On Obama: Seven Points27 Dec 2007A reader recently wrote to ask me why I have spent so much energy penning Left criticisms of the pseudo-progressive Barack Obama phenomenon (1). What, the reader wanted to know, about the other leading mainstream Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards? Don’t they deserve the same critical scrutiny and radical dissection I have given to Obama over the last year? “When,” my correspondent wanted to know, “will you put Clinton II and Edwards – both of whom voted to authorize George W.
Russell: Powershift 2007: Youth Rising to the Climate Challenge27 Dec 2007On November 3rd, I felt a stadium shake from 6,000 students jumping to their feet and chanting “Green Jobs, Not Jails! Parks, Not Prisons! We Won’t Stop Till Somebody Listens!” It was kind of a national coming-out party for the youth climate movement. More than a student environmental conference, Powershift 2007 was a moment revealing youth power and its potential to drive some deeply transformative shifts in this country.
Cohn: The Torture Tape Cover-up: How High Does It Go?27 Dec 2007When the hideous photographs of torture and abuse emerged from Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2004, they created a public relations disaster for the Bush administration. The White House had painstakingly worked to capitalize on the 9/11 attacks by creating a “war on terror.
Ariel: 2008 Presidential Elections27 Dec 2007As we look back upon another stellar year here in these United States of America, Inc., let us say thanks for all we have, and what the hell, even more thanks for all that we don’t have.
Hass: The right to explode in anger26 Dec 2007The negotiations over the future of our land, from the sea to the river, and the two peoples living in it, are proceeding along two parallel channels. It has been that way since the Madrid and Oslo talks for 17 years now.
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