Subjects Archives: Psychology

On September 18, 2013, a press release issued by the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY stated: “Six students were arrested in a brutal, unprovoked police attack during a peaceful protest by the City University of New York’s students and faculty against CUNY’s appointment of former CIA chief ex-General David Petraeus.  Students were […]

The ambush on May 25 by Maoist guerrillas in the Darba Ghati valley (in the Sukma area of the Bastar region in southern Chhattisgarh), 345 kms south of the state capital of Raipur, of a convoy of provincial Congress Party leaders has shocked the Indian state apparatus.  The Z-plus and other categories of armed security […]

As was the case in 1930s Germany, Greek liberalism has revealed itself to be politically spent.  In dealing with the austerity measures imposed upon the country from outside by an international troika consisting of the IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank, the government has failed comprehensively in the eyes of its electorate. When the […]

I would like to start off by saying that I am not a journalist.  However, I do know that there are some common practices in journalism involving privacy.  Some investigative journalists use hidden camera footage to raise awareness of issues of vital public interest when there is no other means of obtaining information about them.  […]

A young veteran was just arrested for murdering homeless people in Los Angeles.  Regardless whether he is actually guilty, a large number of terrible acts have been committed by returning veterans traumatized from the war.  None of the studies of which I’m aware accounts for such costs (including the cost of imprisoning them) in the […]

  “Workin’ hard scarred my proletarian flesh I used to go to sleep drunk every night depressed Slavin’ for a check, a couple hundred at best While the boss getting’ rich off my blood and sweat And all the crumbs I get go to bills and rent I ain’t workin’ all my life just to […]

The recent visit of two Afro-Colombians to the Boggs Center started me thinking dialectically about the paradigm shift in the concept and practice of Solidarity made necessary and possible by corporate globalization. In 1997 these Afro-Colombians, members of a small farming community in Uraba, Colombia, were among those displaced when a joint paramilitary and U.S.-backed […]

After September 11th, 2001, one of the liberal justifications for the military intervention against Afghanistan was the oppression of women, but also of gays, by the Taliban.  People in Europe and the USA received with shock the news that same-sex couples were publicly executed in the Kabul Stadium by bringing down a wall upon them […]

“Elections come and go, but the United States is still careening toward bankruptcy.  By 2020, the U.S. will be spending $1 trillion a year just to pay the interest on the national debt.  Sometime between now and then the catastrophe will come.  It will come with amazing swiftness.  The bond markets are with you until […]

The North Atlantic Left Dialogue (NALD), by bringing North Americans and Europeans together, allows participants to reflect on their own situation through the lens of the thinking of other leftists who face similar political issues in different contexts.  There are commonalities in the division between social movements on the one hand and political parties/labor organizations […]

In a recent article, I discussed the 2010 Economics Nobel Prize in rather unflattering terms.  However, nothing beats the decision to award the 1997 Economics Nobel to Robert Merton and Myron Scholes for developing “a pioneering formula for the valuation of stock options.”  “Their methodology,” trumpeted the Nobel committee, “has paved the way for economic […]

The issue of “blood diamonds” has once again made the news: Farai Maguwu, Director of Zimbabwe’s Mutare-based Centre for Research and Development (CRD), languishes under the long arm of Zimbabwe’s laws on alleged charges related to his research on Zimbabwe’s Marange mines.  According to a confidential 44-page report produced by investigators mandated by the Kimberley […]

Apparently, my skirt was too short for “West Beirut” according to my relative, who lives in “East Beirut.”  She was certain I would get harassed.  She did not delve deeply into the issue, but simply reiterated that the “type of people” who lived in “West Beirut” were not open-minded enough for short skirts and did […]

  The Fourth Strini Moodley Annual Memorial Lecture, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 13 May 2010 I In her historical novel, A Place of Greater Safety, which is played out against the backdrop of the Great French Revolution through an illuminating character analysis and synthesis of three of that revolution’s most prominent personalities, viz., Maximilien Robespierre, Georges […]

  Max Lane, Unfinished Nation: Indonesia before and after Suharto, Verso, 2008. There was a time when everyone seemed to be talking about Indonesia.  Well, they were talking about it on Joe Duffy and Pat Kenny at least, and that’s as near as makes no difference in this country.  As East Timor voted to extricate […]

  Katherine Pratt Ewing.  Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.  xii + 282 pp.  $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8047-5899-4; $21.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8047-5900-7. Katherine Pratt Ewing’s Stolen Honor provides an interesting and original approach to analyses of discourses of Islam in Europe by focusing on constructions of Muslim masculinity in […]

  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 […]

  This study compared The New York Times‘ and The Moscow Times‘ coverage of the political movements in three former Soviet republics.  Data analysis revealed a clear pro-movement pattern in The New York Times’ reporting.  The U.S. newspaper used more pro-movement sources than pro-incumbent sources.  Overall, The New York Times depicted the protesters favorably and […]

  Travis L. Frampton.  Spinoza and the Rise of Historical Criticism of the Bible.  London: Continuum International Publishing Group, Limited, 2006.  262 pp.  $150.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-567-02593-7. Brayton Polka.  Between Philosophy and Religion, Vol. I: Spinoza, the Bible, and Modernity.  Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006.  276 pp.  $80.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7391-1601-2. Brayton Polka.  Between Philosophy and […]

  While supporters of Troy Davis, including Bob Barr and Pope Benedict, were overjoyed that the US Supreme Court ordered the Georgia district court last month to determine “whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes petitioner’s [Davis’s] innocence,” the ruling may still bode ill. Newly-appointed Sonia Sotomayor […]