Category Archives: ARTICLES

UNDERSTANDING A RETRACTION OF IMPORTANT ARTICLE ON HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE

An article appearing in Science a few days ago has been circulated widely by the Left magazine, Portside. It reports on the retraction of a key study that presented hydroxychloroquine as an effective and safe treatment for Covid-19. Some who should know better seized on the retraction without ever considering WHY it was retracted on […]

THE TIME A POET SAVED NEW YORK’S TREES

PHILIP FRENEAU, THE POET OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION in the late 1700s, had earlier been a roommate at a New Jersey college (soon to become Princeton University) with none other than James Madison, the principal author of what was to become the U.S. Constitution. Freneau was a tree-hugger as well as an anti-federalist, who became […]

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

“For What It’s Worth” is the first “snippet” introducing Mitchel Cohen’s new book, “The Rubber Stamp Man: Poems & Snippets”. THE YEAR WAS 1979. Genevieve – the nom de guerre I’m assigning to this member of our Red Balloon Collective and Poetry Conspiracy (she did after all look like Genevieve Bujold) – returned trembling to […]

ENVIRONMENTALISTS OWE AN ENORMOUS DEBT TO JULIAN ASSANGE

by Mitchel Cohen Environmentalists throughout the world owe an enormous debt of gratitude to political prisoner Julian Assange, the founder and publisher of Wikileaks — and most of them don’t know it. It wasn’t only secret recordings pertaining to war and crimes-against-humanity that Wikileaks published, based on the heroic work of Chelsea Manning who downloaded […]

THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM VS. THE IMMUNE SYSTEM: TOWARDS A GREEN APPROACH TO FREE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE IN THE U.S.

  by Mitchel Cohen The following was written a decade-and-a-half before the outbreak of the SARS COV2 Covid-19 pandemic. THE FIGHT FOR FREE, UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE is even more critical today than it was a decade ago when Hillary and Bill Clinton sacrificed it to the greed of the insurance companies and HMOs. Yes, health […]

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NEUROSIS

by Mitchel Cohen When 20-year-old Marja announced that she was joining the Red Balloon Col­lec­tive at SUNY Stony Brook in the mid-1970s, her Long Island sub­urban mother went bal­lis­tic: “This is the freest country in the world. If they don’t like it here, why don’t they go back to Russia?” Marja’s mom forbade her to […]

LETTER FROM JAILED ATTORNEY STEVEN DONZIGER, IMPRISONED FOR FIGHTING AGAINST CHEVRON’S POISONING OF THE ECUADORAN AMAZON

Mitchel Cohen interviews Steven Donziger, then under house arrest, in July 2021 at rally on his behalf outside his Manhattan apartment. Dear friends and comrades, This new message from Steven Donziger contains much information.  Also go to freedonziger.com for additional information.  If we’re going to overcome the climate catastrophe, we have to be able to […]

AN AMERICAN IN CUBA

IN THE SUMMER OF 1992, I visited Cuba as part of a delegation to the Fourth Conference of Cuban and North Am­er­i­can Philosophers, organized by the U.S.-based Radical Phi­lo­sophy Association. The trip occurred during what Cu­bans call the “Special Period” following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s most important trade partner and benefactor. 

CHILE, RISING AGAIN

Chile, October 2019. A new October revolution. Sends shivers down my spine. A true merging of classical music and revolutionary movements. CLICK ON THE PICTURE! We fight, we make some inroads, sometimes the people succeed in running their government, and then are smashed in military coups. And then a generation or two or three later […]

A TALK IN HAVANA

Giant mural at University of Havana in support of Occupy Wall Street. Details list hundreds of corporations and their profits for the year. A talk by Mitchel Cohen at the “Seminar on Socialist Renewal and the Capitalist Crisis – A Cuban-North American Exchange”, Havana, Cuba: June 16-30, 2013 in association with the Center for Global […]

THE STRUGGLE FOR ECOLOGICAL AGRICULTURE IN CUBA

by RICHARD LEVINS with an into by Mitchel Cohen With the indiscriminate spraying of toxic insecticides on the people of NY and the natural environment, this article — originally written in 1991 and updated in 1995 — becomes even more useful. In it, Richard Levins discusses, among other things, the use of ants and natural […]

DAYS OF ATONEMENT

Some outrages are worse than others. Still, why should we set one injustice against the other, as though seeking greater exhibitions of revulsion at the one oppression or injustice than at the other. And yet we do. The murder of Eric Garner last year at the hands (literally) of one of New York’s “Finest” is […]

The Problem of Greece Is Not Only a Tragedy. It Is a Lie.

By John Pilger Global Research, July 13, 2015 An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week’s landslide “No” vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a “bailout” that means sinister foreign control and a […]

ON PHIL OCHS, MALCOLM X, & JE SUIS CHARLIE

Mitchel Cohen resurrected an interview by 18-year-old Kenny Bromberg with Phil Ochs at SUNY Stony Brook, recorded in 1967. Mitchel turned it into a new show, for Steal This Radio. Listen here. Guest Post by Carol Lipton Phil Ochs penned the famous lyrics to “Love Me I’m a Liberal” about Malcolm X: I cried when […]

PROTESTERS, COPS AND THE MAYOR: THE MOVEMENT TO END VIOLENCE BY POLICE OFFICERS SWEEPS ACROSS COUNTRY

Updated, January 2, 2015 — Two weeks ago, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the thousands of people protesting against police brutality and murder to temporarily suspend their generally peaceful public protests until the completion of the funerals for the two officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, who were killed last Saturday in Brooklyn […]

IN DEFENSE OF BOWE BERGDAHL

For years, Arizona Senator John McCain hammered President Obama for failing to exchange prisoners being tortured in Guantanamo for American POW Bowe Bergdahl, imprisoned in Afghanistan. Now that the President has finally done so (after years of trivial squabbling while Bergdahl as well as the so-called “enemy combatants” wasted away in prison), Sen. McCain flip-flops […]

NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY & BILL DE BLASIO

Here’s a thorough refutation of attempts in the corporate media to criminalize the 1980s Latin America solidarity movements and tar Democratic Party candidate for NYC Mayor, Bill de Blasio, for being supportive of them. It almost makes me want to vote for de Blasio as a thank you for his old efforts — however weak […]

FOR EACH & EVERY WARRIOR WHOSE STRENGTH IS NOT TO FIGHT

The story of the widespread (and, today, hard to believe) resistance of working class kids in the U.S. military to the 1991 Gulf War. The weakness of strategies based on Lowest Common Denominatorism was in full evidentiary blossom during the 1991 bombardment of Iraq, re-packaged as “the Gulf war.” “Support Our Troops, Not the War!” […]

DEBT AND/OR WAGES: ORGANIZING CHALLENGES

The following piece by George Caffentzis in the current issue of Tidal #4 (“Occupy Theory / Occupy Strategy”) is the first I’ve seen that examines the different forms of organization that a Debtors’ movement requires as opposed to a movement around wages (or trade unions). As such, this is a very important document (which ends […]

OCTOBER 21, 1967 (57 YEARS AGO): STORMING THE PENTAGON

Fifty-Seven years it’s been! In October 1967, I was 18 years old and beginning my third year at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, organizing students to participate in the first militant demonstration on the East Coast against the Vietnam war. At the Pentagon. Singer-songwriter Phil Ochs — my hero, and a […]