Z Nightly Commentaries
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Recent Z Nightly Commentaries
Spannos: Crisis of Global Governance
Mar 14, 2010
Standing before an audience at the Brookings Institute on March 8, a day before meeting U.S. President Barak Obama, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou made the case that today’s European crisis involves American interests and that today there is a “crisis of global governance.”
Schechter: Whither Financial Reforms
Mar 10, 2010
What will it take? What are they waiting for? What part of the reality of a systemic crisis that will get worse don't they get?
Szczepanczyk: Solidarity Gaming
Feb 27, 2010
I agree that markets for many important reasons must be abolished and replaced. The projects around a participatory society, including participatory economics, certainly rank among the more detailed proposals for a more just successor economy and society. But in his commentary about the Olympics, Albert seems to imply that sports themselves essentially won't change, even if the economics surrounding them will change to that of a participatory economy. We'd presumably still have sports and games, presumably with a competitive ethos, complete with winners and losers, even if we'd have jobs balanced for desirability and empowerment, remuneration per effort and sacrifice, and participatory planning instead of markets or command planning.
Spannos: European Hegemony in Crisis
Feb 24, 2010
Scrambling to stabilize the current Greek financial crisis inspectors from the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund descended on Greece the eve of today's 24-hour general strike. It was the second such strike in two weeks, with as many as 2 million workers expected to take action against the Papandreou governments forced "austerity measures." The workers do not want to pay for a crisis they did not create themselves. Yet Papandreou is eagerly imposing these measures anyway so that Greece can become "credible again."
Shah: Extraordinary Measures
Feb 23, 2010
Compared to, say, espionage or alien warfare, the drug development business rarely appears on the big screen, and its few cinematic portrayals generally involve sinister white-coated characters doing shadowy experiments. In that sense, the new film Extraordinary Measures, in which a desperate father and biochemist race to develop a cure for a rare genetic disease, marks a refreshing departure. Although not exactly the stuff of industry jingles, there are no bad guys here, either.
Scipes: Lets Make Money
Feb 21, 2010
A Review of "Lets Make Money", a film by Erwin Wagenhofer. Distributed by Bullfrog Films, 2008
Solomon: Dollars for Death
Feb 16, 2010
When the U.S. military began a major offensive in southern Afghanistan over Presidents Day weekend, the killing of children and other civilians was predictable. Lofty rhetoric aside, such deaths come with the territory of war and occupation.
Schechter: It Was 20 Years Ago Today
Feb 12, 2010
It was 20 years ago Thursday February 11th when Nelson Mandela's Liberation Band began to play.
Street: The People's Historian
Jan 29, 2010
The news of Howard Zinn's death hit me like a ton of bricks. I did not expect to cry and then about 10 minutes after getting the e-mail…it hit me - three times. The last time I looked down and saw that I was standing in my den about one foot away from one of my old "instructors' copies" of Zinn's masterpiece, A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present.
Sharma: Farming to Sustain the World
Jan 27, 2010
Ten years from now, in 2020, when we try to look back, Indian agriculture can be transformed into a healthy and vibrant system where farmer suicides have been relegated to history, where distress and despondency has been replaced by the lost pride in farming, where agriculture becomes sustainable in the long run, and does not add on to global warming.
Solomon: Dems Boost the Right
Jan 21, 2010
In his triumphant speech on election night, the next senator from Massachusetts should have thanked top Democrats in Washington for all they did to make his victory possible.
Schechter: Haiti Disaster Response
Jan 18, 2010
Every disaster plan is built to some degree around the idea of triage-deciding who can and cannot be saved. The worst cases are often separated and allowed to perish so that others who are considered more survivable can be treated.
Shah: Pesticides Behind Die-Offs?
Jan 09, 2010
Originally published in Yale Environment 360, Sonia Shah writes that in the past dozen years, three new diseases have decimated populations of amphibians, honeybees, and — most recently — bats. Increasingly, scientists suspect that low-level exposure to pesticides could be contributing to this rash of epidemics.
Schechter: Banks Still Rule
Jan 05, 2010
It's a new week, a new year, and some, erroneously believe a new decade. What's not new is the stranglehold the banks have on our economy quietly stashing more billions for more bonuses while still restricting the flow of credit. Bad loans have been supplanted by no loans.
Sharma: India's Starvation Line
Jan 02, 2010
There is something terribly wrong with growth economics. After all, 18 years after India ushered in economic liberalisation, the promise of high growth to reduce poverty and hunger, has not worked. In fact, it has gone the other way around: the more the economic growth, the higher is the resulting poverty.
Schechter: Our Challenge Lies Ahead
Dec 30, 2009
Lets drop all the decade hype. I know we tend to structure history in ten year swallows: The 60's, the 70's, the 80's etc. It is all so neat and so clean but, alas, not quite true.
Street: Fight the Rich
Dec 28, 2009
The following remarks were delivered on Friday December 18, 2009, at 5 PM in front of the Wells Fargo Bank building in downtown Cedar Rapids, IA, after a vigil and march called by the Cedar Rapids branch of Socialist Alternative and Iowa Women for Peace.
Schechter: Congo Communique 2
Dec 18, 2009
After a week in Kinshasa talking about war in Congo, it was time to see it, or at least visit its epicenter in the East. This is where rape is used as a weapon of war, where rebel groups challenge government forces militarily and occupy territory. 1.8 million people have been displaced causing a major humanitarian crisis; territory seems to change hands regularly and, as they say, tension is high.
Solomon: War Is Not Peace
Dec 12, 2009
Eloquence in Oslo cannot change the realities of war.
Mar 15, 2010
Since 1966 - and as a consequence of the introduction of the Green Revolution model of water-intensive, chemical farming - India has over-exploited her groundwater, creating a water famine.