Recent Z Commentaries

War is what the United States does to others

“Free trade” agreements have very little to do with trade and much to do with imposing corporate wish lists

I come and stand at every door But none shall hear my silent tread I knock and yet remain unseen”                             -Nazim Hikmet On July 18, 2017, at a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing focused on “The Four Famines: Root Causes and a Multilateral Action Plan,” Republican Senator Todd Young, a former Marine, asked Read more…

There are some common threads a commitment to change; to empowering people; to building leadership-and sharing it; to trying new models; and to looking at problems systematically, as inter-connected, and with a global perspective

Instead of silence, neutrality, or indecision from the international left in the current conflict in Venezuela, what is needed is active solidarity with the Bolivarian socialist movement

Imagine if the media only reported the good news that governments and corporations wanted you to see, hear and read about. Unfortunately, that is not far from the reality of reporting about Canada’s role internationally. The dominant media almost exclusively covers stories that portray this country positively while ignoring or downplaying information that contradicts this Read more…

War profiteers and self-marketing politicians have no interest in helping U.S. people understand that war itself is a tyrant

On an even playing field, the brutality of the programs put forth by the Koch brothers and their fellow libertarian billionaires wouldn’t pass the laugh test

The Fourth Of July Like You’ve Never Seen It Before

Perhaps it is time for a broader discussion about election meddling

Since the late 1970s, the world’s economy and dominant nations have been marching to the tune of (neoliberal) globalization, whose impact and effects on average people’s livelihood and communities everywhere are generating great popular discontent, accompanied by a rising wave of nationalist and anti-elitist sentiments. But what exactly is driving globalization? And who really benefits Read more…

This week, in New York City, representatives from more than100 countries will begin collaborating on an international treaty, first proposed in 2016, to ban nuclear weapons forever. It makes sense for every country in the world to seek a legally binding ban on nuclear weapons. It would make even more sense to immediately deactivate all Read more…

We should, individually and collectively, do all that we can to prohibit U.S. supported Saudi-led coalition onslaughts against Yemeni civilians

Capitalism won’t offer people displaced from dirty industries new jobs, and if the only option someone has to feed their family is take a job in the oil sands or in a coal mine, it is pointless to blame those workers

This is 1913, we are at the hub of Europe’s cultural and political life, a hub that basically includes Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Paris, Munich, and, from a distance, also London. Cultural elites go on increasing their knowledge through newspapers, feuilletons and literary soirees, art galleries, concerts, and cultural gatherings in cafés. They feverishly keep abreast Read more…

New Report Shows Corporations and Western Governments Continue to Profit from Looting of Africa

Nearly five years ago, Ecuador granted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange political asylum at its London embassy. The original purpose of the asylum was to avoid extradition to the United States. Two years earlier, Swedish authorities had launched an investigation of Assange for sexual assault. Sweden has now dropped that investigation. Assange called the Swedish decision Read more…

Will Trump’s mercantilist approach to trade threaten a more coercive economic regime, or will it follow traditional conservative trade policy?

The recent seizure of phosphate from a Moroccan state company in South Africa and Panama is a blow to corporate Canada and a victory for national independence struggles

Will Trump express concern about Israel’s human rights violations, including those underlying the prisoners’ hunger strike?

[In 1963, historian Howard Zinn was fired from Spelman College, where he was chair of the History Department, because of his civil rights activities. This year, he was invited back to give the commencement address. Here is the text of that speech, given on May 15, 2005.] I am deeply honored to be invited back Read more…

At the same time public schools are resegregating as a result of increased privatization, the Trump administration is taking other actions that will hurt school integration

In the ongoing structural crisis of the modern world-system, which began in the 1970s and will probably last another 20-40 years, the issue is not the reform of capitalism, but its successor system

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has responded to the crescendo of outrage by appointing former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” as well as Read more…

Can cute Canadian Caribbean dreams about enchanted islands come true? Or is reality more complicated and Canada a far less benign actor than we imagine ourselves to be?

A basic problem of housing it this: Housing is a commodity instead of a human right. We’re not accustomed to seeing housing as a basic right for everybody, but why isn’t it? Other than food and water, what is more basic a need than shelter? It is here that questions about why the cost of Read more…

At the World Economic Forum-Africa, Germany pitched a dubious new G20 corporate strategy

Would the world be better off if the world’s largest gold miner ceased to exist?

For the weakest, globalisation is an insidious colonialism that enables transnational finance and its camp-followers to penetrate deeperjojohn pilg

Business interests were united, while the left and right alternative parties were divided

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pursuing a draconian agenda on voting rights, immigration, crime, policing, the drug war, federal sentencing and the privatization of prisons

US Senator Jeff Merkley, with co-sponsorship from Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker and Ed Markey, has introduced a major piece of climate legislation, the “100 by ‘50 Act.” The primary objective of the bill is “to transition away from fossil fuel sources of energy to 100% clean and renewable energy by 2050.” I started hearing about Read more…

Time is on no-one’s side as regards the crisis in Yemen

At dusk I stood on a residential street with trim lawns and watched planes approach a runaway along the other side of a chain-link fence. Just a few dozen yards away, a JetBlue airliner landed. Then a United plane followed. But the next aircraft looked different. It was a bit smaller and had no markings Read more…

Jacob Zuma and ‘white monopoly capital’

The corporation most determined to acquire control of the world’s food supply, a behemoth determined to bend the world’s farmers to its will, douse the world with pesticides and place genetically modified organisms on everyone’s dinner plate, Monsanto Company has long operated beyond effective control. Although in no position to alter that status by itself, Read more…

On South Africa’s political left, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party dominated recent news by leading a mass march on President Jacob Zuma’s office in Pretoria

Congress could put an end to U.S. complicity in the crimes against humanity being committed by military forces in Yemen

We need to challenge all the institutions that blame our problems on immigrants and poor people while simultaneously threatening planetary survival

Interview on Nuclear proliferation, climate change and the Trump administration

Taking It to the Streets

In the year 2042, an oral history of the then 25 year-old ongoing Revolutionary Participatory Society organization/project in the U.S. will be published. The book’s fifteen chapters will excerpt and arrange insights culled from eighteen interviews to present events and ideas in a sequential, encompassing way.  By unknown dynamics, the book’s introduction, its 18 source Read more…

Inaction Equals Annihilation

Trump’s wars are now all over the map. The peace movement can fight back by joining already thriving intersectional campaigns

In the year 2042, an oral history of the then 25 year-old ongoing Revolutionary Participatory Society organization/project in the U.S. will be published. The book’s fifteen chapters will excerpt and arrange insights culled from eighteen interviews to present events and ideas in a sequential, encompassing way.  By unknown dynamics, the book’s introduction, its 18 source Read more…

In the year 2042, an oral history of the then 25 year-old ongoing Revolutionary Participatory Society organization/project in the U.S. will be published. The book’s fifteen chapters will excerpt and arrange insights culled from eighteen interviews to present events and ideas in a sequential, encompassing way.  By unknown dynamics, the book’s introduction, its 18 source Read more…

Economists say wages are too high

Australia is sleep-walking into a confrontation with China. Wars can happen suddenly in an atmosphere of mistrust and provocation, especially if a minor power, like Australia, abandons its independence for an “alliance” with an unstable superpower.   The United States is at a critical moment. Having exported its all-powerful manufacturing base, run down its industry Read more…

Regardless of who is responsible for the Khan Sheikhoun chemical deaths, however, Trump’s response violated both U.S. and international law

The cost of continuing business as usual is much higher — a price our descendants will pay if we don’t move to an economic system that values life rather than only profits