Z Nightly Commentaries
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Recent Z Nightly Commentaries
Author: Pakistan's Pathos
Oct 16, 1999
Pakistan is, once again, in the throes of a serious crisis. The country is under martial law. The elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, his brother, Shahbaz and General Ziaudin, the head of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) are under house arrest. Ever since its foundation in 1947, the Pakistani state has been plagued by a failure to establish strong democratic institutions.
Author: Pakistan's Pathos
Oct 16, 1999
Pakistan is, once again, in the throes of a serious crisis. The country is under martial law. The elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, his brother, Shahbaz and General Ziaudin, the head of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) are under house arrest. Ever si
Wise: Kill First, Ask Questions Later
Oct 15, 1999
It's been nearly four decades since the last execution in Tennessee. During that time, my state has resisted boarding the killing train engineered by folks in places like Florida and Texas, where execution has been refined to a near science, applied with
Gonsalves: A Letter to Mrs. Bush
Oct 14, 1999
I recently received a copy of a letter that was sent to the former First Lady, Barbara Bush. The letter was written by six mothers whose children are in jail because of the "war on drugs" - a "war" avidly supported by Barbara's son, George W., who is runn
Shalom: Political Correctness
Oct 13, 1999
Conservative pundits and their frequent liberal allies have been complaining for years about "Political Correctness" -- the intrusion of left-wing ideology into the academy, supposedly subverting academic standards.
Herman: How the media have protected U.S. Appeasement- Collusion with Indonesia in East Timor
Oct 12, 1999
The mainstream U.S. media have performed a semi-miracle in reporting on the East Timor crisis, providing us with a model case of apologetics in the service of state policy.
Solomon: Media Time Capsule
Oct 11, 1999
On the first day of January, many public ceremonies will feature time capsules -- sealed long ago, when "the year 2000" sounded incredibly futuristic. Those containers, intended for opening at the start of the new millennium, presumably hold evocative sym
Zinn: A Larger Consciousness
Oct 10, 1999
Some years ago, when I was teaching at Boston University, I was asked by a Jewish group to give a talk on the Holocaust. I spoke that evening, but not about the Holocaust of World War II, not about the genocide of six million Jews.
Landau: The Pinochet Decision
Oct 09, 1999
This week, a British magistrate will decide whether to extradite Augusto Pinochet to Spain or release him. England has detained the former Chilean dictator for eleven plus months. In that time, his case has brought to world attention the principals of int
Schechter: Fighting for the Soul of the BBC
Oct 08, 1999
British television has become a battleground--literally. On Labor Day, an enraged intruder vaulted over the BBC's new upgraded security barriers, raced up a set of stairs, threw a table through the window of a newsroom, jumped inside and started tossing c
Shah: Young and Younger
Oct 06, 1999
As a child, on every birthday morning, I was meant to touch the feet of each of my parents to show my gratitude and respect. This simple and brief act would overwhelm me with its nakedness, its confession of my own powerlessness, its reference to an India
Hightower: Snapshots
Oct 05, 1999
Let's say you're at home one evening, sitting there in your La-Z-Boy, maybe with a cool one in your hand, when suddenly you feel a sharp pain in your chest, your left arm is tingly and sort of numb. Heart attack! Or it least it could be one. You go for th
Chomsky: East Timor
Oct 04, 1999
The events of the past weeks in East Timor should elicit shame as well as horror. The crimes could easily have been stopped.
Solomon: The Enduring Spirit of a Dissident Senator
Oct 03, 1999
The black-and-white TV footage is grainy and faded, but it still jumps off the screen -- a portentous clash between a prominent reporter and a maverick politician.
Guellec: Marketizing HMOs to Latin America
Oct 02, 1999
The number of for-profit health care organizations has quadrupled in the pas 17 years, a study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation said. For-profit HMO's were 18% of all plans in 1981 but increased to 74% by 1998. The proportion of enrollees in for p
Russell: George W. Bush Y2000?
Oct 01, 1999
In his "new" fight against poverty, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush says he will issue a call to America's "armies of compassion" to end poverty, hunger, welfare and crime by donating to charity. The political goal of compassionate conser
Marable: Race-ing Justice: The Prison-Industrial Complex
Sep 30, 1999
Several months ago, 650 people attended the "Race-ing Justice" Conference in New York, sponsored by the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. In more than two dozen panels and workshops, black people examined the destr
Weisbrot: The Looting of Russia
Sep 29, 1999
What were they thinking? When executives at the Bank of New York saw billions of dollars floating in from the home computer of a Russian businessman with ties to organized crime there, did they really believe that these were just ordinary profits?
Herman: The Western Betrayal of East Timor
Sep 28, 1999
Led by Australia, U.N.-sponsored peacekeepers continue to arrive in East Timor, where they are finding a staggering level of destruction. Reconnaissance flights over the half-island territory report scenes of Biblical dimensions, where the "Lord rained do
Oct 16, 1999
On October l, thousands of New York artists, activists and politicians rallied outside the Brooklyn Museum against threats by the city's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to defund one of the city's preeminent cultural institutions because of one painting on display