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On Columbus Day: Big Lies and U.S. Imperialism
BLOOD ON THE BORDER: A Memoir of the Contra War by Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizBUY THIS BOOK Most people think of the U.S.-sponsored war against the Sandinistas (that came to be called, simply, the “Contra War”) as having taken place on the northern border of western Nicaragua and Honduras and on the southern border with Costa Rica. […]
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Two Forms of Resistance against Empire
Today the planet is an immense gulag. The resources of the periphery of the empire — the great majority of human beings — are channeled towards the imperial centre — the richest countries — in the manner of a colossal funnel. There are now in the world two practical routes of resistance to the US […]
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Noon Whistle
Leaping from the edge-of-town factory fist, a machinist, buttoned blue sleeves, steps into the autumn noon light. Sits, back to the smokestack, on an old wooden bench opens wax-paper tuna seedless dark rye, a half-sour. A bookkeeper stretches fingers ’round a flat wide thermos, lentil soup, and a welder, unmasked, sips crimson borcht, red confetti […]
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Thinking and Acting Locally: Institutional Flaws of the Electoral System in Afghanistan
Much of the discussions surrounding the Afghan legislative elections on September 18, 2005 has centered on poll-related violence, logistical obstacles, and potential frauds. Lost in the discussions is a problem of much greater significance to the future of Afghanistan. The institutional arrangements of Afghanistan’s political frameworks are incapable of solving its most debilitating problem — […]
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A Soldier in Doubt
Remi Kanazi performs his poem “A Soldier in Doubt” (MP3). Remi Kanazi is the founder and primary writer for the political website Poetic Injustice. In recent weeks, his articles have been featured on CounterPunch, Middle East Online, Palestine Chronicle, Worldpress.org, and the Tehran Times. His work can also be seen at MIFTAH.org, the website of […]
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Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda: Part Six
In the last four parts of this series, I gave many examples of the alienating and degrading nature of work in capitalist societies. Even “good” jobs, such as college teaching and nursing, have lost whatever luster they once had. Part-time teachers teach an increasing fraction of all course while struggling to make ends meet. […]
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Filiberto*
La hemorragia de América anclada en tu cuerpo como una sangría en tu alma cáncer de espanto quebrada de llanto canto de dolor y muerte pasajeros cautiverios secuestradas las almas y en ti Puerto Rico se proyecta resurge y reclama el faro de luz negado por Halcones de la noche tú como un rayo […]
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CAFTA Math
CAFTA 15 NAME (Click on the name for contact information.) DISTRICT Melissa Bean IL (8th District) Top Industries/Top Contributors Jim Cooper TN (5th District) Top Industries/Top Contributors Henry Cuellar TX (28th District) Top Industries/Top Contributors Norm Dicks WA (6th District) Top Industries/Top Contributors Rubén Hinojosa TX (15th District) Top Industries/Top Contributors William Jefferson LA (2nd […]
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Dribbling toward Armageddon
Retired U.S. Army Lt. General William Odom is a Vietnam Veteran who, in the late 1970s, helped Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski use mujahedeen zealots to “give the Soviets their Vietnam” in Afghanistan. In the mid-1980s, Odom worked for Ronald Reagan as Director of the National Security Agency. One week ago, this very same General […]
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History Can Guide Us: Toward a Third Reconstruction
“Then came this battle called the Civil War, beginning in Kansas in 1854, and ending with the presidential elections of 1876, twenty awful years. The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again towards slavery. The whole weight of America was thrown to color caste.”1 — W.E.B. DuBois, Black […]
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The Euro — Going Global, Making Trouble: Why the Europeanization of “Modell Deutschland” Does Not Make a World Currency
Going Global Supporters and even critics of the European Monetary Union (EMU) often see its policies — its rejection of Keynesian demand management that was written into the Maastricht Treaty and later transformed into the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), as well as its monetarist belief in the priority of anti-inflationary policies over any other […]
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Second Letter to Young Activists: But It’s My Own Country!
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at his most radical, the year before he was assassinated, said: “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.” That was four decades ago, yet it is perhaps more true today. The greatest purveyor of violence on this earth is my own government. For those […]
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Neo-Paleyism’s Assault on Reason
William Paley‘s Natural Theology, originally published in 1802, stands as one of the prime examples of the teleological, mystical, and theistic premises that underlie bourgeois thought. Paley opened his book with an argument that if one were crossing a heath and stumbled upon a watch, one would inevitability infer that it must have had a […]
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Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” Law: Killing in Defense of Private Property, at Home or in the Streets
Inequality in the state of Florida has become increasingly dangerous. Despite extensive urban planning and social policies that maintain the segregation of the haves from the have-nots, interaction and even conflict between them are unavoidable. The relationship of extremes in the state’s major metropolitan areas is both interdependent and alienating — the residents of the […]
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A New Labor Federation Claims Its Space: If Enthusiasm on Display Were Substance, CtW Could Claim a Good Start
Jerry Tucker The founding convention of the Change-to-Win labor federation held in St. Louis on September 27, 2005 was, if nothing else, filled with enthusiasm and efficiently managed. The founding unions’ top leaders put forward a lean and specifically organizing-focused agenda, and it was adopted without even a hint of dissent. The longer-term question is […]
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Becoming Conscious of Our Own Strength: Gabriele Zamparini Listens to Voices of Dissent
An Italian-born former law student, Gabriele Zamparini moved to the States in 1998 where he worked as an Italian teacher and freelance journalist. It was post-9/11 when Zamparini got the idea to make a documentary about “the fast growing, grassroots peace movement” he was witnessing in America. The result was a seven-part film series called […]
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We Are Just Getting Warmed Up:Notes on Civil Disobedience (Monday, 26 September 2005)
We gather provisions. In my pockets are only a key to the house, $50, and an energy bar — somehow in my careful adherence to the recommendations I have neglected to bring my driver’s license — and in my shoe are a pen and a makeshift notebook. I am ready for this. We drink […]
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Flexibility for Whom?
MANUFACTURING DISCONTENT: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society by Michael PerelmanBUY THIS BOOK Imagining the workplace as a network of voluntary relationships has dire political implications. For example, in 1997, a California state agency, the Industrial Welfare Commission, bowing to employer pressure voted to reinterpret an overtime regulation dating back to 1918. For almost […]