About Z Commentaries

Z Commentaries are sent every night to all Z Sustainers, and have been for many years. They are a kind of thank you mailing, you might say, for those who are supporting our overall operations. 

Commentators are diverse and many. A few of the more prominent ones are listed in the top menu, to show just their work. In time we will add a left menu, up above this text area, and below the generic menu that now appears, with the same purpose, but for more people. 

Recent Z Commentaries

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Vincent Emanuele: Ten Years Later: Reflections on Katrina and Iraq

In the end, there are consequences for our actions and inactions. When events like Hurricane Katrina, or the invasion of Iraq takes place, the eventual fallout is immeasurable

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Carl Finamore: Property Investors Buying, Evicting & Profiting Banks Displacing People

There is no question that activism was having an impact on the First Republic Bank

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Kathy Kelly: Replanting

Our shared future requires faith that whatever lays ahead, small gestures undertaken now – a folded message, a careful planting – are not lost

Pete Dolack: Dump The Kid And Get Back To Work

Here is the complete list of all the countries in the world that do not provide paid maternity leave for women workers: Papua New Guinea, United States of America

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Paul Street: The Real Cost of Being Poor: Reflections from the Heartland

Serious debates over what the minimum wage should be in various U.S. locales and jurisdictions should start with serious information on what it actually costs to live in the different places where Americans live

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Paul Street: Trumped: On the Political and Ideological Functions of The Donald

Trump’s ugly and vicious madness, buffoonery, narcissism, and revanchism help make the “mainstream” Big Money candidates Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton look reasonable, responsible, respectable, mature, and trustworthy by comparison

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Vincent Emanuele: Donald Trump, Working Class Whites and the Left

If the Left hopes to win, we’re going to need to organize white working class communities, some of whom will transition from reactionaries to left-wing radicals

Pete Dolack: Speculators Circling Puerto Rico Latest Mode Of Colonialism

The financial industry, in contrast to the mythology it loves to peddle, does not create wealth — it confiscates wealth, attempting to profit off every aspect of human activity

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Vincent Emanuele: War and Culture: Becoming Politically Conscious

The next time you run into someone who’s the least bit interested in politics, please invite them to your house for a dinner party, not the next local organizing meeting

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Carl Finamore: San Francisco Too Valuable for Poor People

Landlords behaving badly

Pete Dolack: We may have already committed ourselves to 6-meter sea-level rise

Even if humanity were to stop throwing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere today, a catastrophic rise in sea levels of six meters may be inevitable. Two previous prehistoric interglacial periods, in which the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was believed to be about what it is today, resulted in dramatic rising of Read more…

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Nikos Raptis: Greece: The Beginning

This could be the beginning of Resistance of ordinary Greeks

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David Swanson: War Acceptance 101

If you are going to support some wars, how do you pick which wars not to support?

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Paul Street: Happiness v. Property: From Jefferson and Franklin to Cuba and the United States

When it comes to the pursuit of property, the “rich” U.S. has state socialist Cuba beat hands down. When it comes to human well-being, “poor” Cuba wins just as decisively

Joris Leverink: Armenian Heritage Under Threat: The Occupation of Camp Armen in Istanbul

As soon as the news broke that Camp Armen was under threat calls for solidarity were shared, leading to a Gezi-like occupation of the site

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Carl Finamore: San Francisco Immigrants Mourn and Organize

ICE prefers to circumvent the legal process in order to engage in massive “round-up sweeps” in communities, schools and workplaces

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Jack Rasmus: China’s Stock Bubble Bursts

The Beginning of a New Global Financial Crisis?

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Patrick Bond: Is BRICS A True Alternative?

In turbulent economic times, BRICS will undergird – not undermine – Western financial decadence

Pete Dolack: Class Warfare Through Stock Markets

The insatiable greed of financiers has reached the point where large corporations are now spending almost all profits on stock buybacks and dividends

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Jérôme Roos: Greece’s referendum: one no, many yeses!

A victory for OXI would not just help restore a sense of dignity to Greece; it would strengthen the ground for anti-austerity struggles across Europe

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Auset Marian Lewis: A Struggle without Borders: Charleston a Uniter or Divider?

Racial differences in the U.S. cannot be denied, but the greatest tragedy is the lie that we the people do not have a common fight

Pete Dolack: G7 leaders fiddle while Earth burns

The world has to drastically reduce its consumption. As this is an impossibility under capitalism, another world is not only possible, it is necessary

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Arun Gupta: The End of Terrorism

While calling Roof a terrorist is important for the historical power it carries, it should be coupled with opposition to the war on terror and more government grabs for repressive powers

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Jérôme Roos: Greek referendum: euro crisis explodes into dramatic climax

Those who accuse the Greeks of “recklessness” are mistaken: the creditors’ utter contempt for democracy left them with no other choice but a rupture.

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Cynthia Peters: How Quaint When the Corporate Media Notices Its Corporate-ness

The mainstream media’s task is to deliver the purchasing power of the largest possible segment of the population to companies with products to sell

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Paul Street: Democracy Wrecked Again: On the Fast Track of Corporate Authoritarianism

Washington runs on corporate and financial cash, connections, reach, and propaganda, not public opinion

Pete Dolack: Building workplace organizations anew

Once we realize we don’t need capitalists to make decisions for us, and learn to organize collective self-defense, getting rid of bosses and running enterprises ourselves enters our imagination

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Nikos Raptis: Patriotism, Hypocrisy, and Cowardice in Our Societies

Samuel Johnson defines patriotism as “love for one’s country; zeal for one’s country” and scoundrel as “a mean rascal; a low petty villain”

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Chris Kromm: Charleston and the South’s sordid history of attacks on black churches

The assault is part of a history of racial violence striking at a central institution of African-American life in the South

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Paul Street: Race Violence, Gun Violence: Reflections on Obama’s Charleston Comments

At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the depth, degree, and relevance of anti-Black white societal, institutional, and cultural racism in American life

Pete Dolack: TPP promises health care for profits, not patients

“Free trade” agreements are nothing more than initiatives to cement corporate control over all aspects of society

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Jack Rasmus: Greek Default? What Does the Troika Really Want?

A default would reduce the value of the Euro further and theoretically provide another boost to exports and the sagging Eurozone economy

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Paul Street: The Silly Season: Reflections From Iowa

The leading hog and corn producer in the nation is already crawling with wannabe presidents

Danica Jorden: In Argentina and Mexico, “Not One Less” Means Every Woman’s Life Matters

Women’s rights activists in Argentina have revived the slogan that began in Mexico in response to the mass killings of young women in Ciudad Juárez

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Joe Emersberger: What Drives Governments to Keep TISA, TPP and TTIP Secret?

The corporate media, not secrecy, is actually the more important barrier to fair and open debate

Pete Dolack: The Destruction of Jamaica’s Economy Through Austerity

So disastrous has austerity been for Jamaica that its per capita gross domestic product is lower than it was 20 years ago

Andy Piascik: Save the US Postal Service Before It’s Too Late

The public should join postal workers to demand an end to the contracts with Staples and Walmart and an end to postal facility closures

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Boris Kagarlitsky: The killing of Novorossiya

The problem, however, is that a series of concessions, capitulations and betrayals will destroy the state far more rapidly and inevitably than any set of enemies is capable of doing

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Patrick Bond: World Soccer Corruption, Africa’s ‘Illicit Financial Flows’ and Elite Silences

If there is anywhere deserving of corporate corruption probes to the extent of the FIFA investigation, it is Washington itself

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Carl Finamore: Why Police Kill So Often

The picture is becoming clearer each day how policing in the United States is so brutally more violent than any other industrialized country

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Paul Street: Enough with the Holy Founders and Their Undemocratic Constitution

Serious advocates of popular sovereignty should call for – imagine – a new U.S. Constitutional Convention

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Vincent Emanuele: Reflections on Black Lives Matter – Gary, Indiana

The more I can help younger activists avoid the pitfalls that I’ve experienced in the past, the better off and more effective they will be in the future

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Walden Bello: Southeast Asia: Home to Ethnic Cleansing, Slavery, and Hazardous Work

Pundits remark cynically that instead of integrating dynamic tiger economies, ASEAN integration will pool together societies with unsolved, deep-seated social problems

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Peter Bohmer: Another Police Shooting of African-Americans: This Time in Olympia, WA

Out of this tragedy, there is an opportunity to have serious conversations about racism, about Black lives matter and to build mass movements

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Paul Street: Theater of the Absurd

Elected in the brand name of peace, Barack Obama has joked to his White House staff that he is “good at killing people”

Joris Leverink: Water Politics in the Land of Two Rivers

Source of life, cause for conflict

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Nikos Raptis: An Earthquake is not an Academic Subject

Although quakes cannot be prevented, they can be rendered not deadly

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Paul Street: No Respect for the Poor, Working or Not

Respect for workers will only be won from the bottom up, through collective and militant action

Pete Dolack: Speculation for its own sake pays billions

A year’s worth of gross world product is traded in about two weeks on the world’s stock, bond, derivative, futures and foreign-exchange markets

Jeff Abbott: Guatemala: Popular Protests Challenge Corruption and the Political Establishment

The political crisis has brought calls by many protesters for a new form of local politics that move beyond the traditional hierarchy of the political structure

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