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, […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
In Search of Metoro: Women, Youth, and Labor in Japan
Only last year, Honda’s humanoid robot, Asimo, was learning how to walk. Now, the five-year-old droid is ready to take on simple office work, greet visitors and fetch refreshments. Japan’s third-biggest auto manufacturer introduced Tuesday a second-generation Asimo that can also push a cart weighing up to 22 pounds, and walk straight, sideways or backwards […]
Clinton Jencks, Legendary Labor Organizer, Dies
Clinton Jencks, from Salt of the Earth Legendary labor organizer Clinton Jencks, who led mineworkers in New Mexico in a strike depicted in the classic movie Salt of the Earth, died Dec. 15 in San Diego of natural causes. He was 87. An international representative of the Amalgamated Bayard District Union of Mine, Mill, and […]
Hymn for a Brave New World
When the polar bears are drowning and the salmon cross the street And late summer’s on the non-existent breeze; When the yellow clouds are frowning and the snow is always sleet And there’s only five of what were Seven Seas; When it’s ninety in December at the Arctic Circle’s edge And the birds are […]
Contraindications: A Review of Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s Blood on the Border
To many of us in the United States, the US contra war against the Nicaraguan government in the 1980s seems like very long ago. Since the CIA-manufactured defeat of the revolutionary government in Managua — a defeat engineered through mercenary war, media manipulations, CIA and Special Forces covert ops, drug-running and arms smuggling by people […]
“Damage Control”: The Corporate Media’s Service to the Empire
In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky posit that the “‘societal purpose’ of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state” (p. 298).1 Lately, however, the media has been taking […]
Bowling Alley
Michael D. Yates, “Revelation” (29 October 2005); and “Mobilization” (13 November 2005) It was a mid-Sunday afternoon in late Winter. We had just finished our match, and I was disappointed with my poor performance. For some reason I could not prevent my left wrist from turning over when I released my bowling bowl, and […]
Killing the Dark Bodies: Execution as Market Sustainability & State Redemption
From: Sam <xxx@xxx.com> Subject: Re: The Soul of Money Date: December 13, 2005 11:40:11 AM CST To: Lisa Arrastía<arras004@umn.edu>Good morning, chica, Mom and Marty hosted a brunch fundraiser for “Death Penalty Focus” on Sunday, which was uplifting. Mike Farrell (Captain B.J. Hunnicut of M.A.S.H. fame) spoke at the fundraiser. He’s a long time death […]
The Social Meaning of Pensions
MANUFACTURING DISCONTENT: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society by Michael PerelmanBUY THIS BOOK Pensions offer a wonderful example of the perverse phenomenon of the corporate sector winning support by taking actions that harm individuals. Between 1979 and 1997, the share of employees with defined benefit plans — i.e., plans that promise a specific level […]
Seattle Votes for a Right to Health Care
Measure No. 1, as it appeared on the ballot: Advisory ballot measure No. 1 concerns the right to health care. If approved, the measure would advise the mayor and the city council that every person in the US should have an equal right to quality health care, and that Congress should implement that right. The […]
CNN’s Mounting Slanders against Latin American Democracy
As Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky explain in Manufacturing Consent, which stories do and do not receive coverage in the commercially-dominated U.S. news media can be very accurately predicted based on whether or not they can pass through five institutional “filters.” To make it onto the air, a story has to have these five qualities: […]
From a US Resistance Primer: A Conversation with Randy Rowland
Randy Rowland I just got off the phone with Randy Rowland in Seattle. For those readers who don’t know, Randy was a a GI resister and a member of the Presidio 27 — one of the first acts of GI resistance to the Vietnam War. When I spoke with him, Randy had just returned from […]
Two Decades at Ryerson Freaking Steel
A young man by the name of Erik Hartmann graduated from Evergreen Park Community High School in Evergreen Park, Illinois in June of 1976 without having a clue of what to do beyond that. He had played sports in all four of his high school years and was quite the physical specimen. He was […]
Understanding Hugo Chávez
Understanding the Venezuelan Revolution: Hugo Chávez Talks to Marta Harnecker, trans. Chesa Boudin (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005) 203 pages, $15.95 paperback. UNDERSTANDING THE VENEZUELAN REVOLUTION: Hugo Chávez Talks to Marta Harnecker (Trans. Chesa Boudin)BUY THIS BOOK Who is this guy who refuses to be intimidated by Bush and his legions of mercenaries and […]
At My Job
We do not have coffee break at my work. No one yells, “Break time!” to remind you to stop for a minute. We do not sit together on flipped, five-gallon paint buckets. And no one shares homemade cookies, made by someone back home who makes working worth something. We do not have lunch break, […]
True Belligerence or Belligerent Bluster? Tel Aviv and Tehran Go at It Again
In recent weeks, the battle of words between Tel Aviv and Tehran has reached ever more heated levels. On December 8, 2005, the populist and fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, questioned the truth of the Nazi holocaust and suggested that Israel be moved to Europe. These comments were made in the wake of previous […]
Blind Man with a Pistol: The Evolution of the Modern Police State as Seen by Prison Authors
“What started it?” “A blind man with a pistol.” “That don’t make sense.” “Sure don’t.” — Chester Himes Minorities and most poor people in the inner cities have always lived with the knowledge that (for them at least) the forces of unlawful suppression and misuse of power far too often masqueraded as the forces of […]
