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 […]
Geography Archives: United States
Are Troops What Haiti Needs?
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 […]
Politics of the Earthquake: Respect the People of Haiti
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 […]
Day 2 in Port-au-Prince: “Young Men with Crowbars”
[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.”] […]
The Campaign to Stop Single-Employee Railroad Crews
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. […]
Ortega Warns of US Deployment in Haiti
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 […]
To Build Up a Transnational Network of Struggles and Resistance: Within and against the Global University
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 […]
Latvia Shows the Damage That Far-Right Economic Policy Can Do — with Support from the European Union and IMF
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 […]
Help Haiti? Let Haitians Stay and Cancel Haiti’s Debt
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have pledged that the US will do all it can to help Haiti following the devastating earthquake. But while getting assistance into Haiti right now is extremely difficult, there are two things the Obama Administration could do immediately to help Haiti that are entirely within its control. It […]
China to Send “Lower-level” Envoy to P5+1 Talks on Iran Sanctions
In yet another demonstration of the (in)effectiveness of the Obama Administration’s quixotic quest to get China on board for what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used to call “crippling sanctions,” the Chinese foreign ministry announced that Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, who has been representing Beijing at meetings of the P5+1 political directors regarding […]
Emir Sader: The Post-Neoliberal Challenge
With the passing of a year and the coming of another, it’s time to look at the balance sheet and define the prospects. Who can help us do so better than Brazilian sociologist and political scientist Emir Sader, one of the best-known critical thinkers in our America today? Sader is currently executive secretary of […]
Singing and Praying at Night in Port-au-Prince
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan. 13 — Several hundred people had gathered to sing, clap, and pray in an intersection here by 9 o’clock last night, a little more than four hours after an earthquake had devastated much of the Haitian capital. Another group was singing a block away, on the other side of the Hotel Oloffson, where […]
Invitation to a Home-Based Worker Organizing Forum
Dear Brother or Sister: We are writing because of our shared interest in the challenge of organizing and representing home-based workers. As labor activists, direct care providers, or academic researchers, we have all been involved in aiding or studying organizing work among publicly-funded personal care attendants and child care providers, plus other types of […]
Year of Resistance: Interview with Eva Golinger
Listen to Sheehan’s interview with Golinger: Eva Golinger: Venezuela is a very wealthy country in oil and gas reserves. It’s actually one of the largest oil producers in the world. It has over 24% of oil reserves in the entire world. That’s a lot for a country of 27 million people. And of course […]
Wake Up, It’s Happening NOW!A New Immigrant Revolution Takes Shape
On January 1, five South Florida residents stopped eating in a protest action. They are demanding that the Obama administration take measures now to put an end to the deportations that are separating families — at least until Congress can provide more permanent relief by fixing our harsh immigration laws. The Fast for Our Families […]
The Obama Administration Moves toward Regime Change in Its Iran Policy
In one of our posts surrounding our January 6, 2010 Op Ed in The New York Times, we noted that “analytic views of Iranian politics since the June 12 presidential election have important implications for the debate about U.S. and Western policy toward Tehran.” In particular, buying into the proposition that the Islamic Republic is […]
Iran: The Green Movement and US Foreign Policy
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich: . . . I think there’s nothing new that the West is painting a distorted image of what’s going on in Iran. I also want to mention that it’s very normal to have political dissent in any country. Iran is not unique in that sense. But what’s happening is by distorting the […]
Media Battles in Latin America Not about “Free Speech”
For at least a month now in Ecuador there has been a battle over regulation of the media. It has been in the front pages of the newspapers most of the time, and a leading daily, El Comercio, referred to the fight as one for “defense of human rights and the free practice of journalism.” […]
Cuba. Again. Still. Forever.
More than 50 years now it is. The propaganda and hypocrisy of the American mainstream media seems endless and unwavering. They can not accept the fact that Cuban leaders are humane or rational. Here’s the Washington Post of December 13 writing about an American arrested in Cuba: “The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen […]
No Guantanamos at Home or Abroad
Monday, January 18th, 2010 6 to 7 pm, across from the Metropolitan Correctional Complex (MCC) 150 Park Row and Pearl Street, NYC On January 18th, as our nation commemorates Martin Luther King Day, for the slain civil rights leader who peacefully spoke out against war, racism, and injustice, members of THAW (Theater Artists Against […]
