Archive | September, 2011

  • US Postal Service Crisis? Two Postal Workers Speak Out

    An interview with postal workers Jim Kaufman and Jeff Levitt from Albany, New York, about the alleged financial crisis of the Postal Service Jeff Levitt: It is an artificially created crisis.  It’s created by the Congress. . . .  In 2006, the Postal Service became an institution that is required to pre-fund future retiree health […]

  • NATO Divides the Libyan Cake

    Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 5 September 2011.  Cf. Vittorio de Filippis, “Pétrole : l’accord secret entre le CNT et la France” (Libération, 1 September 2011). | Print

  • Report on the August 28 Chicago Meeting to Organize the NATO/G8 Protests

    On Sunday, August 28, 163 people came together at the Kent College of Law in downtown Chicago to organize protests at the May 2012 NATO and G8 meetings in Chicago.  The 163 people represented 73 organizations.  Around 60 of those present came from outside of Chicago, mainly from nearby states but including people from as […]

  • UN Troops in Haiti Accused of Sexual Assault

    The video is profoundly disturbing.  It shows four men, identified as Uruguayan troops from the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), apparently raping an 18-year old Haitian youth.  Two of them have the victim pinned down on a mattress, with his hands twisted high up his back so that he cannot move.  Perhaps the most unnerving […]

  • Cuba Refuses to Recognize the Transitional National Council in Libya

      The Foreign Ministry of Cuba has withdrawn its diplomatic staff from Libya, where foreign intervention and NATO military aggression has exacerbated the conflict and prevented the Libyan people from advancing toward a peaceful negotiated solution, in full exercise of their self-determination. The Republic of Cuba does not recognize the Transitional National Council, nor any […]

  • George Monbiot and the Guardian on “Genocide Denial” and “Revisionism”

    On Tuesday, June 14, the Guardian of London published “Left and Libertarian Right Cohabit in the Weird World of the Genocide Belittlers.”1  In this nearly 1,100-word commentary, the British writer George Monbiot attacked the two of us (among others) as “genocide deniers” and “revisionists” for our writings on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.  Monbiot also […]

  • Zero Job Growth in August, as Unemployment Rate Remains Stable

    The Labor Department reported that there was no growth in jobs in August, while it revised down its job growth numbers for the prior two months by 58,000.  Job growth over the last three months has now averaged 35,000, well below the 90,000 needed to keep pace with the growth of the labor force.  The […]

  • Anna Hazare in the Light of Gandhian Ideals

    In the past two weeks, the world was captivated by the bitter confrontation between the Indian government and a short, bespectacled, seventy-four-year-old man called Anna Hazare, a self-styled anti-corruption crusader.  On August 16th, Hazare’s arrest and internment in Tihar jail, South Asia’s largest complex of high-security prisons, sparked candlelit marches across the country, leading a […]

  • Subjecting Spanish Constitution to Market Reform

      Spanish Constitution, Approved by the Constituent Cortes on 31 October 1978, Reformed by Markets in 2011 Juan Ramón Mora is a cartoonist in Barcelona.  This cartoon was first published in his blog on 30 August 2011 under a Creative Commons license.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).  Cf. “Folletos para imprimir […]

  • Corruption and Party Politics in the Late Soviet Period

      Luc Duhamel.  The KGB Campaign against Corruption in Moscow, 1982-1987.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010.  312 pp.  $26.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8229-6108-6. Luc Duhamel’s study of an extensive anticorruption campaign in Moscow in the mid-1980s is riveting.  At multiple levels, this work provides new information and perspectives on a period of stalemate, factional competition, […]

  • Help Boulder Create Public Power for Greener Future

      On November 1st, the citizens of Boulder, Colorado will vote on whether to create a city-owned electric utility to pilot leadership in renewables and the elimination of greenhouse gases in Colorado and the U.S. as a whole.  Preliminary polling indicates Boulder voters have done their homework and generally favor this 2-part ballot initiative by […]

  • The Canadian Oil Pipeline: Good for 2 Days’ Worth of Jobs

    Robert Samuelson urged President Obama to support the building of an oil pipeline to Canada which would facilitate the import of oil from Canadian oil sands.  One of his arguments is that: “TransCanada, the pipeline’s sponsor, says the project should result in 20,000 construction and manufacturing jobs.  Most would be American, because 80 percent of […]