Archive | January, 2006

  • No Redemption

    I’ve been in prison for almost 17 years.  Like so many other poor men raised in the ghettos throughout this country, I am guilty of the crime of ignorance, self-hate, and the desire to follow the road to self-destruction. Though our families tried to give us the tools they felt would lead to a more […]

  • No Redemption

    I’ve been in prison for almost 17 years.  Like so many other poor men raised in the ghettos throughout this country, I am guilty of the crime of ignorance, self-hate, and the desire to follow the road to self-destruction. Though our families tried to give us the tools they felt would lead to a more […]

  • 2006: The Year in Horrorscopes

    The world scoffed in 1988 when it discovered that Nancy and Ronald Reagan consulted an astrologer. But the world was wrong; Ronnie and Mommie needed all the help they could get. Their only mistake was in relying on the tacky, low-class zodiac of the masses. I have therefore upgraded Western astrology, in keeping with the […]

  • Pleasure Domes and Plantation Workers

    Polly Pattullo, Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean, 2nd ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005), 271 pages, paperback, $22.00. LAST RESORTS: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean (New Edition) by Polly PattulloBUY THIS BOOK The four S’s (sun, sand, sea, and, sometimes, sex) draw millions of tourists, mostly Americans and […]

  • Baghdad/Albany

    The TV glows green like the obsolete computer in the attic blurred shapes that could be buildings or simply the geometry of electrons bright circles of lens flare as accents an abstract electronic image they say is Baghdad. I don’t know Baghdad, don’t know where the missiles are falling I don’t know which buildings are […]

  • Evo Morales, el socialismo comunitario y el Bloque Regional de PoderEvo Morales, Communitarian Socialism, and the Regional Power Block

    1. Evo Morales y el socialismo “Evo, ¿que entienden tú y el MAS por socialismo?”, le pregunté durante aquellos horribles días de matanza de Sánchez de Losada, en La Paz, en febrero del 2003, donde estaba invitado por el Comité Ejecutivo de la Central Obrera Boliviana (COB). “Vivir en comunidad y en igualdad”, me contestó. […]

  • North versus South:Expect More Global Apartheid — and SA Collaboration — in 2006

    Unless political elites change strategy and tactics in 2006, North-South relations will continue to degenerate.  By the end of last year, opportunities ranging from rock concerts to summits and trade negotiations were lost. South Africa’s role in this failure of global nerve was substantial.  Three leading politicians of South Africa — Thabo Mbeki, Alec Erwin, […]

  • The Man (and the System) behind the Mining Murders

    Most of the coverage of the West Virginia mine murders quoted International Coal Group CEO Bennett Hatfield, who was on the scene. But its owner and “Non-Executive Chairman” is corporate takeover artist Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., who has bought up bankrupt firms in a variety of industries after they shed pension, health and/or other obligations […]

  • Invisible Immigrant Workers in Our Midst

      In October 2005, I ran into several Guatemalan guest workers in a village laundromat.  My first guess was that they worked on a large dairy farm, but in my poor Spanish and their almost non-existent English, we managed to communicate, and they made me understand that their jobs were in new home construction!  I […]

  • “Airline Workers United” Forms to Fight Concessions Industrywide

      Things seem to keep going from bad to worse for workers at Northwest Airlines (NWA).  While striking mechanics and cleaners face a bitter winter after more than four months on the picket line, pilots, flight attendants, gate/ramp agents, baggage handlers, customer service reps, and other union workers face a fresh round of givebacks against […]

  • Washington and Wall Street Look Southward . . . for Barrels of Oil

    On January 1,  2006, thirty-two private oil companies in Venezuela lost their contracts to operate independently.  The replaced contracts were given to the oil companies by the pre-Chavez government in Caracas during the 1990s, the latest in a series of oil agreements that were much more beneficial to the oil companies than they were to […]

  • “We Will Educate Our Colleagues, the Policy Community, the Media, and Our Patients”: Physicians for a National Health Program Meet in Philadelphia

    Physicians for a National Health Program held its annual meeting on December 10, 2005. Originally planned for New Orleans, it was relocated to Philadelphia after Hurricane Katrina. Founded in 1987, the organization has over 14,000 members nationally. PNHP advocates and educates for a single national health insurance plan: in the words of PNHP National Coordinator […]

  • Evangelical Economics

    (Dedicated to the memory of Harry Magdoff) Right-wing faith-based politics in the US has its counterpart in faith-based economics. The school of economics that dominates education, journalism, and politics — called “neoclassical” economics — has absolute faith in two secular gods. These are private property and markets. Neoclassical economists believe that these two institutions cause […]

  • A Strange Program of Exchange

    In the late seventies, I joined the Peace Corps, fresh out of college with a degree in Plant and Soil Science.  Maybe I did it for for idealism, maybe for a youthful sense of altruism or adventure, maybe to escape a future of employment at Cargill or Monsanto, or all of these.  Whatever the reason, […]

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  • Syriana

    That some reviewers gave Syriana a poor rating is a direct consequence of the journalistic practice of delegating film reviews to uninformed writers.  (The worst example comes from William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “[I]t’s simply not a very good movie. Its story line is populated with so many characters and meaningless names that it’s […]

  • The Optimism of the Heart: Harry Magdoff (1913-2006)*

    Harry Magdoff — coeditor of Monthly Review since 1969, socialist, and one of the world’s leading economic analysts of capitalism and imperialism — died at his home in Burlington, Vermont on January 1, 2006. Harry Magdoff was born on August 21, 1913 in the Bronx, the son of working-class Russian Jewish immigrants.  His father worked […]

  • A Means to Effect the Peaceful Overthrow of a Tyrant

    The summer 2005 revelations by former FBI assistant director W. Mark Felt that he was the source known as Deep Throat that helped bring down Richard Nixon has revived talk among certain US residents regarding the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.  While I have great reservations about the likelihood of such an event […]

  • Is The Strike Dead? Not According to Bob Schwartz. . . .

    Three years ago in Boston, downtown streets and office buildings were the scene of inspiring immigrant worker activism during an unprecedented strike by local janitors.  Their walk-out was backed by other union members, community activists, students and professors, public officials, religious leaders, and even a few “socially-minded” businessmen.  The janitors had long been invisible, mistreated […]

  • The First Pamphlet Proposing the Creation of Committees of Correspondence to Redeem the Constitution of the United States by Causing the Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon

    American Civil Liberties Union Washington Office 410 First Street, S.E.Washington, D.C. 20003 INDEX Letter to Fellow Citizens Resolution on Impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon Annotations to the Resolution Impeachment: Its History Impeachment: Its Procedures I. Constitutional Provisions Relating to Impeachment II. Excerpts from Jefferson’s Manual III. The Rules of Procedure and Practice in the […]