Z Nightly Commentaries
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Recent Z Nightly Commentaries
Choudry: New Zealand Plays “Follow the Leader†on spylaws
Mar 14, 2001
New Zealanders often brag that their country is a world leader. They claim it was first to create a welfare state and give suffrage to women. The 1984-1990 Labour Government declared the country nuclear-free, while, according to the Economist, it simultaneously set about “out-Thatchering Mrs Thatcher†by applying textbook neoliberal economic theory on an unsuspecting New Zealand public to a degree never seen in any other OECD country. Now, some rosy-spectacled commentators like The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland claim that Helen Clark’s Labour Party-led government, elected in 1999, is leading the world away from the blind faith in the private sector and market dogma that has characterised so many social democratic governments worldwide.
Choudry: New Zealand Plays ÒFollow the LeaderÓ on spylaws
Mar 14, 2001
New Zealanders often brag that their country is a world leader. They claim it was first to create a welfare state and give suffrage to women. The 1984-1990 Labour Government declared the country nuclear-free, while, according to the Economist, it simultan
Chomsky: Escaping Orthodoxies
Dec 31, 2000
DB: Talk in concrete ways about liberating the mind from orthodoxies. Take for example, humanitarian intervention.
Cromwell: An Unholy Trinity: Truth, Market Forces and the Media
Dec 25, 2000
Are you a regular newspaper reader? If so, you'll have noticed that many journalists and columnists include an email address at the bottom of their articles. They surely crave your feedback! So here's a fun experiment. Fire off an email to the commentator
Chomsky: Overcoming Orthodoxies
Dec 16, 2000
David Barsamian: I want to come back to the idea of what individuals can do in overcoming orthodoxies. Steve Biko, the South African activist who was murdered by the apartheid regime while he was in custody, once said, The most powerful weapon in the hand
Chomsky: Propaganda and Indoctrination
Dec 10, 2000
This is the first of three Chomsky Commentaries I will send this month...each answers one or more queries from David Barsamian (DB) and all are excerpted from a still to be published interview... DB: Lets talk about a theme that we return to periodically
Cromwell: FALLOUT FROM THE CLIMATE TALKS
Dec 08, 2000
The planet is burning, while politicians fiddle the books. If yet more proof was needed that capitalist society is rotten to the core, then just look to the recently collapsed climate talks in The Hague. No agreements, paltry or otherwise. Just bitter rec
Chomsky: Al-Aqsa Intifida
Oct 26, 2000
After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories, Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status of the region. During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including 30 children, often by "exces
Cromwell: Silent Democracy
Oct 24, 2000
"It's sociologically interesting, though scary", said the actor Anthony Sher in a recent interview, "that you can be inside an evil system and be somehow unaware of it." South African by birth, Sher was talking about the former system of apartheid. But wh
Cromwell: Silent Democracy
Oct 24, 2000
"It's sociologically interesting, though scary", said the actor Anthony Sher in a recent interview, "that you can be inside an evil system and be somehow unaware of it." South African by birth, Sher was talking about the former system of apartheid. But wh
Chomsky: Chomsky Comments on Milosevic Ouster, etc.
Oct 12, 2000
A number of people in the ZNet forum system and elsewhere have raised questions about the prominent role they see assigned to US-NATO in the flood of commentary on recent events in Yugoslavia, "gloating over the victory of the opposition in Yugoslavia--as
Cromwell: Supping with the devil
Oct 07, 2000
When Chris Tuppen, a senior manager with British Telecom, was granted space a couple of years ago in a green pressure groupÕs magazine, he made a plea for business and the green movement to "settle their differences" and "work together". But what he was a
Chomsky: Summits
Sep 17, 2000
The United Nations Summit in New York in September was the second major gathering of government leaders marking the millennium. The first was the South Summit in Havana in April. The UN Summit received considerable national publicity, while the South Summ
Cagan: Toys, the Death Penalty and the Gay Movement
Aug 24, 2000
In case you missed it, the Week in Review section of the 7/23/00 Sunday New York Times ran a most incredible piece. Instead of summarizing from it, let me just quote a few choice sentences:"Never Say Die, Just Execute.
Cagan: Philadelphia: Sunday, July 30
Aug 01, 2000
As the several thousand delegates to the Republican PartyÕs Nominating Convention were arriving in Philadelphia this weekend, protests were already in full swing. There is too much happening for me to report on it all, but the Independent Media Center wit
Chomsky: "Peace Process" Prospects
Jul 27, 2000
The latest AP report from Camp David (evening, July 25) begins: "The Middle East peace talks at Camp David collapsed Tuesday over rival claims to East Jerusalem. Disappointed, President Clinton said he tried several approaches but could not come up with a
Chomsky: National Missile Defense
Jul 20, 2000
Taking into account the results of the recent test, should President Clinton ask the Pentagon to go ahead with the national missile defense system?I would prefer to respond to a slight reformulation of the question. The most hopeful prospect for the NMD [
Chomsky: Humanitarian Intervention
Jul 05, 2000
At a public talk in February Chomsky was asked: "President Clinton recently said the U.S. has the right on humanitarian grounds to intervene, with force, in any country which it deems is abusing the human rights of its citizens. Do you agree with Pre
Cunningham: Moon River
Jul 02, 2000
The Moon river is the lifeline of Isan, bringing sustenance and irrigation to the poorest and most populous part of Thailand. The World Bank identified the Moon, the greatest of the Mekong's tributaries, as a suitable location for a giant dam, and proceed
Mar 26, 2001
We haven't heard an awful lot about nuclear power lately. Does that mean it's a technology whose time has come and gone? Not likely. There remains the possibility that nuclear power could make a comeback through the backdoor, courtesy of the so-called 'jo