Z Nightly Commentaries
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Recent Z Nightly Commentaries
Kagarlitsky: Europe's Nationalists Waiting
Apr 30, 2011
Finnish elections don’t usually make headlines in Europe. But this spring Finnish voters managed to spoil the mood among Brussels bureaucrats and the liberal public by giving the nationalist True Finns party the third highest number of seats in parliament.
Kagarlitsky: Prokhorov's Exploitative Emancipation
Apr 27, 2011
In the spirit of Newspeak, Prokhorov claims that his proposals will “emancipate the worker.”
Klein: Lives Are Under Threat
Apr 11, 2011
Not for forty years has there been such a stretch of bad news for environmentalists in Washington.
Kagarlitsky: Russia Inspired Arab Protesters
Apr 03, 2011
Several weeks ago, Russia celebrated the 150th anniversary of Tsar Alexander II's abolishment of serfdom, and historians are quick to mention that his reforms failed to create a full-fledged civil society.
Kagarlitsky: Gorbachev the Traitor
Mar 25, 2011
The 80th birthday of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev this month sparked a sudden but understandable surge of nostalgia for perestroika among the liberal intelligentsia.
Kelly: Incalculable
Mar 04, 2011
Recent polls suggest that while a majority of U.S. people disapprove of the war in Afghanistan, many on grounds of its horrible economic cost, only three percent took the war into account when voting in the 2010 midterm elections.
Kagarlitsky: The Return of Fascism
Dec 25, 2010
There was nothing unexpected about the racially motivated rioting and attacks that took place in Moscow and other cities during the past 10 days.
Kagarlitsky: Fursenko as Enemy
Nov 29, 2010
The Russian educational system has many problems but only one real enemy. It would take hours to list all of the problems but only a moment to name the No. 1 enemy: Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko.
Kagarlitsky: Prokhorov’s Shock Modernization
Nov 13, 2010
The State Duma invented National Unity Day on Nov. 4 to replace the Nov. 7 holiday commemorating the Bolshevik Revolution.
Kagarlitsky: the Russian Census
Oct 28, 2010
Today, when a census taker comes calling at your door, you are having a firsthand encounter with the legacy of the Tatar yoke...
Kelly: War & Your Mind
Oct 24, 2010
Khamad Jan, age 22, remembers that, as a youngster, he was a good student who enjoyed studying. “Now, I can’t seem to think,” he said sadly, looking at the ground. There was a long pause. “War does this to your mind.”
Kelly: Banning Slaughter
Sep 19, 2010
In the early 1970’s, I spent two summers slinging pork loins in a Chicago meat-packing factory. Rose Packing Company paid a handful of college students $2.25 an hour to process pork.
Kagarlitsky: Burning Wake-Up Call
Sep 13, 2010
Russian authorities and much of the Russian public have pretended up to now that there were no costs to privatization of forests and that there was no climate crisis. We have to hope this year's fires and heatwave causes a change in policy.
Kelly: Witnessing Against Torture
Jun 26, 2010
An old cliché says that anyone who has herself for a lawyer has a fool for a client. Nevertheless, going to trial in Washington, D.C., this past June 14, I and twenty-three other defendants prepared a pro se defense. Acting as our own lawyers in court, we aimed to defend a population that finds little voice in our society at all, and to bring a sort of prosecution against their persecutors.
Kagarlitsky: Nation of Poor
Jun 18, 2010
A new bill has been passed in Russia that will extensively roll back Government funding of education, the arts and social services - by introducing per capita financing - that will punish smaller towns and downgrade quality in the larger ones.
Kolko: U.S. Doesn't Get It
May 05, 2010
The United States' wars have always been very expensive and capital-intensive, fought with the most modern weapons available and assuming a modern, concentrated enemy such as the Soviet Union. The ever-growing Pentagon budget is virtually the only issue both Republicans and Democrats agree upon. But there are major economic and social liabilities in increasingly expensive, protracted wars, and these-as in the case of Vietnam-eventually proved decisive.
Kagarlitsky: Lenin’s Loss, Stalin’s Gain
May 02, 2010
Several years ago, I taught political science at a technical college. Why future engineers were required to study political science is anybody’s guess, but perhaps it replaced the mandatory Soviet-era course on the history of the Communist Party.
Konstantinou: Anti-Authoritarian Economy
Apr 30, 2010
The most extensive antiauthoritarian network of our country is preparing for a national meeting on May 8th-9th, inaugurating a special time period which will be as crucial for the progress of itself as for the future of the financial organization of our society.
Kagarlitsky: Crash in Moscow
Apr 09, 2010
Protests sparked by last month's fatal car accident in Moscow reveal the depth and scale of the anti-corporate mood in today's Russia.
May 14, 2011
The West is taken as the standard, and everything in Russia differing from it is considered “abnormal