Archive | January, 2010

Just five days prior to the 7.0 earthquake that shattered Port-au-Prince on January 12th, the Haitian government’s Council of Modernisation of Public Enterprises (CMEP) announced the planned 70% privatization of Teleco, Haiti’s public telephone company. Today Port-au-Prince lies in ruins, with thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands dead, entire neighborhoods cut off, many buried alive.  Towns […]

  Kenneth Katzman: Certainly, as long as the floor is open for talks, there is always a hope for a deal.  But I think, from the US standpoint, the United States is certainly not counting on a deal.  Obviously, the thrust of US policy, I think, is starting to shift, from a focus on getting […]

Thursday, January 21 7:30 pm Brecht Forum 451 West Street (between Bank & Bethune Streets)New York Citybrechtforum.org/directions While the earthquake in Haiti has revealed the faultlines of United States intervention in the country since its founding in 1804, the relief efforts led by grassroots activists and organizations has opened up new political space for a […]

  Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change, Sage Publications, 2009, 192 pp., $37.75 (paperback). In a 2004 essay titled “Feminism and Femininity: Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Thong,” self-proclaimed third-wave feminists Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards offer their analysis of the state of contemporary feminism. […]

Sales may begin to increase soon if the Federal Reserve extends its program to buy mortgage-backed securities. Building permits increased by 10.9 percent in December, driven largely by a 33.7 percent increase in permits for multi-family units.  However, permits for single-family units also rose by 8.3 percent.  Permits for multi-family units are still down by […]

  In June of 2004, I went to Haiti with two other members of the Haiti Action Committee.  We were there to investigate the effects of the political earthquake in which the democratically elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been overthrown by a coup orchestrated by the United States, France and Canada. What we […]

Jesse Freeston: . . . [T]he Heritage Foundation think tank responded within hours of the earthquake, with the demand that the US should use the crisis to its advantage.  They quickly took the post down, but a new one appeared soon after laying out four demands for US intervention in Haiti. Send the military. Appoint […]

[The author was in Port-au-Prince with a delegation when the January 12 earthquake struck the city.  Because of limited electricity and internet connection, he was unable to send this report out until he got back to New York the morning of January 18.  For an earlier report, see “Singing and Praying at Night in Port-au-Prince.”] […]

Following on from our recent post, “Iran, the Competition over Eurasian Natural Gas, and the Revival of Classical Diplomacy in the 21st Century,” we want to draw readers’ attention, first of all, to a very thoughtful comment on that post from Ed Chow, our friend and colleague at CSIS.  Ed generously notes his agreement with […]

Labor productivity soared in the United States in 2009.  According to the Transport Times of December 3, 2009, productivity increased by 6.4% in the second quarter and leaped by 8.1% in the third quarter. Labor costs fell at a 2.5% rate in the third quarter of 2009, capping the biggest 12-month drop in seven years. […]

  The journal À bâbord! [To Portside] will sponsor, on Friday, 22 January at the University of Québec at Montreal, a colloquium titled “Québec in Search of Secularism.”1  With Guy Rocher, Françoise David is a guest of honor at the event. For several months, nay several years, there has been an intense debate on secularism, […]

The news reported from Haiti describes a great chaos that was to be expected, given the exceptional situation created in the aftermath of the catastrophe. At first, a feeling of surprise, astonishment, and commotion set in. A desire to offer immediate assistance came up in the farthest corners of the Earth. What assistance should be […]

Haiti is facing one of its most severe challenges after a large earthquake rocked the capital yesterday destroying most government buildings and killing possibly thousands.  Now more than ever the people of Haiti need hope for the future and, as Haiti’s ambassador to Washington Raymond Joseph said yesterday on CNN, “we need unity to meet […]

  Yesterday, I watched news of rescue efforts in Port-au-Prince.  Elite rescue teams, such as the one from Fairfax County, VA, were focusing primarily on the Montana Hotel and the headquarters of the UN “peacekeeping” force, MINUSTAH.  Anyone who knows Haiti knows that the Montana Hotel is the most lavish lodging your can find in […]

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega says that the United States has taken advantage of the massive quake in Haiti and deployed troops in the country. “What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as US troops have already taken control of the airport,” Ortega said on Saturday. The Pentagon says it has deployed more than 10,000 […]

  There appear to be some rising tensions between countries leading the relief efforts in Haiti.  We know the US is sending in upwards of 10,000 troops to the country.  But since 2004, Brazil’s military has been the commanding force leading the Haiti UN peacekeeping mission, technically referred to as MINUSTAH.  Brazil has about 1,700 […]

  Open and Collective Proposal: To Build a Transnational Network Since its beginning, edu-factory has tried to be a place of political discussion and communication, a site of the free circulation of knowledge and networking at the global level.  In the “double crisis” (i.e., the global economic crisis and the crisis of the university in […]

The news reported from Haiti describes a great chaos that was to be expected, given the exceptional situation created in the aftermath of the catastrophe. At first, a feeling of surprise, astonishment, and commotion set in.  A desire to offer immediate assistance came up in the farthest corners of the Earth.  What assistance should be […]

The signs of recession are more noticeable to those who live here — restaurants and coffee shops have lost most of their customers, and construction has practically ground to a halt.  Emigration has soared. Latvia has set a world-historical record by losing more than 24 percent of its economy in just two years.  The International […]

N.B. The statement in the article below simply attributed to FETRAELEC President Angel Navas is actually one first published by Marea Socialista. — Ed. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the suspension of programmed power outages in the capital city on Wednesday, and asked for the resignation of his minister for electricity, citing errors in the […]