Z Nightly Commentaries
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Recent Z Nightly Commentaries
Bennis: Obama's Afghanistan Escalation
Dec 04, 2009
There was one way in which President Obama's escalation speech brought significant relief to the 59% of people in this country, as well as the overwhelming majorities of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East and elsewhere who oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan: It was a pretty lousy speech. That is, it had none of the power, the lyricism, the passion for history, the capacity to engage and to persuade virtually every listener, even those who may ultimately disagree, that have characterized the president's earlier addresses.
Bennis: Obama & Afghanistan
Dec 01, 2009
The president had a difficult decision to make. The war had been raging for a long time. The US and its far-away enemies had fought to a stalemate - but people just kept dying. Most of them were local civilians, but plenty of US and coalition troops, as well as local allied and enemy forces were being killed too. For years government and media reports of possible enemy threats at home had driven people in the U.S. to sky-high levels of fear - high enough that many people had accepted the view that "we have to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here."
Bond: Climate Denialism & Seattle
Nov 30, 2009
Preparations for the December 7-18 Copenhagen climate summit are going as expected, including a rare sighting of African elites' stiffened spines. That's a great development (maybe decisive), more about which below.
Bello: The Migrant Condition
Nov 20, 2009
Speech delivered at the People's Global Action Conference during the Global Forum for Migration and Development, Athens, Greece, Nov. 1, 2009.
Blum: Anti-Empire Report
Nov 08, 2009
Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?
Bennis: Midwest, Mideast & Afghanistan
Nov 03, 2009
The dangers of another, even greater, U.S. escalation in Afghanistan are rising; the continuing war in Iraq is exploding anew; the possibilities-but-still-dangers in U.S. engagement with Iran remain hopeful but tense; and U.S. diplomatic engagement in the Middle East is still designed to fail.
Bond: Climate Change Center
Oct 25, 2009
On a day that 350.org and thousands of allies are valiantly trying to raise global consciousness about impending catastrophe, we can ask some tough questions about what to do after people depart and the props are packed up. No matter today’s activism, global climate governance is grid-locked and it seems clear that no meaningful deal can be sealed in Copenhagen on December 18.
Blum: Sickness of Pacifism
Oct 03, 2009
Picture the scene: Afghanistan, two hijacked tankers filled with highly inflammable fuel, surrounded by a crowd of Afghans eager to syphon off some for free ... What's the last thing you want to do? Right — drop bombs on the tankers. That's what a German military commander signaled an American drone airplane to do September 4. Kaboom!! At least 100 human beings incinerated. This incident has led to a lot of controversy in Germany, for Article 26 of Germany's post-war Grundgesetz (Basic Law/Constitution) states: "Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be made a criminal offense."
Boyle: Law of the Jungle
Sep 21, 2009
On the morning of 13 September 2001, that is 48 hours after the terrible tragedies in New York and Washington, D.C. on September 11th, I received telephone call from a producer at Fox Television Network News in New York City. He asked me to go onto The O'Reilly Factor TV program live that evening in order to debate Bill O'Reilly on the question of war versus peace. O'Reilly would argue for the United States going to war in reaction to the terrorist attacks on 11 September, and I would argue for a peaceful resolution of this matter.
Brecher: Solidarity with Van Jones?
Sep 13, 2009
The attack that drove “green jobs czar†Van Jones from the White House this week is an attack on labor and on workers’ best hope for good jobs. If labor wants to promote green jobs, labor should embrace Van Jones - publicly, loudly, and fast - at the upcoming AFL-CIO Convention.
Blum: Anti-Empire Report
Sep 08, 2009
If there's anyone out there who is not already thoroughly cynical about those on the board of directors of the planet, the latest chapter in the saga of the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland might just be enough to push them over the edge.
Bond: 'Seattle' Copenhagen
Sep 06, 2009
Here's a fairly simple choice: the Global North would pay hard-hit Global South sites to deal with climate crisis either through complicated, corrupt, controversial 'Clean Development Mechanism' (CDM) projects with plenty of damaging side effects to communities, or instead pay through other mechanisms that must provide financing quickly, transparently and decisively, to achieve genuine income compensation plus renewable energy to the masses.
Blum: Empire's Crimes
Aug 08, 2009
If you catch the CIA with its hand in the cookie jar and the Agency admits the obvious — what your eyes can plainly see — that its hand is indeed in the cookie jar, it means one of two things: a) the CIA's hand is in several other cookie jars at the same time which you don't know about and they hope that by confessing to the one instance they can keep the others covered up; or b) its hand is not really in the cookie jar — it's an illusion to throw you off the right scent — but they want you to believe it.
Bennis: Netanyahu Speaks
Jun 17, 2009
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu threw a rhetorical bone to President Obama in his much anticipated speech on June 14, when he used the term "Palestinian state." But he conceded nothing of substance, reiterating Israel's continuing rejection of real Palestinian statehood, independence, sovereignty, and self-determination. He demanded that the Palestinians recognize and accept Israel as the "national homeland of the Jewish People," not a state of all its citizens, thus requiring Palestinians to accept the legitimacy of Israel's discriminatory practices. And his speech continued Israel's escalation of threats against Iran.
Bond: SA Political Power
Jun 13, 2009
With high-volume class strife heard in the rumbling of wage demands and the friction of township 'service delivery protests', rhetorical and real conflicts are bursting open in every nook and cranny of South Africa.
Blum: Team/Cult Obama
Jun 10, 2009
The praise heaped on President Obama for his speech to the Muslim world by writers on the left, both here and abroad, is disturbing. I'm referring to people who I think should know better, who've taken Politics 101 and can easily see the many hypocrisies in Obama's talk, as well as the distortions, omissions, and contradictions, the true but irrelevant observations, the lies, the optimistic words without any matching action, the insensitivities to victims. Yet, these commentators are impressed, in many cases very impressed. In the world at large, this frame of mind borders on a cult.
Bennis: Changing the Discourse
Jun 05, 2009
President Barack Obama's much-anticipated Cairo speech reflected a significant shift away from the ideological framework of militarism and unilateralism that shaped the Bush administration's war-based policy towards the Arab and Muslim worlds. His "not Bush" focus was perhaps most sharply evident in his public denunciation of the Iraq War as a "war of choice." Obama's call for a "new beginning" based on "the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition" was followed by a move to shift the official U.S. discourse towards something closer to internationalism - particularly by pointing to parallels between historical (and some contemporary) grievances and treating them as equivalent. This included his reference to the U.S. "role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government" along with Iran's "role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians."
Bond: Shell on Trial
May 25, 2009
The state's most recent assault against the Delta left the villages of Opuye, Okerenkoro, Kurutie and Oporoza (site of the new documentary Sweet Crude - www.sweetcrudemovie.com ) burned to the ground in mid-May, with hundreds of Ijaw people - both armed activists (called 'militants') and civilians - feared dead. Journalists are banned from the area.
Bennis: Netanyahu's Visit
May 21, 2009
Overall, yesterday's White House meeting between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has to be seen as a draw. As former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Obama adviser Daniel Kurtzer noted before the meeting, "for different but complementary reasons, both Obama and Netanyahu do not want this meeting to fail." And it didn't. There was no public acknowledgement of strategic differences between them, the tone was friendly and upbeat, the U.S.-Israeli "special relationship" re-emerged unchanged and intact.
Dec 16, 2009
Eight million people viewed Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff video since December 2007, and her new nine-minute Story of Cap and Trade received 400,000 hits in the two weeks after its December 1 launch.