It is no secret that something must be done about our healthcare system — and soon. Even those lucky enough to have good coverage are aware that the current system is unsustainable. The number of uninsured people and the absurd costs of our medical needs continue to rise dramatically. Unfortunately, the problem with our […]
Subjects Archives: Inequality
Sexuality and the Law: An Uneasy Marriage
Matthew Waites. The Age of Consent: Young People, Sexuality, and Citizenship. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. viii + 285 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4039-2173-4. $29.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-230-23718-6. There are many “ages of consent.” But in common parlance, age of consent laws define the age at which a person can legally consent […]
Pederasts and Others
William A. Peniston, Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris. New York: Harrington Park, 2004. xii + 258. Maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $49.95 US (hb). ISBN 1-56023-485-7; $24.95 U.S. (pb). ISBN 1-506023-486-5. As part of the burgeoning of the history of gender and sexuality, recent years have seen several […]
Honduras: COFADEH Register of Political Murders since Coup
The document below is a list of 40 political murders since the June 2009 coup d’état in Honduras. The list includes only the murders that members of the Committee of the Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) personally investigated. Translation by Quixote Center. See, also, “Informe Situación de Derechos Humanos en […]
New Immigrants in a New South
Mary E. Odem, Elaine Cantrell Lacy, eds. Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of the U.S. South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. xxvii + 175 pp. $59.95 (library), ISBN 978-0-8203-2968-0; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8203-3212-3. In the past two decades, the Latino population of the American South has grown faster than in any other region […]
Indigenous Struggles in the Americas: Interview with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a writer, teacher, historian, and social activist, is Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies at California State University. You have been deeply involved in Indigenous peoples’ activism in the United States. What is the current situation of Indigenous people in the US economically and politically? Decolonization is a difficult and long-term […]
A Socialist View of Sexuality and Liberation?
Sherry Wolf. Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2009. 333 pp. $12. The cover photo on Sherry Wolf’s book shows a protest rally with a woman holding a highlighted rainbow flag. Radical gay and lesbian activists, one assumes. Look closely, though, and you’ll see that the woman is […]
Colonialism and Homosexuality
Robert Aldrich. Colonialism and Homosexuality. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. xii + 436 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $104.95 US (cl.). ISBN 0-415-19615-9. $32.95 (pb.). ISBN 0-415-19616-7. It is generally seen as a sign of maturity when gay scholarship moves beyond a mere self-affirmative search for “ancestry” and develops a critical and […]
Letter from Ofer Military Prison: “Missing the Five-year Anniversary of Our Struggle in Bil’in Will Be Like Missing the Birthday of One of My Children”
It has been two months now since I was handcuffed, blindfolded and taken from my home. Today news has reached Ofer Military Prison that the apartheid wall on Bil’in’s land will finally be moved and construction has begun on the new route. This will return half of the land that was stolen from our village. […]
Flying with a Foreign Language
College student Nick George was handcuffed, interrogated, and jailed for hours at the airport when he tried to bring English-Arabic flash cards on the plane to study on his flight back to school. Now he is an ACLU plaintiff. “First she asked me about how I felt about 911. . . . I thought […]
How Credible Is Human Rights Watch on Cuba?
In late 2009 the New York-based group Human Rights Watch published a report titled New Castro, Same Cuba. Based on the testimony of former prisoners, the report systematically condemns the Cuban government as an “abusive” regime that uses its “repressive machinery . . . draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who […]
The Rose and the Mignonette
For Gabriel Péri and d’Estiennes d’Orves, as well as Guy Moquet and Gilbert Dru The one who believed in heaven The one who didn’t Both loved a beauty Imprisoned by soldiers Which climbed the ladder? Which stood guard below? The one who believed in heaven? The one who didn’t? What matters the name of […]
Seema Is a Human Rights Worker, Not a “Naxali”: Letter to the National Human Rights Commission, New Delhi
Seema Azad, editor of the left-wing journal DASTAK published from Allahabad, was taken into custody by the police Saturday, 6th February, soon after she alighted from the train on her return from the Book Fair at Delhi. She, along with her husband and left-wing activist Vishwa Vijaya Azad, has been detained at the Khuldabad […]
Humanitarian Crusade
“My basic equipment for Haiti is an M16 assault rifle with a laser sight, phosphorus grenades, a Kevlar bulletproof vest, a Glock pistol with a silencer, and a portable GPS. . . .” “We are following the US humanitarian crusade in Haiti, step by step.” Sergio Langer is an Argentinean cartoonist. This cartoon was first […]
Rising Income Inequality in the US: Divisive, Depressing, and Dangerous
The gap between annual incomes of the top 10 per cent of US citizens and what the other 90 per cent gets has been widening sharply for the last 30 years. The nation’s economic development has been increasingly divisive. Professor Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley, a leading expert, summarizes the facts […]
The Ugly Face of the Beautiful Game
Christos Kassimeris. European Football in Black and White: Tackling Racism in Football. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008. viii + 267 pp. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7391-1959-4; $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7391-1960-0. Soccer fans held in thrall by the European Championships have no doubt observed the significant display of anti-racist statements and activities before, during, and after the […]
The Time for Single Payer Health Care Is Now
Yesterday the Labor Campaign for Single Payer joined the growing number of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare advocates who have responded to President Obama’s State of the Union challenge to “let him know” if there is a better approach that “will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare, and […]
Towards Demotic Cosmopolitanism
Ruth Ellen Mandel. Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. xxiv + 413 pp. $89.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8223-4176-5; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-4193-2. In September 1979, the first federal commissioner of foreigners’ affairs (Ausländerbeauftragte) Heinz Kühn declared Germany a country of immigration — a novel and controversial […]
Flowers to Obama: Try Single Payer
Last night, President Obama said he wanted ideas on health care reform. Obama put it this way: “If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know. Let […]
Haiti and the “Devil’s Curse”
Peter Hallward: The role that journalists tend to be comfortable with when it comes to talking about Haiti is the role of victim. If you ask why the Haitians are so poor . . . it has to do with three factors, all of which are functions really of Haiti’s independence and the strength […]
