Archive | October, 2010

  • An Uprising at the United Nations (Part 1)

    The session of October 26 last at the United Nations General Assembly, which is supposedly the top political authority in the planet, was convened for the purpose of discussing an item that has been reiterated for so long that it even sounds familiar: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the […]

  • Families Without Borders

    In the past ten years, 12,000 Mexican families have been torn apart by a broken immigration system. For more information about Families Without Borders, go to . | Print

  • The Globalising Wall

    Walls have a longstanding relation both with freedom from fear and subjugation to another’s will.  After 1945, walls acquired an unprecedented determination to divide.  They spread like a bushfire from Berlin to Palestine, from the tablelands of Kashmir to the villages of Cyprus, from the Korean peninsula to the streets of Belfast.  When the Cold […]

  • Arresting Latinos for Marijuana in California: Possession Arrests in 33 Cities, 2006-08

      Highlights: In the last twenty years, California made 850,000 arrests for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and half a million arrests in the last ten years, disproportionately of young Latinos and blacks. U.S. government surveys consistently find that young Latinos use marijuana at lower rates than young whites.  Yet from 2006 through 2008, major […]

  • Speaking of Islam: An Orwellian Story

    A few metres from my office at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the heart of London’s Bloomsbury area is the Senate House of the University of London, a remarkable neo-classical colossus of a building which functioned as the headquarters of Britain’s ministry of information, where George Orwell worked occasionally during the second […]

  • Economic Crisis and Tax Injustice

    The Associated Press’s Robin Hindery reported on October 29, 2010 that the AP had found a remarkable fact: communities across the US have been raising their local property taxes.  The AP surveyed 39 states and studied 2,387 revenue measures that came before town, city, and county voters.  In most of those elections, voters favored measures […]

  • The House of Latin America in Iran

    In mid-October, a nongovernmental organization in Iran called the House of Latin America, or HOLA, invited several anti-imperialist organizations from North America to Tehran with the goal of building the movement against war and sanctions against Iran.  Among those who attended were representatives of the International Action Center, ANSWER Coalition, Toronto Coalition Against the War, […]

  • Death Squads in Honduras

      Anyone who thinks that social and political instability in Honduras ended with the election of Porfirio Lobo as the president of the republic is mistaken, according to the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH). Human rights violations, political persecution, and selective political murders continue to be the order of […]

  • Brazil: Abortion in Presidential Election

    Pope Benedict XVI backs José Serra, determined to continue to make uteruses church properties in Brazil. Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. Leonardo Boff: “No Brasil a cada dois dias morre uma mulher por abortos mal feitos, como foi publicado recentemente em O Globo na primeira página” (In Brazil a woman dies every other […]

  • Che Guevara’s Daughter Meets Hezbollah’s Number 2 Leader

    11 October 2010 — The daughter of the celebrated revolutionary Che Guevara, who is currently visiting Lebanon, met on Sunday the number two leader of Hezbollah after visiting southern Lebanon where she received a plaque in homage to her father and the martyr Imad Mughniyeh.

  • The Impact of Income Distribution on the Length of Retirement

    Social Security has made it possible for the vast majority of workers to enjoy a period of retirement in at least modest comfort without relying on their children for support.  The average length of retirement has increased consistently since the program was started in 1937.  However, the increase in the normal retirement age from 65 […]

  • Thinking About the American Left and Die Linke

    The North Atlantic Left Dialogue (NALD), by bringing North Americans and Europeans together, allows participants to reflect on their own situation through the lens of the thinking of other leftists who face similar political issues in different contexts.  There are commonalities in the division between social movements on the one hand and political parties/labor organizations […]

  • The Contrarian

    Over the years Gore Vidal has spilled a lot of ink telling readers how the mass media murdered serious book culture in the United States, but he is the only living US novelist to have his own coffee table book.  Snapshots in History’s Glare is a photo album of fine design and no small expense […]

  • Iran War Talk: “Once the Military Option Is on the Table, It Never Goes Away”

    October 28, 2010 Today, Marc Lynch — a professor at George Washington University who blogs at Foreign Policy — published a timely piece entitled “Keep the Iran War Talk Quiet.”  As Marc notes, “there’s some hope that Iran will return to nuclear talks with the P-5+1 in Geneva on Nov.15, even if they probably will […]

  • Surging Inventories Sustain Third-Quarter Growth

    Inventories grew at a $115.9 billion annual rate in the third quarter, the highest rate of increase since a $117.2 billion rise in the first quarter of 1998.  This increase added 1.44 percentage points to growth for the quarter, bringing the rate to 2.0 percent. Final demand growth, which excludes fluctuations in inventories, was just […]

  • Reading a History of Failure in America

      Scott A. Sandage.  Born Losers: A History of Failure in America.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.  x + 362 pp.  $16.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-674-02107-5. In the epilogue of Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, Scott A. Sandage quotes a pivotal line from Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, that haunts his […]

  • The IMF and Economic Recovery: Is Fund Policy Contributing to Downside Risks?

    Introduction The IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook (WEO) projects world economic growth will slow, from 4.8 percent in 2010 to 4.2 percent next year.  Throughout the report, there are numerous concerns expressed about the “fragility” of the global economic recovery.  The Acting Chair of the Executive Board states that “[t]he recovery is losing momentum […]

  • French Trade Unions: Going All the Way or Just Going Along to Get Along?

      One of the key elements of the current new movement against the retirement reform is the unity of trade unions, which has so far survived.  This unity of trade union leadership is perceived by a large section of workers, as well as by the population in general, as an asset, a fulcrum of the […]

  • The Empire and the Right to Life of Human Beings

    That’s terrific! So I exclaimed when I read down to the last line about the revelations of the famous journalist Seymour Hersh, printed in Democracy Now! and collected as one of the 25 most censored news items in the United States. The material is entitled “The War Crimes of Stanley McChrystal, U.S. General” and it […]

  • Kirchner Rescued Argentina’s Economy, Helped Unite South America

    The sudden death of Néstor Kirchner today is a great loss not only to Argentina but to the region and the world.  Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a terrible recession.  His role in rescuing Argentina’s economy is comparable to that of […]