The New York Times ran a truly despicable story on its front page today. The article, by Scott Shane, argues that Pfc. Bradley Manning is not being treated so badly. But what moves this piece from the category of apologetics to contemptible is its opening paragraphs that try to contrast the plush circumstances of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with the grim conditions under which Manning is being held:

Stephen Steinberg’s Boston Review article “Poor Reason: Culture still doesn’t explain poverty“ is a breath of fresh air, reminding us that the path toward ending poverty is creating decent jobs for everyone.

Editor's note: This is the seventh article in a series by Richard Greeman about Islamism. U.S. imperialism, deluded by its own ideology, has joined the March of Folly in Afghanistan/West Pakistan — following in the illustrious footsteps of other would-be conquerors including the Persian Emperor Darius I, Alexander the Great, the British Empire under Queen Victoria and Brezhnev's Soviet Russian empire. All these great powers lost whole armies in the region before being driven out by the fiercely independent natives, as we have seen in previous articles. The U.S.

New York City plans to have even more inaccessible taxis

A fascinating analysis of Liu Xiaobo and the Nobel Peace Prize has been circulating in Europe but has not, to my knowledge, been reprinted in the US, in print or online. Au Loong Yu, who wrote about China for the New Politics symposium on labor’s response to the global economic collapse, rejects the premises of a debate that is “primarily between the liberals who support Liu Xiaobo and the nationalists is essentially a debate of either Washington or the

I’m with Peter Tatchell in supporting WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, who are exposing the U.S. government’s lies and its support for human rights abuses. Tatchell wants Brits to protest the U.S.-led attacks on WikiLeaks and argues that the charges against Assange have to be pursued in the court of law.  Where I disagree is in estimating the probability of a frameup, and I think comparison with  Daniel Ellsberg and the  Pentagon Papers supports my case.

Does desperation alone account for reckless escalation of U.S. military aggression in the Middle East for which the “threat” of an aggressive Islamism provides the rationalization? To be sure, the  worsening world economic crisis directly conditions the international context, aggravating U.S. capital’s frantic rush to control the world’s remaining oil reserves. America's willingness to use excessive force and to go it alone also serves to intimidate would-be imperialist rivals like China, Russia and France, so as to retain its lion’s share.

Obama’s decision to radically escalate the wars he was ostensibly elected to terminate is a measure of U.S. imperialism's desperation. It’s not just that our erstwhile peace candidate and future Nobel peace laureate is withdrawing exhausted U.S. troops from the frying pan of Iraq only to transfer them into the fire of Afghanistan, although that itself was an act of desperation. Many of these “volunteer” soldiers and reservists, shattered after several devastating tours of duty in Iraq, are being forced to remain in the service years beyond their contracts.

Here’s how Gloria Steinem  announced her support of Bloomberg’s designation of Cathleen Black as NYC Schools Chancellor: “I’ve known Cathie Black for more than three decades, and I know she turns the impossible into success. In the beginning of New York Magazine and Ms.

The critique of “Waiting for Superman,” available mostly in the blogosphere, indicates that a backlash against the neoliberal project in education is developing. No doubt you’ve seen the barrage of propaganda for this ersatz documentary,  which touts charter schools as the solution to poverty and inequality and teachers unions as the enemy. But if you haven’t read the critiques by teachers and advocacy groups, be sure to look at the Rethinking Schools  webpage that refutes the film’s premises and conclusions.

In our previous articles, we emphasized the ideological nature of today’s problematic Islamic “threat.” Historically this “threat” fits into an established tradition of hysterical propaganda campaigns – whether against “Indians,” “Negroes” or “Reds” — which distort and exaggerate real and potential challenges to U.S. capitalism /imperialism so as to justify violence, state terror and wars of plunder. If the truth is “the first casualty” in war, then democracy is the second. Although framed by the U.S.

[Editor’s note: This is the second in a series by Richard Greeman.] To understand the lunacy of the problematic Islamic “threat” currently being hyped in mainstream U.S. political discourse, we need to place the concept in the historical context of Western, particularly U.S. imperialism’s collective self-image. White American identity has from the beginning defined itself in opposition a dangerous, threatening, darker “other” who had to be conquered, subdued, and/or exterminated : in the first instance the “savages” native to the Americas.