Recent Z Commentaries

During my four stints in U.S. federal prisons, I’ve witnessed long-term inmates’ unconquerably humane response when a newcomer arrives

Chicago Media Exposed for its Deceitfulness

The United States President recently told his fellow US-of-Americans that Venezuela – yes, Venezuela – is an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”

US capital never lost its way or its dominant role in American society

All these years, the neoliberal university quietly bred its own nemesis — now let’s rejoice as we join in the rebellion

The global climate protection movement does not need either to support or to block the Paris climate summit. It needs to raise the pressure on the governments and institutions of the world

We need more public discussion of the woman-hating and of how—short of censorship—to combat it

It is througha struggle around the racialization of murder that we have the opportunity to change not only the manner in which crimes are addressed and tolerated by the larger society

Referring to “the remarkable alliance between Israel and the United States” which includes “generous military assistance and missile defense,” Netanyahu failed to mention that Israel has an arsenal of 100 or 200 nuclear weapons

Around 3000 protesters from the new United Front party recently marched to parliament against new economic plans

A conversation with Vanessa Satoris from The Malvinas Assembly in Argentina

Review of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, by Edward E. Baptist

Imagine if we had one Congress member who would say, “I’m skipping the speech because I’m opposed to killing Iranians”

The uncompromising stance of European creditors is rapidly shattering Greek trust in the Eurozone. Is it time to start preparing for Grexit?

I believe Syriza is sincere, and I’m rooting for them, but they may have overestimated their own strength, while forgetting how the Mafia came to occupy its position

Dependency on advertising is inherent in the very model of a so-called “free press” owned by profit-hungry media conglomerates

The rest of the world is now consuming media at the same pace, and in the same forms, as those living in the United States

Negotiations over the Greek debt in Europe in recent weeks reveal noteworthy parallels with labor-management contract negotiations

Our need to sell our labor, the resulting reduction of human beings’ labor power to a commodity, and the endless competitive pressures on capitalists to boost profits underlie the present economic difficulties

Participants reflect that the self organized nature of the schools is directly connected to the horizontal and assembly based movements that came out of the popular rebellion of December 2001

After an explosive start to his State of the Nation Address last week, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma turned to nuclear, coal, fracking and offshore drilling projects – but what about the country’s free sunshine, wind and tides?

Venezuela has sought a libertarian, non violent, and even participatory path more so then any other large scale project in the world

I think the more people write about what needs to be done, and how to do it, the more we can get people involved with movements seeking to end U.S. Empire.

Will the elephant that is U.S. authoritarian power win the day, week, month, year? Or will a fledgling path to better outcomes persist, grow still more, and spread still farther?

In the UK, while the rich escaped to Switzerland and the Caymens, the benefits of the poor were cut “to balance the budget”

I’m encountering less and less people who wish to defend the status-quo, but few who are willing or ready to organize

The students do not then have to practice medicine in Cuba or do anything for Cuba, but rather are expected to return to their own countries and practice medicine where it is most needed

Will anyone stop 1984 on steroids before it becomes 2015 commonplace?

From recuperated workplaces to defense of the land

Trillions of dollars has been poured into programs that do little more than produce stock-market bubbles; more trillions have been poured directly into banks and other financial institutions for bailouts

Until students control the universities, workers control corporations and the state is managed by working-class and poor citizens, regular folks will have little to say about why, how in what ways these technologies are implemented

What better place to make blue-green alliance building more real than rhetorical, among labor and community partners long pitted against each other by companies like Chevron and Shell?

Imperial America has been calling those who dare to resist its murderous expansions “savages” since the colonial and early revolutionary eras

Here is, a possible estimate of what the Empire could do to protect its “property”

Honest criticism of these countries is obviously required as well, but people should be aware that HRW is not the organization to provide it

Before the 19th century, there were no police forces that we would recognize as such anywhere in the world

After the square occupations of the past years, the Augusta Park actions in São Paulo, Brazil, open a new phase based on a vision of the commons

What QE has done is stimulate financial asset inflation and bubbles, accelerate capital income growth, and worsen global income inequality

Another reality of Argentina is one of social movements that are creating alternatives from below with a horizontalist model of organizing

Four decades after a newspaper brought down an American president, political journalism is joined at the hip with an administration that doesn’t just secretly brief journalists but sucks up their ideas for how to sell a war to the public

Why this unsettling contrast, reflecting remarkable public indifference of most of the US white populace to the regular heinous police murder of Black Americans?

Were the AFL-CIO to join the fight for $15, the movement could experience an explosion in growth

What the U.S. government does openly is many times worse than anything it can be doing secretly, and yet the secrets fascinate us

In the wake of the recent release of the powerful movie “Selma,” an intra-Democratic debate of sorts has emerged

I feel like shouting from the rooftops, “Do you see what’s going on inside these gates?”

The ancient Greeks with the expression “ee pollee” referred to the ordinary people in contrast to those that were considered as the intellectual elites

The CIA is on a quest for more respect — from news media, from lawmakers, from potential recruits — from anyone willing to defer to its authority

As Republicans in Congress successfully change the rules, Obama and Democrats will try to change their stripes

In their speeches and commentary, the administration, corporate interests and GOP leadership disregard the real, detrimental impacts that previous fast tracked trade deals…have had on America’s middle class

Surveillance Is Just First Phase