Recent Z Commentaries

Gun ownership in the U.S. was a defining feature of whiteness

Right to Work is not inevitable in Oregon. There is still time to go on the offensive

Following the election, new checks and balances to MAS party power may continue to open up spaces of dissent, debate and contestation that will deepen Bolivia’s wider process of change

With the institutions it controls having such dismal records in managing the global economy and promoting development, the US should have expected that at some point, the world would begin looking elsewhere for institutions that could deliver

Pregnancy has been the one area that remained generally untouched by superficial beauty and fashion judgments

Struggles for reform will be fought again and again, becoming more difficult to sustain, as long as economic systems stress private profit rather than public good

The USA’s dominance of the IMF and World Bank since 1945 has provided Washington with great leverage in influencing both political events and economic directions in emerging market economies

US movies (like US television sit-coms and dramas and video games) are loaded with richly “Orwellian” political and ideological content

Discussions of Vietnam are hardly academic exercises; the US is currently on a global rampage and falsifying history is part and parcel of the effort to whip up support for the next war

Concluding a TPP deal in 2015 is right up there—along with across the board corporate tax rate cuts—at the top of Corporate America’s ‘must have’ list for this year

How many people are really out of work?

The most important event of this annual commemoration has been an angry march of tens of thousands of Greeks from the Polytechnic campus to the US embassy in Athens

I’m not prescribing martyrdom for the movement. I’m simply wondering what sort of sacrifices, discipline and commitment it will take to stop the most powerful military machine in the world?

People who live in glass, dollar-drenched houses of fake democracy should not throw stones

A morally bankrupt alliance – one that also places westerners at risk – is passed over in silence. For lavishly paid TV journalists, the price is well worth it

The SAE anthem is the ugly veneer of the kind of institutional racism that led to the fact that over the past two years, the black residents of Ferguson accounted for 85% of all traffic stops

When you’re starting wars on the grounds that if you don’t start a war now someone else could theoretically start one later, you have set up a logic of Armageddon

The United States’ complicity, along with its satellites and allies, in the rise of ISIS, goes back at least to the late Cold War era

That 22 veterans commit suicide per day is a grim reminder not only of the harsh demands of military life but that the Pentagon effectively throws away its veterans after using them

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