Greece: Fascists At The Gate

Conn Hallinan Dispatches From the Edge
Golden Dawn's penchant for violence led to the charge that it is a criminal organization. It is accused of several murders, as well as attacks on immigrants, leftists, and trade unionists. Raids uncovered weapon caches. Investigators turned up information suggesting close ties to wealthy shipping owners, and the National Intelligence Service (EYP) and municipal police departments. Close ties between the extreme right and Greek security forces is not new in Greece.

Meet the Knesset Members from the Joint List; Netanyahu's Fear Mongering Attack on Palestinians - Rooted in Zionism

Allison Deger; Yousef Munayyer
Palestinian citizens of Israel - and their political parties - agreed on a most basic principle: there should be equality under law and in practice between them and Israeli-Jews. Everything else, the peace process, the two state solution, could fall to the side. Netanyahu's demographic fear-mongering is rooted in the foundation of the Zionist project in Palestine and demographic engineering to ensure political power remains in the hands of one ethno-religious group.

Groundbreakers: How Obama's 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America

Andrew Mayersohn Boston Review
It's clear that President Obama out-organized his opponents in both of his runs for president. But how did he do it? Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie Han, in Groundbreakers, shows us how. As Andrew Mayersohn notes in this review, "giving people meaningful responsibilities is a powerful way to engage them and keep them engaged." This is a vital lesson in politics, one that Team Obama, in two national campaigns, realized with spectacular results.

The Tragedy of Party Communism

Michael Brie Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung
"The consciousness that violence is always something evil, that it always violates human dignity, and therefore needs to be controlled very strictly — requiring the strongest moral and institutional checks — could quickly be lost in Leninism. Rosa Luxemburg’s dictum, that the ‘true essence of socialism’ is the connection between ‘ruthless revolutionary energy and tender humanity’, was continuously reduced to the remorselessness of the communist ‘cause’."

MI5 and the Hobsbawm File

Frances Stonor Saunders London Review of Books
The British security service, MI5, its war on communism, and its file on Eric Hobsbawm, 'one of the pre-eminent British historians of the 20th century.'

The Scene of the Crime

Seymour M. Hersh The New Yorker
A reporter’s journey to My Lai and the secrets of the past.

Students Occupy Swarthmore College in Fossil Fuel Divestment Protest

Suzanne Goldenberg The Guardian
Nearly two-thirds of Swarthmore’s 1,500 students signed a petition last December calling on the university to exit coal, oil and gas holdings. The Swarthmore Mountain Justice campaign is calling for an immediate freeze on new fossil fuel investments, followed by a staged withdrawal over five years.