Subjects Archives: Inequality

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its Summer 2007 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. Prior to the Friday, August 3rd, 2007 release of the agreed text of the U.S.-Indian nuclear agreement, the media build-up in favor of civilian nuclear technology “transfer” and […]

What will it take to shine a spotlight on the vast income gap between the very rich and everyone else in the US today, in the way that Michael Moore’s film Sicko exposes the injustices of privatized health care?  Ten years ago, on August 4, 1997, when 185,000 UPS workers went out on strike, they […]

  Ahmad Sa’adat, General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, is one of over 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails.  These political prisoners, men, women and children, are activists, organizers, and political leaders of the Palestinian people. Sa’adat’s trial is scheduled to […]

  Join the silent protest at the courthouse, make calls to Attorney General Jerry Brown and Federal Receiver Robert Sillen to support a transgender woman rape survivor. When: 8:00am – 9:30am Monday July 30th, 2007. Where: Civic Center Courthouse, 400 McAllister Street @ Polk St, San Francisco. Clothing: Wear RED, as Alexis has chosen the […]

  Oaxaca, 20 July 2007 — The struggle between the popular movement of rebellion and the government’s actions to totally crush it is at a critical point.  I believe the situation is extremely dangerous for many oaxaqueños.  Five days ago the governments (Oaxaca State and Mexican Federal — fully backed by the United States, I’m […]

  The post-911 immigration regime originates in 2003 when immigration control shifted from the Department of Justice to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  The Immigration and Naturalization Service was abolished March 2003, and its functions were transferred into the newly created DHS, in a merger of some 180,000 employees from 22 different agencies.  […]

  Since the first pictures of Abu Ghraib, the collusion of medical personnel, including psychologists, in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Bagram, and CIA detention centers is no longer open to question: Mark Benjamin, “The CIA’s Torture Teachers,” Salon.com, 12 June 2007; Valtin, “Fact Sheet: Psychologist Participation in Torture,” Invictus, 6 July […]

I will not refer to Bush’s health and education, but to that of his neighbors. It was not an improvised declaration. The AP agency tells us what his opening words were: “Tenemos corazones grandes en este país” (We have big hearts in this country); he said this in Spanish in front of 250 representatives of […]

Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko indicts private health insurance and calls for its abolition.  Sicko joins an American tradition that includes Lewis Hine‘s photographs of child laborers (1908) and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), two examples among many.  But can Moore’s theme change our nation in 2007? Private health insurance, usually obtained […]

I saw Michael Moore’s SICKO last week.  By now who doesn’t know that SICKO is a savage and hilarious demolition job on the US health care insurance corporations and their self-serving myths about the national health care systems of countries like Canada and Cuba? But this is not a review of SICKO.  I’ll just say […]

The four young African American lesbians from Newark, New Jersey, who were convicted of gang assault and received long senetences for defending themselves against street harassment have been sent to New York State prisons.  Supporters and those concerned about what has happened to these women and their families are trying to obtain them pro bono […]

Watch the videos of a July 2006 forum in New York City featuring Scott Long of Human Rights Watch, Paul Schindler of Gay City News, an Iranian-American activist, and others debating the question of Western gay rights activism, US imperialism, and Iran. Gays Feed into Anti-Iran Hysteria Gay Executions in Iran? Randy Wicker, born in […]

Four more Black girls just went bad.  Young, 19 to 25; from Newark or surrounding neighborhoods; “troubled” families; having babies while in their teens — you’ve heard it all before.  The reason you’re reading about this bunch is that they’re lesbians — “killer lesbians,” “a wolf pack of lesbians,” say the media.  They’re not martyrs […]

On August 18, 2006, seven young African American lesbians traveled to the West Village from their homes in Newark for a regular night out.  When walking down the street, a male bystander assaulted them with sexist and homophobic comments.  The women tried to defend themselves, and a fight broke out.  Thus began the women’s nightmare […]

  On Wednesday, June 6, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted a sweep of homes in New Haven, Connecticut.  They arrested 33 immigrant workers and set off a series of mass protests calling for the release of detainees and an immediate halt to federal raids.  On Saturday, June 16, a mass mobilization […]

  Frankly, the last time a boy kicked me in the shins was . . . well never, because even in grade school I think we were all taught not to do that.  I am, after all, a 5 ft 1 inch girl in flip-flops with her hands above her head, wearing a pink shirt, […]

Listen to Saadia Toor (Assistant Professor, Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, College of Staten Island) and Kourosh Shemirani (of the Queer Iranian Alliance) on Doug Henwood’s Behind the News (WBAI, 99.5 FM, 31 May 2007) on liberal imperialism and how Western leftists should think about the conditions of women and LGBTQ people in Iran and […]

Auto workers are bracing for a bumpy road ahead at Chrysler, following the May 14 announcement that Daimler-Chrysler (DCX) would sell off 80 percent ownership of the company to Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm.  The surprise sale may tip the balance of power further against the United Auto Workers (UAW) as the union […]

Contrary to both mainstream dogma and received cultural-leftist/neo-Marcusian canon, access to commodities has never been anything like equal in the United States.  In fact, in this epoch of escalating income and wealth polarity, the newest statistics show that inequality among U.S. “consumers” is now at an all-time high. Bradley Johnson of Advertising Age magazine’s “American […]

Opening comments at Conference on Participation, Change, and Human Development at the Centro Internacional Miranda in Caracas, Venezuela on 27 March 2007 The Bolivarian Constitution, in my view, is unique in its explicit recognition (in Article 299) that the goal of a human society must be that of “ensuring overall human development.”  From the declaration […]