Essays

Bernie Sanders’ campaign to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in the 2016 US presidential election presents the left in the United States with some hard questions. Is this the revolution we’ve been hoping for? Or is it just more of the same, another effort to generate and mobilize enthusiasm that is destined to break our hearts?

Those convinced that the electoral process is a vehicle through which the capitalist class enlists the rest of us in consenting to our own subjection doubt that there is anything different about the Sanders’ campaign. …

The Bernie Sanders campaign for President is one of the most exciting and hopeful developments in US politics in decades. Sanders is, and long has been, a man of principle — democratic socialist principle. He articulates a clear message — that a more genuine democratic politics in the United States needs to mobilize millions of people on behalf of an egalitarian political economic agenda — and he does so in a way that is both consistent and intelligent. He is always “on message,” because he has expressed this message for decades and he knows and believes in it, not because he is properly “handled.” His campaign has thus far succeeded beyond …

Earlier this week the United States Center for Disease Control (the CDC) released yet more guidelines for women of “reproductive age”. These guidelines take what could be seen as a draconian, or perhaps more bluntly, a misogynous stance of recommending that all women of reproductive age who do not use contraception avoid alcohol altogether. For women, drinking alcohol, as the CDC materials detail, results  in “unintended pregnancy, fertility issues, sexually transmitted diseases, …

One way of understanding Shia LaBeouf’s “Just Do It” motivational video is as a translation of Bernard Stiegler’s recent work about “escaping the anthropocene.” And vice versa. Reading Stiegler’s essays and watching LaBeouf’s video are essentially the same experience: one feels exhilarated, thrilled, excited (as if one might really do the impossible) and then a little disappointed.

Stiegler’s latest essays, many translated into English by Daniel Ross, sharpen the thought of a new type of urgency and are in some ways quite simple. This thought of urgency — figured as an “alternative” — is expressed succinctly at …

Last Thursday, I received a message via Facebook messenger. The message’s author was (so it read) the Chief Censor of Israel’s Military Censor, one Colonel Ariella Ben-Avraham, and in it she demanded that I submit to the Censor’s warrant. Entering Ben-Abraham’s Facebook page showed a page that was almost empty — her name and picture only. In fact, it seems that the Censor was so embarrassed by all the publicity in recent days that she erased it. When I tried to enter the page today in order to write the post, it …

No US election campaign in living memory has seen as many invocations of “populism” as this one. Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are labelled as “populists;” the term is regularly used as a synonym for “anti-establishment,” irrespective of any particular political ideas; it is also associated with particular moods and emotions: populists are “angry,” their voters are “frustrated,” or suffer from “resentment.” Similar claims are made about figures in Europe: Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders are most commonly …

The Democratic Party Presidential primary is now heating up as a two-person race between two evenly matched candidates, both of whom declare themselves and not their adversary to be a “progressive.”

Bernie Sanders has declared that “You can be a moderate. You can be a progressive. But you cannot be a moderate and a progressive.”

Hillary Clinton has expressed amusement that Sanders considers himself the …

The battle against ISIS in Iraq is critical at both a regional and a global level. But ISIS is not the root cause of the ongoing chaos in the country, which dates back to before the emergence of the terrorist entity or the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Any form of viable governance is contingent upon the creation and strengthening of social ties within and across communities. The discriminatory and sectarian policies of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have certainly hindered efforts to forge ties among the populace in Iraq. Yet, under both US presidents Obama and Bush, most critiques of the military …

At the center of the battle for the Republican nomination is the Donald Trump phenomenon and the implausible advantage he carries in the polls despite the discriminatory, misinformed, insulting statements that have always marked his style — only now he launches them from the platform of a possible United States president, showing callous disregard. “We don’t have time for tone,” said Trump, when Jeb Bush called his statements divisive to the party and to society in the first Republican debate. 

One such infamous statement is Trump’s …