"With so much recent mainstream press evocation of Joseph Stalin and claims of “enemy of the people” comparisons to Donald Trump we thought it timely to share some recent thoughts on the subject from journalist, professor and writer Saswat Pattanayak. As an additional side note, and given what Pattanayak exposes about the nature and history of the association of a phrase, rather than with Stalin some of us would be more familiar with the play by Henrik Ibsen and further note that this is also where the late Dr. John Henrik Clarke got the inspiration for the spelling of his own middle name." (Dr. Jared Ball, iMixWhatILike)

Einstein was opposed to a separate Jewish state, opposed to a partition of Palestine, opposed even to an establishment of a Jewish government-in-exile, considered the Jewish underground movement a “disaster” and supported a bi-national self-government in Palestine with both Arabs and the Jews ruled with the consent of the Arabs.

Guthrie’s ‘machine’ indeed ‘killed Fascists’, for reactionary seeds, just as revolutionary ones, are sowed first in the minds.

Merely the celebrity status of a pacifist leader cannot transform a country that has been kept deliberately bereft of the knowledge of its peoples’ history.

No one else emulated American electoral system like Havel did. He not only successfully divided up the country by racially disintegrating the Slovakians (almost 90% of whom were ethnically Slovak), Havel adopted a political system modeled on the U.S. Senate.

Cold War history has been so colored by western media propaganda that it has ceased to be Cold. As an unintended ramification and possible consequence of the old habits of generating fear psychoses and war justifications, the numbers continue to get inflated even today. In the case of Libya, before the issue is relegated to dustbins of history and before Gaddafi is eternally depicted as the dictator he was not, it is crucial to seek for answers regarding the number of actual deaths.

The war on Libya certainly did not begin in 2011. However, it probably is going to end this year if the rogue nations of G8 and NATO forces end up assassinating Colonel Gaddafi. But there should not be any illusions harbored as regards the outcome of this war.

An uncritical acceptance of street tactics in Egypt will be a historical fallacy. The romantic notions of revolutionaries as hopeful future is one thing; a false ascription to a group of religious mischiefs as social justice fighters is yet another. The most recent instances of popular uprisings may well have been a continuation of protests on part of the people to end brutal regimes world over.

America has witnessed more revolutionary upheavals than any other modern nation. Abolitionism, women suffrage movement, Wobblies, anarchism, anti-McCarthyism, black upsurge against racial segregation, New Left, anti-Vietnam War resistance movement, Stonewall and LGBT movements, Black Panther Party, and anti-WTO protests in Seattle are among hundreds of other small and significant revolutionary sparks which provide important lessons for the global working class solidarity against capitalism, racism and patriarchy.

Employing radical perspectives, Howard Zinn has not only left behind issues that have legacies of progressivism, but also equally powerful tools for future reinventions of the current world. “We the people” are stricken by the grief of his passage, but enriched by his enduring imaginings.

Nobel Peace Prize, in reality is an apologist for, and celebration of continued Eurocentric imperialism. Obama is the latest one to have been “humbled”. Amidst his militarist interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, through his announcements for larger US troops for invasions and bigger budget to feed the military-industrial complex, the Nobel committees have yet again perpetuated a reactionary definition of peace. In their world of successes and achievements, they have merely crowned their King.