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 […]
Geography Archives: Americas
South America, Central America, United States & Canada
“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 […]
“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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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: […]
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 […]
