Z Nightly Commentaries
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Recent Z Nightly Commentaries
Zirin: Start with the '84 LA Olympics
May 05, 2012
When the people have no voice, no community, and no power, their frustration is left no physical choice but to explode
Zirin: 25 Years Since Al Campanis Shocked Baseball
Apr 18, 2012
The Campanis lesson for Major League Baseball hasn’t been to take on racism in the sport, but find executives who can smile for the camera and talk a cat out of a tree
Zirin: Trayvon Martin’s Death, LeBron James and the Miami Heat
Mar 30, 2012
That’s the scary thing about choosing to give a damn. People will expect you to mean it
Zirin: Beneath the Brackets
Mar 13, 2012
In our perennial rite of spring, we are being bombarded with bracketology, Final Four predictions and the general hoops hysteria otherwise known as "March Madness
Zinn: A Marvelous Victory
Feb 01, 2010
American historian, playwright and social activist Howard Zinn died January 27, 2010, aged 87. Below is an excerpt from his recent book A Power Governments Cannot Suppress published by City Lights Books.
Zinn: War & Peace Prizes
Oct 11, 2009
I was dismayed when I heard Barack Obama was given the Nobel peace prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on two wars would be given a peace prize. Until I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel peace prizes. The Nobel committee is famous for its superficial estimates, won over by rhetoric and by empty gestures, and ignoring blatant violations of world peace.
Zinn: Empire
Oct 03, 2008
This current financial crisis is a major way-station on the way to the collapse of the American empire. The first important sign was 9/11, with the most heavily-armed nation in the world shown to be vulnerable to a handful of hijackers.
Zinn: Memo to Obama
Jul 19, 2008
For someone like myself, who fought in World War II, and since then has protested against war, I must ask: Have our political leaders gone mad? Have they learned nothing from recent history? Have they not learned that no one "wins" in a war, but that hundreds of thousands of humans die, most of them civilians, many of them children?
Zinn: The New Deal
Apr 02, 2008
We might wonder why no Democratic Party contender for the presidency has invoked the memory of the New Deal and its unprecedented series of laws aimed at helping people in need. The New Deal was tentative, cautious, bold enough to shake the pillars of the system but not to replace them. It created many jobs but left 9 million unemployed. It built public housing but not nearly enough. It helped large commercial farmers but not tenant farmers. Excluded from its programs were the poorest of the poor, especially blacks. As farm laborers, migrants or domestic workers, they didn't qualify for unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, Social Security or farm subsidies.
Zinn: Antiwar talk at the Boston Commons
Mar 27, 2007
Howard Zinn, addressing the crowd gathered for the March 24th 2007 antiwar rally at the Boston Commons.
Z: Godzilla vs. The Condoleezzard (Celebrating Halloween in the United States of Anxiety)
Oct 29, 2006
Halloween is an odd holiday. The ostensible concept, as it has evolved to become, is to shock, startle, frighten, petrify, horrify, and/or terrify...all while consuming enough high fructose corn syrup to keep the American Dental Association content for an
Zinn: War Is Not A Solution For Terrorism
Sep 07, 2006
THERE IS SOMETHING important to be learned from the recent experience of the United States and Israel in the Middle East: that massive military attacks, inevitably indiscriminate, are not only morally reprehensible, but useless in achieving the stated aim
Z: America: The Land of Denial
Jun 11, 2006
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Zinn: Lessons of Iraq War Start With US History
Mar 19, 2006
On the third anniversary of President Bush's Iraq debacle, it's important to consider why the administration so easily fooled so many people into supporting the war.
Zinn: After This War
Jan 03, 2006
The war against Iraq, the assault on its people, the occupation of its cities, will come to an end, sooner or later. The process has already begun. The first signs of mutiny are appearing in Congress The first editorials calling from withdrawal from Iraq
Z: An Interview With Jordy Cummings
Oct 18, 2005
Jordy Cummings says: "I'm writing a book that focuses on what I believe, with input from a lot of people, are the most important anti-war or anti-imperialist films." Cummings is a Canadian-based writer who seamlessly blends pop culture with political theo
Zinn: Victory?
Oct 05, 2005
How quickly would you like to see society change in fundamental ways? How quickly do you believe it will, or ought, to occur? Do you believe that serious social change is literally possible within a matter of a few years?
Z: Debs
Sep 29, 2005
Eugene V. Debs and the legacy of dissent
Zinn: The Optimism of Uncertainty
Sep 30, 2004
In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?
May 16, 2012
Local police forces have just been given an inordinate number of new toys and the boxes have been opened, the receipts tossed away