Guy Hocquenghem. The Screwball Asses. Trans. Noura Wedell. Semiotext(e), 2010. 88 pp. $12.95 “Speak to my ass. My head is sick.” — Southern French proverb This little book was first published as an anonymous essay at the end of Félix Guattari’s Recherches no. 12, its March 1973 special issue titled Trois Milliards de Pervers [Three […]
Geography Archives: United States
The Class Dynamics of Asian America: A Primer
The notion that Asian Americans are model minorities originated in the 1960s, mainly in reference to the socioeconomic gains of Japanese and Chinese Americans in particular. It did not take long, however, for that very idea to be applied to Asian Americans as a whole, especially as it continues to be perpetuated by the mainstream […]
The United States and the Gulf Arab States: Interview with Adam Hanieh
Adam Hanieh: Well, we’ve seen over the last few days a wave of repression [in Bahrain] that’s ongoing, repression against the protests after the Saudi troops went in on March 15, about a month ago. As you said, there have been reports that up to 31 people have been killed during the demonstrations. And now […]
Venezuelan President Will Reactivate Peace Proposal for Libya
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced this Sunday that he will reactivate the peace proposal for Libya at the urging of his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Venezuelan leader called upon the nations of the world to form a larger commission to try to “stop this madness” of imperialist “aggressions” against the Libyan people. “Ahmadinejad asked […]
Obstruct Militarization and the Usurpation of Democracy
On behalf of the American University Anthropology department, I am deeply honored to welcome you all to AU, and to the Latin American Solidarity Coalition’s “Conference to Build a Stronger Movement to End US Militarism and the Militarization of Latin America.” It’s exciting personally to be involved in such an important event — after all, […]
The Arab Spring and the Saudi Counter-Revolution
We return from a recent trip to the region persuaded that the main question engaging people with respect to the “Arab spring” is no longer “who’s next,” but rather “how far will Saudi Arabia go in pushing a counter-revolutionary agenda” across the Middle East? Whether Saudi Arabia is really capable of coping with the momentous […]
US to Open New Military Base in Honduras
The United States is planning to open a new military base in the Islas de la Bahía (Bay Islands) in Honduras, according to a report in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo this Wednesday. The news emerged after the meeting between Honduran Defense Minister Marlon Pascual and the head of the US Sothern Command Douglas Fraser. […]
(Former) Communists for Liberal Democracy
Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Yassin Al-Hajj Saleh in the New York Times Of course, Saleh suffered from the brutality of the Syrian regime and I share many of his criticisms of the Syrian regime although I don’t share his decision to write about Syria in racist anti-Syrian (people) right-wing publications, like An-Nahar and Al-Hayat […]
The Scorecard on Development, 1960-2010: Closing the Gap?
Executive Summary: This paper is the third installment in a series (the first and second editions were in 2001 and 2005) that traces a long-term growth failure in most of the world’s countries. For the vast majority of the world’s low- and middle-income countries, there was a sharp slowdown in economic growth for the two […]
Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United States: Interview with Zainab Alkhawaja and Nabeel Rajab
Amy Goodman: The Bahraini government is intensifying its crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. In a pre-dawn raid Saturday, masked police officers broke into the home of Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, a prominent Bahraini human rights activist. Alkhawaja and other family members were beaten and detained. They remain in police custody at an unknown location. Human Rights Watch has […]
CBO: Medicare Privatization Would Increase Costs
House Budget Chair Paul Ryan’s proposal for Medicare has two primary goals. It would end Medicare as a government program and shift it to private insurers, and it would reduce the government’s payments to the program, shifting more of the costs to the Medicare beneficiaries. This analysis by the Congressional Budget Office* demonstrates that […]
Collective Bargaining — Essential to Democracy
Recent events in Wisconsin have highlighted the necessity of collective bargaining. The governor of Wisconsin notwithstanding, collective bargaining is recognized internationally in numerous conventions, constitutions, and courts as a human right. Legal Background Our Constitution addresses the right of collective bargaining. The Thirteenth Amendment provides that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment […]
Ohio House Bill 153: “Charter Universities” and Increasing Teaching Loads
Testimony of Sara Kaminski, Executive Director,Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors,before the House Finance Subcommittee on Higher Education, 7 April 2011 Chairman Gardner, Ranking Member Garland, and distinguished members of the Higher Education Subcommittee: my name is Sara Kaminski, and I am the Executive Director of the Ohio Conference of the […]
On the Acquittal of Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles
In the afternoon of April 8, 2011, the farce that had begun thirteen weeks ago in El Paso, Texas, came to an end when terrorist Luis Posada Carriles was acquitted of all the charges pressed against him during a migration trial. To all those who have been following the sinister history behind this terrorist […]
Socialist and/or Feminist?
This year, 8 March marked a century of the celebration of International Women’s Day. But aside from a few publications and websites of women’s movements, this event went largely unremarked in the mainstream press, and also in the public consciousness. The idea of International Women’s Day was born in the socialist movement in the first […]
Taking Over the West
Hi, my name is Sukant Chandan. I’m 32 years old. I was born in Chandigarh in North India, in Punjab, in April 1978. I always say, teasingly to my parents, they brought me here, in the winter of 1981 without my consent, at the age of three and a half. . . . I remember […]
Address to the “We Are Ohio” Rally to Kick Off the Referendum Campaign to Repeal Senate Bill 5
I find it no coincidence that we gather on the week following the commemoration of the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was meeting to speak on behalf of garbage workers who sought the ability to collectively bargain. They wanted, like you, […]
100 Imams Call on Muslims to Rally for Peace and Jobs, against Wars and Terrorism, on April 9, 2011
We, 100 Imams from the Muslim community in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, stand together to thank our neighbors who have defended the Muslim community against Islamaphobia. Our neighbors have stood in opposition to Congressman Peter King’s hearings and against the efforts of the extremists to criminalize the practice of Islam in America. […]
Egypt, Iran, and the Middle East’s Evolving Balance of Power
The full extent of the ramifications of the extraordinary developments in Egypt since the beginning of this year — for Egypt itself, for the Middle East, and for the world — will not be clear for some time. At this juncture, though, it seems virtually certain that post-Mubarak Egypt will have a much more balanced […]
Gilbert Achcar’s Defense of Humanitarian Intervention
Gilbert Achcar defends the recently “UN-authorized” imperialist intervention in Libya on the ground that general principles may require exceptions in concrete cases. “Every general rule admits of exceptions. This includes the general rule that UN-authorized military interventions by imperialist powers are purely reactionary ones, and can never achieve a humanitarian or positive purpose.”1 This kind […]
