Subjects Archives: Inequality

  Earlier this month, the jury in Ward Churchill‘s civil trial against the University of Colorado found, in his favor, that the university had fired him because of critical remarks he made after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  While Churchill awaits a hearing on his ongoing employment at the university, this victory is […]

  The media consensus is that union auto workers escaped the government-imposed restructuring of their industry basically unharmed, exchanging a few dings for control of the companies.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Chrysler retirees — like me — were assured in 2007 that our retiree health care benefits, funded through the Voluntary Employee […]

  On January 28, little more than a week after Israel concluded its brutal military campaign against the Gaza Strip, James Kirchick published the latest installment (advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid71844.asp) in his growing corpus of articles about tolerant, gay-friendly Israel and homophobic, “Islamofascist” Palestine.  Although Kirchick has published essentially the same article under different titles — “Palestine and […]

David Bacon, Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, Beacon Press, 2008.  Hardcover, 261 pages, $26.95. With the Obama administration reportedly set to push for immigration reform this year, the debate on immigration seems likely to start up again.  If it’s anything like the debate we got from the mainstream media in previous […]

In an attempt to find out what union members think about the health care crisis and its solution, the AFL-CIO recently asked union members and supporters to complete a health care survey: . The problem with the survey is that it does not present the full range of opinions union members have, and nowhere in […]

  As people in the U.S. and around the world evaluate President Barack Obama’s first one-hundred days, many — that is, those who truly wanted a break from the racist, militarist, anti-working class policies of the Bush regime — are coming to the conclusion that the ‘change’ his campaign promised seems to have turned into […]

  The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attended the conference to condemn the Israeli government’s brutal and repressive policy against the Palestinians.  The European delegates walked out when he called the government of Israel “racist,” but the Latin Americans stayed.  The United States and eight other countries boycotted the event. The Israeli government’s stance against […]

  A great American theorist and intellectual Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, one of the founders of queer theory and the author of Epistemology of the Closet, Between Men, and Tendencies among other books and articles, died on the night of Sunday, 12 April 2009.  To pay homage to her, I posed questions to two of her […]

  Conor Foley, The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War, Verso, 2008. All is not well within the world of humanitarian aid organisations.  In his new book, The Thin Blue Line, Conor Foley, an experienced aid worker, discusses many of the problems associated with the burgeoning relationship between contemporary aid organisations and recent […]

  Within an otherwise bleak reality of capitalist crisis, Mike Lebowitz has provided us with an eloquent restatement of the case for socialism — The Path for Human Development: Capitalism or Socialism?  This short text is now circulating widely in Venezuela, in Spanish, as a pocket-sized pamphlet, has been published in Monthly Review, and is […]

The U.S. administration announced through CNN that Obama would be visiting Mexico this week, in the first part of a trip that will take him to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, where he will be within four days taking part in the Summit of the Americas. He has announced the relief of some hateful restrictions imposed by Bush on Cubans living in the United States regarding their visits to relatives in Cuba. When questions were raised on whether such prerogatives extended to other American citizens the response was that the latter were not authorized.

  After a day of chaos and violence, Bangkok is currently in a tense stand off. Thousands of Red Shirt protesters are in control of a large geographic area around Government House. They have armed themselves and have erected a number of roadblocks around the city. In response to this challenge, the government has declared […]

Evo entered today his fourth day of rigorous hunger strike. He spoke yesterday evening and today at noon. His words were calm, persuasive and categorical. He offered a “biometric electoral register” that was still better than the one in force during the electoral processes held in his country, which had already been described by international institutions as reliable and of high quality.

Sometimes I have thought that I would not have to write the following day and that I could rather use part of the time to read and study, as I have often done. But, the significant events of the past few weeks related to the world economy and politics, and the developments in Bolivia have prevented me from doing so.

Yesterday, Thursday 9, our attention was focused on the tense situation in Bolivia…

A decision by Israel’s state-owned railway company to sack 150 Arab workers because they have not served in the army has been denounced as “unlawful” and “racist” this week by Arab legal and workers’ rights groups. The new policy, which applies to guards at train crossing points, is being implemented even though the country’s Arab […]

Early on Tuesday March 31st, I read a Notimex news cable dated the 30th; it stated, verbatim:

  On March 28, Palestinians and international activists gathered to protest the long-time closure of Shuhada Street in Hebron, leaving one arrested and five injured. The protest was attended by about 50 local and international activists, including MK Mohammad Barakeh of Hadash and Palestinian Legislative Council member Sahar Qawasmi.  Giving a passionate and fiery speech […]

Couscous Global: Tell me — how is gay life in Iran? Depends on your situation.  As all the people know, it’s not easy here, but it depends on your situation, too.  Which kind of family you are, what’s your religion, yes, it depends on your situation. – – – – – – – – – […]

  Although many people believe inequality is socially divisive and adds to the problems associated with relative deprivation, what inequality does or does not do to us has remained largely a matter of personal opinion.  But now that we have comparable measures of the scale of income inequality in different societies we can actually see […]