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The 2010 Commonwealth Games: Delhi’s Worrying Transformation
Amid spells of heavy monsoon rain and sticky, sweltering heat, Delhi is an anxious city, struggling to meet a deadline. Preparations are furiously underway for the nineteenth Commonwealth Games, to be held in town in less than three months (from October 3-14). Delhi residents expect that their upturned streets, recurrent blackouts and impassable traffic jams […]
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What Difference Does a Revolution Make? A Preliminary Contrast of India and China
I. Commonalities At the time of their casting off of colonialism — India gaining independence from Britain in 1947, China putting an end to a century of imperialist domination in 1949 — the two largest countries in Asia shared many common characteristics. Each possessed an enormous continental landmass with a population in the hundreds of […]
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$tudent$ Make Banks Rich (Only If the Loans Are Repaid)
These are original poster designs by EDUdebtorsunion.org. They are all formatted for print on standard 8 1/2″ x 11″ letter paper. Please print and display anywhere you think this information would be relevant, provocative, or necessary! Some ideas of placement: Within Universities: Financial Aid Office, Bursar’s Office, Cashiers’ Windows, Student Unions Within the City: […]
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India: The Poverty of the Intellectual Mind and the Enlightened Mind of the Backward Adivasi
This is a rejoinder that the slain CPI (Maoist) spokesperson had penned in response to B.G. Verghese’s article in Outlook. Reading B.G. Verghese’s article Daylight at the Thousand-Star Hotel in Outlook (May 3), one is stunned by the abysmal poverty of thought and colonial mindset of this renowned intellectual. How is it that the […]
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Statement of Solidarity with the Students of Middlesex University
On 26 April 2010, the management of Middlesex University in London, England announced that it was cutting all its philosophy programs and shutting down the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, the top-rated research department at Middlesex. The statement below offers solidarity from Zagreb, Croatia to the campaigners to Save Middlesex Philosophy. — […]
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Puerto Rico: Long Live the Students!
In support of the students of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) on strike against the $100 million budget cuts, elimination of tuition wavers, privatization, etc. . . . ¡Que vivan los estudiantes! Note: The indefinite strike declared on the Río Piedras campus is on its 15th day today. The one declared in the Mayagüez […]
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The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. New Afrikaners
Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture, Palestine Center, Washington, D.C., 29 April 2010 It is a great honor to be here at the Palestine Center to give the Sharabi Memorial Lecture. I would like to thank Yousef Munnayer, the executive director of the Jerusalem Fund, for inviting me, and all of you for coming out […]
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Numbers
What you need to earn every month to buy a house, in euros: 10634 What you actually earn every month, in euros: 1063 How many years it will take to pay off the mortgage: 106 How many times a month you will be able to go out to dinner . . . To see […]
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Studying Madrasas in West Bengal
Nilanjana Gupta. Reading with Allah: Madrasas in West Bengal. New Delhi: Routledge, 2010. Pp. 192. R. 595. ISBN: 978-0-415-54459-7. Much has been written on the Indian madrasas or Islamic seminaries, but because the most influential madrasas in the country are concentrated in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, many of these writings tend […]
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Health reform in the United States
Barack Obama is a fanatical believer in the imperialist capitalist system imposed by the United States on the world. “God bless the United States,” he ends his speeches. Some of his acts wounded the sensibility of world opinion, which viewed with sympathy the African-American candidate’s victory over that country’s extreme right-wing candidate. Basing himself on […]
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Honduras: Students, Trade Unionists, and Teachers March amidst Crisis at UNAH
Tegucigalpa, Honduras — Scores of students, trade unionists, and teachers of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) marched to the National Congress today in protest, due to the current crisis of this university, demanding that it be not closed. The march was composed of a student group from the University Revolutionary Front (FRU), […]
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Celebrating Zinn at Boston University the Right Way
Boston University is planning a “celebration” of Howard Zinn on March 27th. I dare think that this is a proper moment for the university to address the need to reverse the grievous discrimination against Zinn, who taught political science at BU for over two decades and yet retired with a paltry junior faculty salary. John Silber, BU’s president at the time of Zinn’s tenure, repeatedly denied any salary increase for him, voted on unanimously by the faculty committees at BU. In one instance, Silber wrote an opinion letter justifying his unilateral decision against pay increase for Zinn by labeling Zinn’s books as “nonsense” and bereft of scholarly value.
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Poverty Reduction in China and India: Policy Implications of Recent Trends
China and India are generally regarded as the two large countries in the developing world that are the “success stories” of globalisation. This success has been defined by the high and sustained rates of growth of aggregate and per capita national income; and the substantial reduction in income poverty. Further, both China and India are […]
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All Out March 4 in Defense of Public Education!
The U.S. ruling class and its political representatives at all levels have launched an all-out assault on public education. While disparate elements of this campaign have been in place for the past three or four decades, we are today seeing a confluence and culmination of these trends, orchestrated by President Obama and his Education secretary […]
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Do I Look Rich? Student Voices on Fee Hikes in California
For more information about the education crisis and the 4 March 2010 strike and day of action to defend public education in California, go to <checkingeducation.com>, <defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/>, or <www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=184333923808>. | | Print
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Remembering Howard Zinn
I studied with Howard Zinn at Boston University. He was my dissertation advisor, mentor, friend, tennis partner and a pillar of support for me during the eight grueling years when I fought a civil rights battle with Harvard University. Zinn’s passage is a great loss to all who knew him directly or indirectly, including the millions of people in America and around the world who were impacted by his revisionist American history written from people’s rather than elite’s point of view, his exemplary peace activism, as well as his literary works. The “old solider of the left,” as he was once described by the New York Times, was a hero of the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement who spoke at thousands of rallies and sit-ins against the war in Vietnam, as well as America’s invasions of Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., always at the forefront of American peace movement.
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The Making of Japan’s New Working Class: “Freeters” and the Progression from Middle School to the Labor Market
This article is a modified and developed version of a chapter from Social Class in Contemporary Japan: Structures, Socialization and Strategies, edited by Ishida Hiroshi and David H. Slater, Routledge, 2009. For a brief outline of the book’s arguments, please see <japanfocus.org/data/Social_Class_5.htm>. Introduction: The “New Working Class” of Urban Japan Tomo was a first-year […]
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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 […]
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Make Bologna History!
Celebrating Bologna? We don’t think so. International Call for Participation On March 11 and 12, 2010, the education ministers of 46 European countries will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Bologna process in Vienna and Budapest. Given the current situation in many European universities and the ongoing protests for the freedom of education, this […]
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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 […]