Archive | October, 2009

  • Out of Place, Out of Print: On the Censorship of the First Queerness/Raciality Collection in Britain

      In their article “Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror’” (2008), Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem critique white gay discourses in Germany and Britain that trade in Islamophobic constructions of a gay-friendly, sexually liberated ‘West’ and a homophobic, sexually oppressive ‘Islam’ as the West’s Other.  They argue that […]

  • Real Wages Fall amidst Mounting Job Losses

    The headline CPI rose 0.2 percent in September, down from 0.4 percent in August in large part due to falling rent.  The core CPI ticked up to 0.1 percentage points to 0.2 percent last month.  In the last three months, the overall CPI rose at a 2.5 percent annual rate. Rent and owners’ equivalent rent, […]

  • Puerto Rico: Ready for the National Strike

    Puerto Rico is getting ready for the national strike on Thursday, October 15.  Since governor Luis Fortuño layed off about 17,000 government employees the first week of October, there has been tremendous mobilization from different sectors of the civil society: workers and members of trade unions, women, environmentalists, students, and professors, among others.  There have […]

  • Open Letter to All Those Concerned about the Labor Movement

      Note to New York Times Readers In his November 18th article “Some Organizers Protest Their Union’s Tactics,” the New York Times‘ Steven Greenhouse cites a couple of sentences from this letter and links to it.  While it is good to see the New York Times examine important debates within the U.S. labor movement, for […]

  • The Impending Indian Government Offensive against the Adivasi Inhabited Hilly Regions: Statement of Concern and Protest by Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky and Others

    Analytical Monthly Review On Monday, October 12th, it was reported that Manmohan Singh — despite the request of air chief marshal P. V. Naik to permit IAF personnel in helicopters to attack inhabitants of the hilly regions — had announced that the armed forces would not be deployed against the domestic left-wing opponents of the […]

  • Communiqué No. 28

    The National Front of Resistance against the Coup d’État, in view of the latest developments at the table of dialogue established at the behest of the Organization of American States (OAS) announces that: We withdrew our compañero Juan Barahona from the so-called Guaymuras dialogue.  Comrade Barahona served as representative of the National Front of Resistance […]

  • Joblessness and Jailing: The Truth about Dropping Out of High School

    A new report on the effects of unemployment on our nation’s youth stands the world we live in on its head.  This latest study, The Consequences of Dropping Out of High School: Joblessness and Jailing for High School Dropouts and the High Cost for Taxpayers from the Center for Market Studies at Northeastern University, mistakes […]

  • Military Method (or How to Restore Order and Security)

    Journalist: “And you are sure that is going to work?” Mazen Kerbaj, born in 1975 in Beirut, is a musician and cartoonist.  ©Mazen Kerbaj  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

  • Shopping at WalMart for Seeds of Revolt

    The cashier was a WalMart supervisor, a black man in his 30s, crisp in the company’s blue tee-shirt uniform.  While he served the customer ahead of me, he did double duty by instructing a clerk next to him, a black woman in her 20s. “You must take your break no later than two hours after […]

  • Applause for Mr. Obama

    Comrades in death: A round of applause for Mr. Obama for the Nobel Peace Prize Allan McDonald is a Honduran cartoonist.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

  • Total Revolution or Nuthin’

    (Darkened stage.  Jaunty whistling and cell-phone texting is heard, along with the footsteps of Converse sneakers on a dusty, small-town road.  Suddenly, the screech of heavy tires, then a sickening thud and a groan.  Lights up on the original American Gothic couple, sitting on the porch of their dilapidated house, up the hill from the […]

  • The Young Honduran Revolution

      “What I want to know more than anything is how they began to be activists.” — Johannes Wilm Johannes Wilm is a revolutionary socialist activist, anthropologist, computer geek, trade unionist. . . .  In this 90-minute documentary, Johannes Wilm interviews young Honduran activists against the coup, especially activists of such organizations as the Revolutionary […]

  • Mexican Government Seizes Power Plants, Liquidates Company, Fires Workers, Union in Jeopardy

    Mexican Federal Police last night and early this morning seized the plants of the Central Light and Power Company of Mexico (LyF) which provides electricity to Mexico City and several states in central Mexico.  The government of President Felipe Calderón also announced the liquidation of the company, the termination of the workers, and thereby the […]

  • A Nazi March Near My Home

    Today, close to my Berlin home, I saw a frightening march of Nazis, calling themselves the Nationale Sozialistische Partei Deutschlands — leaving out only the word Arbeiter (Worker) from the name Hitler used.  Several thousands of them, almost all in black, many skinheads but also many all too normal-looking youngsters (and a smattering of very […]

  • A New Role for the IMF?

    Rescued from a state of near-irrelevance by the world recession and an infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars (mostly from the U.S., Europe, and Japan), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is now thinking of expanding its role into previously uncharted territory.  In Istanbul for the fall meetings of the IMF, Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn […]

  • Intifada

    Six million Jews Annihilated in the manner most cruel, An imperialist genocide by the fascist armies. You must understand history. The victims have become executioners, Switching roles, Colonizing Palestinian territories, against all common sense. Dead, dead! In whose name? Dead, dead! In the name of Israel. Dead, dead! In whose name? Dead, dead! In the […]

  • The Bells are Tolling for the Dollar

    The Empire has ruled the world through economy and deceit rather than force. At the end of WWII, it had attained the privilege of minting the convertible hard currency, the monopoly over the nuclear weapon and the possession of most of the gold in the world while it was the only large-scale producer of manufactured equipment, consumer goods, food and services worldwide. However, there was a limit to the printing of paper money: the gold standard at a regular price of 35 dollars a troy ounce. This was the situation for over 25 years, until August 15, 1971, when an executive order issued by President Richard Nixon led the United States to unilaterally call off that international arrangement thus defrauding the world. I’ll never tire out of repeating it. That was how it threw on the world economy its military buildup and war adventure expenses, especially the Vietnam War, which according to conservative estimates cost no less than 200 billion dollars and the lives of over 45 thousand American youths.

  • Occupying Afghanistan Is Making Things Worse

    President Obama is coming under attack from the Right for his reluctance to grant the request of General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, for more U.S. troops.  On the other side of the equation sits the majority of the American people, who are against sending more troops and in fact oppose […]

  • The End of Mahmud Abbas

    A United Nations report commission, created after the 2008-2009 Gaza War, has released a thundering report that has ripped through the Palestinian and Arab street, threatening to bring down Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and his entire cabinet.  Mandated to lead the mission was Richard Goldstone, the respected South African president of the United Nations Human […]

  • Obama Wins Nobel PEACE Prize

    Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | | Print