http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081117/shapiro?rel=rightsideaccordian

When I was a student in Chicago in the late 1970s, Studs Terkel’s daily radio interview programs on WFMT were my morning seminars. Even on some mornings when I was supposed to rush out the door to real, tuition-billing courses, he’d come on interviewing a renowned soprano or playing his old tapes made on the train to the March on Washington, and I was done for. (Keep reading…)

In 1977, James Abourezk (D-SD) had just returned from Cuba. He and his fellow South Dakota Solon, George McGovern, had sought to use basketball diplomacy. The University of South Dakota’s team played Cuba’s national team. President Carter had supported the effort since it coincided with his own initiative to gradually restore relations with Cuba. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) tried to stop this process. (Keep reading…)

Globe and Mail December 26, 2007

When Oscar Peterson soloed, the notes flowed like water from a fountain. It hardly mattered whether Peterson, who died Sunday at the age of 82 at his home in Mississauga, was playing solo piano, with a small combo, or a big band; he was perennially, preternaturally capable, playing as if he could barely keep the ideas inside him. (Keep reading…)

Globe and Mail December 26, 2007 at 12:26 AM EST

MISSISSAUGA — The street is pleasant but ordinary, and so is the house, a two-story monument to the forgettable architecture of the late 1960s. There’s a two-car garage, a neatly kept lawn and a driveway flanked by a pair of coach lamps. But look closer, and you realize that this is a very special house indeed. (Keep reading…)

Counterpunch November 25

As a teenager, I learned to appreciate fiction by reading The Naked and the Dead. High school teachers force fed us The Odyssey and The Iliad and other “classics,” but Mailer gave teenage boys thirsty for sex and violence (vicariously, of course) a reason to read. (Keep reading…)

Dear Friends,

It is with sadness that I write to inform you about the death of one of the pillars of Alberta’s, and Canada’s, progressive activist community, and one of Parkland Institute’s original members and volunteers. Betty Mardiros, founder of Edmonton’s Raging Grannies and of the Woodsworth-Irvine Socialist Fellowship, died on Friday March 30 in Edmonton. (Keep reading…)

Wednesday March 21, 2007, The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk

The distinguished Israeli professor of linguistics Tanya Reinhart, who has died suddenly aged 63, was even better known for her prolific writing on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, her searing criticism of her own country, and her role as an activist, including her support for an academic boycott of Israel. She was a woman of immense bravery, and believed that fierce criticism of Israel “is the best act of solidarity and compassion with the Jews that one can have”. (Keep reading…)

Harry Magdoff, co-editor of Monthly Review since 1969

and one of the world’s leading political economists, (Keep reading…)

from Counterpunch

Rudolf Meidner, chief economist of the LO, Sweden’s largest trade union federation, and an immensely practical socialist visionary, died in December. If Meidner had not been a Swedish citizen, and still a controversial figure at the age of 91, he would very likely have been awarded the Nobel Prize for economics. Meidner was, after all, the co-architect — with Gosta Rehn — of the Swedish welfare state, an achievement which, by itself, would have merited such a nomination. Those responsible for this prize tend to prefer theory to policy but it should be clear to everyone that the Rehn/Meidner model was based on its own distinctive theoretical insights and that policy-oriented economics is anyway deserving of recognition. (Keep reading…)