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Below are groups and resources (books, articles, websites, etc.) related to this topic. Click on an item’s title to go its resource page with author, publisher, description/abstract and other details, a link to the full text if available, as well as links to related topics in the Subject Index. You can also browse the Title, Author, Subject, Chronological, Dewey, LoC, and Format indexes, or use the Search box on the left. Particularly recommended items are flagged with a red logo:
2000-2009 Publications
2009
- The ABCs of the Economic Crisis
What Working People Need to Know Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Rich, powerful people created the economic crisis of 2008-09, while hundreds of millions of working people suffer the consequences -- lost homes, lost jobs, rising insecurity, and falling living standards. How could this happen?
- Abettors of war crimes will be held accountable
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Taking action to bring perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice.
- An Abortion Doctor's Jailhouse Journal
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 With Dr. Tiller’s death, we are painfully reminded of how “abortion doctors” are subject to ongoing harassment and even death. The question of what motivates such doctors to continue to provide abortions is once again front and center.
- Academic Freedom Threatened in Ontario Universities
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 While most academics would agree that a university should be a place where critical debate is fostered, what is academic freedom when the freedom to attend classes without being bombed isn't even assured? Academic freedom falters it seems when it comes to Palestine, whether in the Middle East or in North America. Not only is there no realizable academic freedom for Palestinians, but also, even in North America, students and faculty raising critical viewpoints about Israel find themselves muffled, accused of anti-Semitism, threatened with disciplinary action, or, in the case of former Depaul University professor, Norman Finkelstein, out of a job entirely.
- Academics Urge Government Climate Action
Sources News Release Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 More than 500 university faculty members from universities across Canada signed a letter to the Canadian Government calling for immediate drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The letter points out the time frame of reductions is critical.
- Addiction and Control
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Prisons are very profitable. There are private prisons nowadays. The people that own them have, as their mission, first and foremost, the making of money. They need as many people as possible in prison to maximize their profits. They also need to spend as little as possible on the inmates and staff. Thus, America has over 2.3 million people incarcerated; more than any other country.
- Afro-Asian Collaborations
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 At a moment when the national media are abuzz with predictions of a new era of post-racial politics, Fred Ho and Bill Mullen’s anthology on the intersections of African and Asian Americans remind us of the complex ways that race has shaped and continues to shape our lives in this country. Afro Asia compiles a diverse set of essays that illuminate a repressed tradition, spanning the early 19th century onwards, of “creative political and cultural resistance grounded in Afro-Asian collaboration and connectivity.”
- After the Destruction
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 As Barack Obama mounted the Washington, DC inaugural stage on the euphoric morning of January 20, 2009, in Gaza the sounds of Israel’s invasion — the U.S.-supplied F-16s’ bombing runs, the artillery shells that accurately hit their targets of hospitals and clinics and refugee schools with children inside, the clearly-marked made-in-USA canisters of white phosphorus that burn people alive from the inside, the newly field-tested “DIME” bombs that efficiently tear multiple limbs off the victims — had gone at least temporarily silent.
- After the Party
Corruption and the ANC Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Andrew Feinstein is a former member of the African National Congress, and a critic of corruption within the congress. In his analysis, Feinstein discusses things such as the repression of debate within the party, lack of investigations into arms deals, and a failure to criticize Mugabe's rule in Zimbabwe.
- Against the Politics of Tolerance: Islam, Sexuality and Belonging in the Netherlands
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 What could be wrong with tolerance? Would I perhaps prefer intolerance? Of course not -- but if we take a harder look at the concept and the way it was employed, we are able to see that “tolerance” has a paradoxical meaning in present day society. It is accompanied, in fact, by virulent forms of intolerance and exclusion. To illustrate, we may have a look at the debate about Islam in the Netherlands starting in 2001.
- Agenda for a New Economy
From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth - Second Edition Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Korten offers in-depth advice on how to mount a grassroots campaign to bring about an economy based on locally owned, community oriented “living enterprises” whose success is measured as much by their positive impact on people and the environment as by their positive balance sheet.
- The American Crucible
Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Robin Blackburn, an acclaimed historian of slavery, discusses the emergence of anti-slavery ideas and the important events that paved the way for abolitionist movements.
- America's Kingdom
Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 An account of Aramco as a microcosm of the colonial order. America's Kingdom debunks the many myths that now surround the United States's special relationship with Saudi Arabia, also known as "the deal": oil for security.
- And Then They Came For Me
Final Words from Lasantha Wickrematunge Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 An editorial by Lasantha Wickrematunge shortly before he was murdered on January 8, 2009, and published three days after his death.
- Anti-Zionist legacy of Warsaw Ghetto resistance fighter Marek Edelman
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A look at the legacy Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who despite his heroism was shunned by Israel and Zionist organizations because of his frequent criticism of Israelli policy.
- Anti-fascism isn't working
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 What all the current anti-fascist approaches have in common is that they miss the real danger. This doesn't lie in the BNP taking power, in the possibility of concentration camps or any of the other scare stories we've been hearing recently. It lies more immediately in the far right colonising the anti-mainstream vote and developing party loyalty, thereby blocking the development of an independent working-class politics capable of defending our conditions and challenging neoliberalism.
- Are there too many people?
Population, hunger, and environmental degradation Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A number of liberal writers and publications have raised the specter of growing population as an unpleasant yet necessary topic of conversation.
- Are you paying too much to send out your news releases?
Sources News Release Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 If you have been using a corporate newswire service to send out your news releases you are likely paying $500 or more to send out a single release -- and that release may not even be reaching the people you want to reach.
- Argentina: Disappearing Farmers, Disappearing Food
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Food sovereignty as defined by Via Campesina is the peoples' right to define their agricultural and food policy, and the right of farmers and peasants to produce food. Worldwide communities are seeking an alternative to a model controlled by Cargill, Monsanto, General Foods, Nestle and Kraft foods. Starved by industrialization and concentration, citizens are now hungry for traditional production methods and diversity in the food system.
- Bailing Out Banks, Smashing Unions
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 When General Motors and Chrysler received pre-Christmas bridge loans of $17.4 billion, President Bush specified that the unionized work force had to become “competitive” with non-unionized workers in wages, benefits and work rules. This blatant attempt to destroy an already weakened United Auto Workers (UAW) illustrates how, in the midst of an economic crisis, U.S. capital is bailed out as working people are fleeced.
- The Barefoot Guide to Working with Organisations and Social Change
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A partical, do-it-yourself guide for leaders and facilitators wanting to help organisations to function and to develop in more health, human and effective ways as they strive to make their contributions to a more humane society.
- The Battle for Puerto Rico's Labor Movement
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The teachers' union Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR) is the island’s largest labor union. Its evolution has considerable impact on Puerto Rico’s labor movement as a whole. In fact, recent events surrounding the FMPR reflect many of the debates and tensions that have shaped the island’s largest labor struggles over the past decade. These include:
- BBC High Court defence against Trafigura libel suit
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Published: 2010 This document was submitted to the UK's High Court by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in September 2009, as a Defence against a libel claim brought against them by the oil company Trafigura. A May 2009 BBC Newsnight feature suggested that 16 deaths and many other injuries were caused by the dumping in the Ivory Coast of a large quantity of toxic waste originating with Trafigura. A September 2009 UN report into the matter stated that 108,000 people were driven to seek medical attention. This Defence, which has never been previously published online, outlines in detail the evidence which the BBC believed justified its coverage. In December 2009 the BBC settled out of court amid reports that fighting the case could have cost as much as 3 million pounds. The BBC removed its original Newsnight footage and associated articles from its on-line archives. The detailed claims contained in this document were never aired publicly, and never had a chance to be tested in court.
- Beautiful Ruination
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Iin the last half-century, even as the prophets of prosperity have spurred the U.S. on to ever more growth, ruins have become increasingly common features in the American landscape. Braddock, littered with decrepit hulks, is not alone.
- Between Nation and Empire
The Fair Play for Cuba Committees and the Making of Canada-Cuba Solidarity in the Early 1960s Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Published in In Our Place in the Sun: Canada and Cuba in the Castro Era, Robert Wright and Lana Wylie eds. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2009
- Beyond Radical
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 What conservatives could bring to the climate conversation.
- Black Bloc Provocateurs Set Strasbourg Hotel on Fire
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Legitimate anti-NATO protesters are determined to use non-violent civil disobedience to block the summit. In order to provide an excuse to use batons and rubber bullets against them, agents provocateurs masquerading as Black Bloc anarchists have been dispatched with instructions to burn down hotels and vandalize churches.
- Bloggers Name and Shame Torturers in Egypt
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Egyptian bloggers use the Internet to expose police abuse and torture.
- Bloody Oil
Canadian First Nations internationalize their struggle against the most destructive project on earth Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The extraction of oil from tar sands is perhaps the most ecologically insane idea on the planet. Four First Nations representatives from Canada travelled to Britain to participate in the London climate camp and the country's biggest annual gathering of climate activists. Organized by the Indigenous Environmental Network and supported by the New Internationalist, the group's aim was to internationalize the campaign for a complete tar sands moratorium.
- The Bolsheviks Come to Power
The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 An account of how the Bolshevik revolution triumphed.
- Boycott Derails Jerusalem Rail Line
Rail Firm Pays Price for Link to Settlements Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The very survival of the rail project is now in question after the boycott movement's successful lobbying. A Dutch bank, ASN, pulled its investments from Veolia in 2006, and the company lost a large contract in Sweden this year.
- Boycott Israel
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It is clear to me that the only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure.
- Brazil: Changing Lives Through the Power of Dance
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Founded in 1991 and directed by Dora Andrade, EDISCA is a non-governmental organisation that caters exclusively to children and adolescents from poor neighbourhoods.
- A Brief History of Loyal Opposition to War
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 As Afghanistan erupts with redoubled violence, the author recounts the clutch of soldiers who have refused to serve or repented their service in every American war since the War of 1812.
- Bright-sided
How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Ehrenreich traces the strange career of Americans' sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude.
- Broonland
The Last Days of Gordon Brown Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Broonland is a scathing and witty indictment of the architect of New Labour, Gordon Brown. Chris Harvie shows how Gordon Brown came to preside over a bankrupt country on the brink of economic and political breakdown.
- Budrus
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 A documentary film about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel's Separation Barrier.
- Bus Driver
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 Follows Karnel Basi, a public transit driver in South Vancouver, along his regular route through the downtown east side to the heart of the city and back again. Along the way he picks up a variety of passengers, struggles to stay on schedule and keep his bus safe.
- Peter Camejo: A Red-Green Life
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Progressive movements lost a major advocate last September 13th when Peter Camejo died after a long battle with lymphoma at the age of 67. The broad, historical impact he had was obvious in the national media response and the hundreds of emails and blog entries following his death.
- Peter Camejo at Berkeley
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 I met and worked with Peter Camejo in Berkeley during the latter half of the ’60s. He was a leader of the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance there, while I was active in the Independent Socialist Clubs, which later became the International Socialists. Peter was always a hard-driving speaker who always knew what he wanted to say, and he could say it elegantly.
- Camejo's Early Political Years
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 I first met Peter Camejo in 1958, when we were both students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had joined the Young Socialist Alliance in New York, politically aligned with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, the year before, and I was a member of the Young People’s Socialist League, politically aligned with the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation.
- Jim Campbell, Remembered
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It is two years today since Jim Campbell died of a heart attack, bicycling in rural Ontario with his partner Julie. He was 57, and had been looking forward to retiring in a few years, to finally being able to move out of the city.
- Can Journalism Schools Be Relevant In A World On The Brink?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The best of our students are worried not just about whether they can find a job after graduation but also whether those jobs will allow them to contribute to shaping a decent future for a world on the brink.
- Can We Build Socialist-Anarchist Alliances?
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Last summer I delivered a talk on primitivist anarchism at a conference devoted to Marxist literature and culture. The participants were mostly academics engaged with Marxist criticism, and most came out of university English departments. For many in this group of self-described Marxists, my attempt at bemused critical appreciation for this admittedly problematic group of anarchists was not welcome. Anarcho-primitivists, critics insisted, are not activists, and they certainly have no place among committed Marxists. Worse, they are misanthropic, individualistic terrorists — perhaps even genocidal in their overall aims to destroy civilization.
- Canada Is Now To Climate What Japan Is To Whaling
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush. Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada.
- The Canadian Student Movement in the Sixties: Three case studies
PhD Thesis, University of Alberta, 2009 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- The Candy Machine
How Cocaine Took Over the World Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Feiling is interested in the hows and whys of the trade. Everything cocaine touches turns to lead. How it came to this is the question he explores in this extensively researched, passionately argued book.
- Canwest latest 'media giant' to exploit news operations
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Media corporations claim to care about quality journalism, but they've deceived Canadians for decades -- censoring news to protect their profits, pandering to the interests of the corporate world, and neglecting to invest adequately in their news operations. For decades powerful media corporations have decided what news Canadians should read, hear, and see. By reading just about any Canadian daily newspaper it's not hard to see how the values of corporate-owned media are quite different from the values and interests of the majority of Canadians.
- Capitalism and Social Rights
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 We're talking here about rights and how to guarantee them in an unequal globalized society. I’m just going to take it for granted that all of us here believe in human rights in some sense of the term. Let’s start from the premise that all human beings, just by virtue of being human, are entitled to certain basic conditions of freedom and dignity which have to be respected by others, not just by other individuals but also, and especially, by people in power and by states.
- Capitalism and the Ecological Footprint
Published in Monthly Review, Volume 61, Number 6 - November 2009 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The capture of ecological discourse by the political culture of the consensus (a necessary expression of the conception of capitalism as the end of history) is well advanced. In contrast, the expression of the demands of the socialist counterculture is fraught with difficulty—because socialist culture is not there in front of our eyes. It is part of a future to be invented, a project of civilization, open to the creativity of the imagination.
- The Caracas Commitment
Declaration from World Meeting of Left Parties, November 19-21, 2009, Caracas, Venezuela Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 We have gathered with the aim of unifying criteria and giving concrete answers that allow us to defend our sovereignty, our social victories, and the freedom of our peoples in the face of the generalized crisis of the world capitalist system and the new threats spreading over our region and the whole world.
- Carbon trading: privatising the world's forests
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The World Bank sponsored carbon offset program has faced widespread criticism for, in effect, privatising forests and allowing rich nations to evade responsibility for cutting emissions themselves.
- A Carbon-Free Future
An Interview with Arjun Makhijani Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A carbon-free future is possible and necessary.
- Ron Carey, Militant Union Reformer
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 “Ron Carey was the nation’s most charismatic and successful labor leader as the twentieth century was coming to an end. He will be remembered as a major figure in American labor history on the basis of just two of his accomplishments: In 1991, running as a reformer with the backing of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), he was elected general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. In 1997, he led the successful 15-day strike against the giant United Parcel Service, the biggest victory organized labor had experienced in at least three decades.”
- The Case for Academic Boycott
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Academic boycott targets Israel's intellectual leadership, the educated elite whose record consists largely of misinforming Israelis about their history, distorting their understanding of current conflicts, normalizing the racism of their society, and providing to the Israeli military and government the legal, technological, and political tools it needs to facilitate the continued theft of Palestinian land and the containment of its restive population.
- Changing for Real
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The United States changed forever on November 4, 2008. It will undoubtedly change even more during the next four years — although just how remains to be determined. There has never been such a convergence of yawning crises facing an incoming U.S. government, including a collapsing credit system and the near-death spiral of the North American auto industry. It’s an entirely open question whether the sheer scale of the objective emergency might impose serious structural changes on the way capitalism is administered in this country.
- Chavez calls for new international organisation of left parties
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez calls for the formation of a "Fifth International" of left parties and social movements to confront the challenge posed by the global crisis of capitalism.
- Che Guevara in Search of a New Socialism
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In an article published in 1928, José Carlos Mariátegui, the true founder of Latin American Marxism, wrote: “Of course, we do not want socialism in Latin America to be an imitation or a copy. It must be a heroic creation. We must inspire Indo-American socialism with our own reality, our own language. That is a mission worthy of a new generation.” His warning went unheard. In that same year the Latin American communist movement fell under the influence of the Stalinist paradigm, which for close to a half century imposed on it an imitation of the ideology of the Soviet bureaucracy and its so-called “actually existing socialism.”
- Chiapas Anti-Mining Organizer Murdered
Mariano Abarca Led a Growing Movement to Kick Canadian Mining Companies Out of Mexican Communities Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Mariano Abarca Roblero, one of Mexico's most prominent anti-mining organizers, was shot to death on the evening of November 27, 2009, in front of his house in Chicomuselo, Chiapas. The incident comes just days after Abarca filed charges against two Blackfire employees, Ciro Roblero Perez and Luis Antonio Flores Villatoro, for threatening to shoot him if he didn't stop organizing against Canadian mining company Blackfire's barium mine in Chicomuselo.
- Chiapas Murder Draws Criticism of Canadian Mining in Mexico
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The recent murder of Chiapan anti-mining organizer Mariano Abarca Roblero has drawn sharp criticism of Canadian mining in Mexico.
- Chilcot Inquiry - The Establishment Goes to Work
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 When public scepticism erupts in response to resultant extremes of state violence and criminality that even the media are powerless to deny, the illusion of democracy must be bolstered. Then Tweedledum-Tweedledee will choose from their own to rig an "inquiry", while their media allies present the process as something other than a farce.
- A Child in Palestine
The Cartoons of Naji Al-Ali Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Presents the work of Naji Al-Ali, a leading Palestinian political cartoonist, and is introduced by Joe Sacco, author of Palestine.
- China's Disposable Labor
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The global financial crisis has begun to take its toll in China, with a rapid decline in China’s exports. In Guangdong province where the export processing zones house 20 million workers, tens of thousands of migrant workers have been sacked. By comparing various estimates one can conclude that nationally by the beginning of 2009 between four and nine million migrant workers have returned home. Millions more will stay home after the Chinese New Year holiday.
- Chomsky in Mexico
La Jornada at 25 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 September has been a big month for La Jornada. To celebrate its 25th birthday, the National Lottery offered a commemorative ticket as did the Mexico City Metro subway system, rare mainstream honors for a lefty rag, and notorious U.S. rabble rouser Noam Chomsky came to town to help cut the cake - along with Gabriel Garcia Marquez (a founding investor) and the much-lauded Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano. The Jornada was founded in 1984 by itinerant journalists who had bounced from one short-lived left periodical to the next.
- Chronicles from the Front
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 This volume consists of carefully edited contemporary texts from the two U.S. socialists Lois and Charles Orr, who joined the revolutionary events in Spain after the outbreak of the Civil War, from fall 1936 to spring 1937. Two newlywed activists from the left wing of the U.S. Socialist Party, they had been traveling through Europe on their honeymoon when the news of the military revolt under General Franco reached them. They rushed to Barcelona not only to take a look but to become an active part of the workers’ revolution, which had erupted as the answer to the pro-Fascist coup.
- Chronicling Labor's Crisis
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The State of Working America is the Bible of liberals, labor, and often of the left. Like the Bible, few people read it from cover to cover; like the Bible, it is often consulted to back up an argument. The latest, 2008/2009, edition contains a host of useful facts, statistics, analyses, and arguments, essentially all of it based on pre-crash information but with an awareness that some kind of crash was coming upon us.
- Citizens Protest Lack of Consultation about Canadian Mine in San Jose del Progresso
Popular Forces Occupy City Hall and Threaten to Incinerate Hostages Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Inhabitants of San José del Progresso, in the district of Ocotlán, affiliated with the Assembly of People United for the Valley of Ocotlán in Defense of Nature and Popular Autonomy, and opposed to the operation of the Canadian owned mine La Trinidad, escalated their battle with the assistance of the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca, the APPO.
- Civility
A Cultural History Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Through a historical, social, and psychological discussion of the civility practices in 3 nations - England, France and the United States, Davetian addresses major topics in public discourse today regarding the ideas and practices of civility and the possibility of a future civility ethic capable of inspiring cooperation across cultural and national boundaries.
- The Civility Solution
What to Do When People Are Rude Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009
- A Classic Study Revisited
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Pierre Broué (1926-2005) was one of the few Trotskyist historians who carved out a niche in academia, though this career choice had to overcome many obstacles. Coming of age at a time in France when the historical profession mostly consisted of either conservative anti-communists or historians closely linked to the milieu of the hard-line French Communist Party, Broué, a long-time member of the Lambertiste current within French Trotskyism (until his expulsion in 1989), from early on had to learn to fight on his own.
- Climate change: the eco-socialist solution
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Climate change reminds us, in a phrase attributed to Lao Tzu, that "if you don't change direction you may end up where you are heading." The road of capitalism is now lined with horrors and we must find a new direction home. After a long absence, sustainability must be restored to the relationship between society and nature.
- Climate Cover-Up
The Crusade to Deny Global Warming Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Tracking the global warming denial movement from its inception, public relations advisor James Hoggan (working with journalist Richard Littlemore), reveals the details of those early plans and then tracks their execution, naming names and exposing tactics in what has become a full-blown attack on the integrity of the public conversation.
- The Climate Denial Industry Is Out To Dupe The Public. And It's Working
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The climate denial industry consists of people who are paid to say that man-made global warming isn't happening.
- "Climate Justice" and the Left: The Necessity of a Mass Movement
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The climate crisis -- a crisis not of civilization, as some commentators would have it, but of capitalist production -- requires a political response that is long overdue, and is finally stirring. Now that the movement against global warming is brewing, socialists must get involved.
- A climate of fear endangers press freedom
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Today, the greatest threats to freedom of the press are more insidious than a generation ago because they are intended to induce a climate of fear and self-censorship through systematic violence and emblematic arrest aimed at those who would practice real, independent journalism.
- Code Pink's Gaza Delegation
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 I was part of a delegation of 62 people that entered Gaza on March 7, 2009. The purpose of our trip, organized by the women’s antiwar organization Code Pink, was to challenge the Israeli/Egyptian and U.S.-sanctioned blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza, which has been in force since the Palestinian elections of 2006.
- Coming out in Kenya
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Rape has always been used to intimidate assertive women in Kenya, like feminists and female politicians.
- Company Secretary To Replace Inspector
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 If all goes to plan, India Inc would no longer have to deal with labour inspectors turning up at their premises to check compliance with 43 central and myriad state labour legislations. Instead, firms can submit a certificate from a company secretary that validates their compliance with the numerous employment laws.
- A Comparative Review of Flat Earth News and Newspeak
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A comparative review of two recent books about the media, one a mainstream view, the other using the propaganda model of media control.
- Comparison of military strength of Israel and the Palestinians
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 As the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has once again flared up following Israel's ongoing air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip, the IMEU presents a comparison of Israeli and Palestinian military capabilities. (Jaunary 2009).
- A Comrade and Friend
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Steffie Brooks, a member of Solidarity in New York, died Monday evening, February 9, 2009 after a struggle with a cancer that had spread from her lungs into her spine. Steffie’s final few months were difficult and painful, but she remained committed to her political activism, which included giving a presentation at a summer school our organization co-sponsored with others last August.
- Connexions Calendar Expired Events 2009
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009
- Connexions Information Sharing Services - Wikipedia Article - Urdu text
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Published: 2017
- Connexions Information Sharing Services - Wikipedia Article - Chinese text
Connexipedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Connexions Library: Africa Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on Africa.
- Connexions Library: Agriculture and Farming Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on farming and agriculture.
- Connexions Library: Canada Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on Canada.
- Connexions Library: Central America and the Caribbean Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on Central America and the Caribbean.
- Connexions Library: Central and South Asia Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on central and southern Asia.
- Connexions Library: China Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on China.
- Connexions Library: East and Southeast Asia Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on east and southeast Asia.
- Connexions Library: Europe Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on Europe.
- Connexions Library: Food Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on food.
- Connexions Library: History Focus Page
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Published: 2012 Selected articles, books, documents and other resources on historical topics.
- Connexions Library: Imperialism and Colonialism Focus Page
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009
- Connexions Library: Labour and Unions Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on labour and unions.
- Connexions Library: Men Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on men.
- Connexions Library: Middle East Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on the Middle East.
- Connexions Library: Nature Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on nature.
- Connexions Library: Oceans, Lakes, Rivers, Water Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on water, rivers, streams, wetlands, lakes, rivers, oceans, marine life.
- Connexions Library: Oral History Focus Page
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Published: 2012 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on oral history.
- Connexions Library: Pacific Region Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on the Pacific region.
- Connexions Library: Race, Racism, Ethnicity, Multiculturalism Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on race, racism, ethnicity, multiculturalism, identity.
- Connexions Library: Radical and Left History Focus Page
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Published: 2012
- Connexions Library: Religion Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on religion.
- Connexions Library: The Right Focus Page
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on the Right.
- Connexions Library: Rural Issues Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on rural issues.
- Connexions Library: Russia Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on Russia.
- Connexions Library: Science Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on science.
- Connexions Library: Sexuality Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on sexuality.
- Connexions Library: South America Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on South America.
- Connexions Library Spotlight
Featured Resources in the Connexions Library Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Published: 2012
- Connexions Library: Transportation Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on transportation.
- Connexions Library: USA Focus
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on the United States of America.
- Connexions Library: Work Focus Page
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on work.
- Conspiracy, Inc.
Wild Tales From the Reactionary Right Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Increasingly, reactionary media pundits and much of the rank-and-file of the Republican Party are taking the American right down a dangerous path, marked most ominously by the abundance of conspiracy theories directed against the Democratic Party and mainstream liberals.
- Coral Reefs
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 All around the world, much of the world's marine biodiversity face threats from human and activities as well as natural. It is feared that very soon, many reefs could die off.
- The Corporate Stranglehold on Education
Is Higher Education in Need of a Moral Bailout? Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Rather than challenge the economic irresponsibility, ecological damage, and human suffering, and culture of cruelty unleashed by free market fundamentalism, higher education appears to be one of its staunchest defenders, uncritically embracing a view of itself based on a market model of the academy.
- A Cosmetic Cover for Occupation
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October of 2001, the Bush administration belatedly latched on to the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban as a rationale for military action. As part of their ideological arsenal, they deployed the heretofore retiring First Lady to present a humanitarian face to military intervention. Addressing the nation by radio on November 17, 2001, Laura Bush connected misogyny to terrorism, noting, “The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”
- A Country Of Sacred Cows And Ten Commandments
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It's high time that Israel must understand that criticizing Israeli government's foreign policy for assassinating people or for shooting children, is by no way Anti-Semitic, it's just being humane.
- The court does not sympathize
The moral depravity of the Israeli legal system Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The blood of Palestinians is cheap in this country. No one has ever been punished for killing Palestinians' children, adults, newborns, old people. The murderers are all walking among us, free and happy.
- Criminalizing Criticism of Israel
The End of Free Speech? Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel. The Lobby is working to ban as anti-Semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a universal hate-crime in the Western world.
- Crisis from Pakistan to Motown
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Interview with Tariq Ali. Tariq Ali is the author of numerous political books and essays, as well as a filmmaker and novelist.
- Crisis And Hope: Theirs And Ours
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Overcoming the multiple crises means tearing down an enormous edifice of delusions about markets, free trade, and democracy that has been assiduously constructed over many years and overcoming the marginalization and atomization of the public so that they can become participants, not mere spectators of action.
- The Crisis of Revolutionary Power
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Alexander Rabinowitch has long stood as a major figure in the field of revolutionary history, his reputation forged by his series of books tackling the revolution in Petrograd. The book under review, his latest addition to this canon, is a meticulous and painstaking history, showing us the gaps and exploring the confusions of a tightly defined period.
- A Critical Defense of Charter '08
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Last November, dozens of well-known Chinese intellectuals launched the Charter '08 to call on Chinese government to respect basic civil and democratic rights. Soon afterwards the core leader of the appeal, Liu Xiaobo, was arrested and remains in custody until now.
- Critical Resistance at 10
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On the weekend of September 26-28, 3,500 people gathered in Oakland, California to hasten the death of the prison system.
- Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Investigation of oil as major driver in the power dynamics of the world, and of the 'oil curse', which seems to make the countries that export it poorer, not richer.
- Cuba in Search of Renovation
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On January 1, 1959, the rebel Army entered Havana and brought down the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Fifty years later, Fidel Castro has given up power, but his brother Raúl has relieved him. Far from being characterized by paralysis, this transition period has witnessed the emergence of an intense debate about the future of socialism, both among opponents as well as those who defend it with the desire to see it evolve.
- Cuba Today
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Cuban revolution's 50th anniversary has sparked academic conferences, debates and articles assessing its past and future. How and why has the revolution survived? What does the future hold for Cuba? Or, as it is often put, more crudely, what will happen when Fidel/Raul dies?
- The Cuban Five--Injustice Prolonged
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the final appeal of the “Cuban Five,” who were convicted in 2001 and are serving prison terms ranging from 15 years to life for “espionage conspiracy” and acting as illegal agents for the Cuban government.
- The Cultural Turn
Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998 Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Fredric Jameson, a leading voice on the subject of postmodernism, assembles his most powerful writings on the culture of capitalism.
- Cutural Warriors of the Freedom Struggle: Miriam Makeba and Odetta
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It felt like the end of an era to realize that South Africa’s Miriam Makeba and our own Odetta died within weeks of one another, having been born only months apart, these twin pillars of the struggle for justice on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
- Damming Magdalena: Emgesa Threatens Colombian Communities
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Local people protest a project that attacks the region's biodiversity and communities.
- Dancing with Death: "Waltz with Bashir"
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It took Ari Folman 25 years to make “Waltz With Bashir,” his animated film about Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. First, he had to remember the war.
- Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 An analysis on the formation of Charles Darwins' views on slavery and the impact of those views on his theories and publications.
- Dead Palestinian Babies And Bombed Mosques - IDF Fashion 2009
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills."
- Dear John
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 Chronicles the closure of the Welland Canal, Ontario's oldest and leading industrial employer: John Deere Welland Works. The film explores what Welland has in store for its future, while helping those that worked at the plant tell their story.
- The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Journalism is collapsing, and with it comes the most serious threat in our lifetimes to self-government and the rule of law as it has been understood here in the United States.
- Debating how to change the world
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A review of Wobblies and Zapatistas, by Staughton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic.
- Deconstructing The Israeli Narrative
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israel has revealed its nature; a nation built on actions normally termed war crimes by world institutions; a nation that does not follow international law; and a nation that does not heed United Nations Resolutions. Distracting and deceiving the world community with contrived and fallacious narratives permits Israel to continue its illegal maneuvers. Setting the record straight will straighten the road to Middle East peace.
- Defamation
Resource Type: Film First Published: 2009 A critical look at modern anti-semitisim by way of an expose of the New
York-based Anti-Defamation League.
- Defending the right to offend, shock or disturb
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Insult laws are designed to protect politicians, government leaders and officials and state institutions, arming the state with access to resources and legal doctrines that no other citizen has.
- Desert Winds Stir New Hope
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 With oil and gas reserves running dry, Egypt is eyeing wind power as a solution to its looming energy crunch.
- Leon Despres, Chicago Rebel
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Iconic Chicago alderman Leon Despres died at the age of 101 on May 6, 2009 in the city he lived and loved. A little frail in stature, Len had a broad intellect that was fully intact to the very end. He fought much of his adult life for a progressive vision of Chicago that “Machine” politics was never ready to accept. After his 1955 election as alderman, and in the first decade of his two-decade term, many city council votes were recorded 49-1. Despres was the lone dissenter.
- Diario de Oaxaca
A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Mexico Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 The memoir of Peter Kuper living in Oaxaca, Mexico during a social and political upheaval that ended in more than 20 people dead.
- Diary of Bergen-Belsen
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Hanna Lévy-Hass, a Yugoslavian Jew, emerged a defiant survivor of the Holocaust. Her observations, recorded in her own incomparable voice, shed new light on the lived experience of Nazi internment. Lévy-Hass stands alone as the only resistance fighter to report on her own experience inside the camps, and she does so with unflinching clarity in dealing with the political and social divisions inside Bergen-Belsen.
- Did Leviev's Empire Succumb to Boycott?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The brave people who took to the streets to demand boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and Israeli companies have received a clear message that their efforts are not in vain. Private companies that seek to make easy profits in Palestine while ignoring the injustices and illegality of Israel's crimes there, will have to think twice about their investments. They may be required to pay a price in actual money for the moral deficit in their accounts.
- The Difference Between Judaism and Zionism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Argues that "Judaism and Zionism are by no means the same. Indeed they are incompatible and irreconcilable: If one is a good Jew, one cannot be a Zionist; if one is a Zionist, one cannot be a good Jew."
- A Direct Tax On Fossil Fuel Is What The World Needs Urgently
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A direct tax on fossil fuels is the only realistic way to achieve the necessary cuts.
- Disasters You Can Believe In
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The year 2009 coincidentally marks the 100th anniversary of the United States Marines’ invasion of Nicaragua. They stayed for a quarter century, and after assassinating the country’s resistance leader, Augusto Cesar Sandino, left the place in incomparably worse shape than they found it.
- Dissecting Congo's Modern Holocaust
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A primary aim of Gerard Prunier’s work is to detangle and lay bare the complexities of interests, alliances and deep-seeded antagonisms that have made the Congo crisis so brutal. He does this well, without simplifying the narrative for easy comprehension.
- Dissidents Looking Beyond Zionism
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In 1968 — 1968! — a book appeared with the astonishing title Israel Without Zionists. A Plea for Peace in the Middle East. The timing was even more surprising, in Israel’s flush of euphoria in the wake of the 1967 war. This was also the moment when the mainstream American Jewish community and the U.S. intelligentsia in general had just discovered the State of Israel as the great inspiration and center of Jewish redemption — after two decades during which Israel had not been viewed with any such great enthusiasm, as chronicled by historian Peter Novick in The Holocaust In American Life.
- Doctors Under Attack
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On May 31, 2009, while handing out church bulletins, Dr. George Tiller was shot to death by an anti-abortion activist. The Women’s Health Care Services clinic Dr. Tiller operated in Wichita, Kansas was one of three in the United States that performed late-term abortions. His clinic, his home and the homes of his staff have been picketed for years.
- Doom and Gloom
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Jermey Brecher says that the social roots of doom are part of a common pattern that we can observe repeatedly in history. People live their lives and pursue their goals by means of strategies that have been developed over time. But sometimes they discover their established strategies aren't working. No matter how hard they try, their problems remain intractable. The natural result is despair. But the awareness that other people are experiencing the same despair changes the context in which it is experienced. It opens up new possibilities. Perhaps the problems that we despair of solving as individuals can be addressed through some kind of collective action. When people begin to explore that possibility, the result may be a social movement.
- Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Whether you're a climate change denier or doomsayer, an avid recycler or rabid consumer of plastic bottles, there is one very good but little-known reason to oppose carbon offsets: their immediate and dire human costs.
- Düstere Aussichten
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Ist es schon zu spät? Wir wissen, dass bereits vieles verloren ist. Aber wir können nicht wissen, ob bereits alles verloren ist. Man kann im voraus nicht wissen, was eine gemeinsame Aktion alles bewirken kann. Wir befinden uns in der Lage von Eltern, die bereits ein Kind verloren haben, und die sich jetzt überlegen müssen, ob sie für ihre anderen Kinder kämpfen wollen, die in Gefahr aber noch am Leben sind.
- Dwindling Fish Catch Could Leave a Billion Hungry
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Fish catches are expected to decline dramatically in the world's tropical regions because of climate change, but may increase in the north, said a new study published Thursday. This mega-shift in ocean productivity from south to north over the next three to four decades will leave those most reliant on fish for both food and income high and dry.
- Earth's Life Support Systems Failing
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The world has failed to slow the accelerating extinction crisis despite 17 years of national and international efforts since the great hopes raised at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
- Echo Platoon
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Echo and other platoons like it are grim yardsticks for measuring the desperation in which a military under immense strain is now operating. Looking up at that military from Echo's airless limbo, from a world of soldiers who have fallen through the cracks of a system under great stress, you can see just how devastating America's two ongoing wars have been for the military itself. The walking wounded, the troubled, and the broken are now being pressured to reenter the fray.
- Economic crisis and the responsibility of socialists
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Henryk Grossman is particularly relevant today and not only because of his explanation of economic and financial crises
- The Economics of Global Turbulence
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Brenner presents a survey of the world economy from 1950 to the present. He charts the post-war history of the global system and is critical of the results which include over-production and over-competition. He is then able to examine the systematic factors behind wage repression, high unemployment and unequal development.
- The Economy After A Half Century
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The object here is to evaluate the current state of the Cuban economy, but for this no insightful perspective is possible without considering its performance historically, especially over the last sixty years and most especially over the half century since the triumph of the Revolution.
- The Economy in a World of Trouble
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 interview with Robert Brenner.
- Ecuador: Left Turn?
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On April 26, 2009, Rafael Correa won re-election to the Ecuadorian presidency with an absolute majority of the vote. He gained broad popular appeal through a combination of nationalist rhetoric and increased social spending on education and health care. The victory cemented Correa’s control over the country as the old political establishment appeared to be in complete collapse.
- Ecuador's Indigenous Socialism
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 For several decades now, national elites in Latin America have accused the left of acting as a ventriloquist for indigenous movements: allowing Native leaders to speak, but pulling the strings behind them.
- J. David Edelstein
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 J. David Edelstein, an ardent socialist all his life, died July 20, 2009 in Syracuse, NY at age 90. Dave was an at-large member of Solidarity and supporter of the Socialist Party USA; his life in the socialist movement dated back to the Workers Party and Independent Socialist League of the 1940s and 1950s.
- Educate, agitate, occupy!
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 An account of the occupation Visteon factory in Enfield, London.
- Education gap divides Jerusalem
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A recent report by an Israeli non-governmental organisation says 5,000 Palestinian children in East Jerusalem will not be able to attend classes this year because there are not enough classrooms.
- Egyptian Labor Erupting
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In April 2009, a familiar scenario was repeated, as Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s police apparatus assaulted planned demonstrations and a Mahalla textile workers’ strike. A year earlier, many activists and ordinary people from Mahalla received sentences in politically charged criminal trials for “planning the April 6th strike in 2008.”
- Egypt's Long Labor History
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Egyptian working class is one of the oldest in the region, with a long history of internationalist solidarity. Egyptian loading and longshoremen workers in 1947, for example, boycotted the Dutch ship in Canal Suez in solidarity with the Indonesian people’s independence struggle. The union of the workers issued a statement against colonialism in general. They did not allow the ship to service or go through the Canal despite the resistance and efforts made by English and French administrators.
- Electoral Reform: Do the right thing
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Chartist goal of a representative parliament and majority govermment is still sadly unrealised.
- Emma Goldman: Voice of a Rebel
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Emma Goldman's name for many is synonymous with Anarchism. Indeed, as we can see in the first two volumes of the Documentary History of the American Years from the Emma Goldman Papers Project, now out in a welcome paperback edition, she did much to define anarchism to Americans.
- The End of the Revolution
China and the Limits of Modernity Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Wang Hui is a leading member of China's "New Left". He challenges both the bureaucratic one-party regime and the Western neoliberal paradigm. He calls for alternatives to both China's capitalist transformation and its repressive and authoritarian past.
- Endless War: The Suicide Of The United States
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Soldiers are returning from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan destroyed mentally, spiritually, and psychologically, to a general population that is, mostly, willfully ignorant of the occupations and the soldiers participating in them. Troops face a Department of Veterans Affairs that is either unwilling or unable to help them with their physical and psychological wounds, and they are left to fend for themselves.
- The Enemy of Nature
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Images of the rapidly melting polar icecaps, the receding snows of Mount Kilimanjaro and human suffering at the hands of ever more violent storms all over the world occupy central places in our present-day collective culture.
- Ethnic Cleansing: Palestine Reality
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 While the term “ethnic cleansing” has come into use only very recently, the act that it describes, namely the forcible expulsion of one or more ethnic groups from a region, has been practiced for millennia.
- Exploring the Roots of the Crisis
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On several points there is general agreement among most, if not all, radical and revolutionary anti-capitalists and socialists regarding the current economic crisis.
- "Exterminate all the Brutes": Gaza 2009
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israel has a straightforward means to defend itself: put an end to its criminal actions in occupied territories, and accept the long-standing international consensus on a two-state settlement that has been blocked by the US and Israel for over 30 years, since the US first vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a political settlement in these terms in 1976. The Arab League has gone even beyond the consensus, calling for full normalization of relations with Israel. Hamas has repeatedly called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus. Iran and Hezbollah have made it clear that they will abide by any agreement that Palestinians accept.
- Facing Down the Machine
Mike Roselle Draws a Line Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Federal and state governments have long targeted the civil rights of environmentalists. In the mid-1980s swaths of new laws were passed that targeted the acts of direct action oriented environmental protests.
- The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza
Seeing Through the Lies Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The record shows that Hamas wanted to continue the ceasefire, but only on condition that Israel eases the blockade. Long before Hamas began the retaliatory rocket attacks on Israel, Palestinians were facing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza because of the blockade.
- Farmers in Palestine create amazing produce in adverse conditions - and are fighting to export them
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Palestine produces some of the finest olive oils in the world, not to mention dates, nuts, tomatoes - even wine. Now, despite the conflict, farmers are finding ways to export their produce - and show the world that their country is still the land of milk and honey.
- Farmers vs Coca-Cola in Water Wars
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 As India faces its worst drought in four decades, a dispute over water resources between farmers in the Kala Dera area of western Rajasthan state and a Coca-Cola bottling plant located there has sharpened.
- Fearsome Words?
Nationalism and the Israel-Palestine Conflict Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 We are so bemused by the lovely vision of peoples determining themselves, we cannot see that ethnic self-determination is, in the real world, a quest for racial sovereignty, not a bid to enter some international folk dancing festival.
- Feedlots and E. Coli
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Improving processing plant inspections is a good idea, but it is only part of the solution. The real solution is minimizing the potential contaminant. Secondly, slow down the processing line so the workers can do their jobs. CDC tells people to wash their hands, their cutting boards and to cook meat thoroughly. Good sound suggestions, but why is the burden of safety inordinately placed on the consumer? Why are the processors allowed to hide behind the 'safe handling instructions' and maximize their profits with impunity?
- Feeling Racism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 I have found that when a person has faced racism and discrimination, he can never forget it, it stays with him always. Seeing my mother treated with such disrespect and rudeness, only because of her race, was worse than being discriminated against myself. It burned into my soul, and it will never go away.
- Feminism, The Global Struggle
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Coming to feminist consciousness in the early 1980s, I belong to a generation of U.S. feminists caught between the second and third “waves” of the movement. The activist energy of second-wave feminism was inspiring indeed. It challenged the ideological presuppositions of heteronormative patriarchy, established some legal protection against discrimination in the workplace and educational institutions, and enabled a significant percentage of women to enter the ranks of the professional-managerial class.
- 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A collection of essays from international figures in fields of academia, science, literature, media and politics who explain why they are atheists.
- A Fifty-year Old Process
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 To go beyond the debate concerning whether to characterise Cuba as socialist, state capitalist or simply an anti-imperialist state framed by Cold War logic, I propose that instead of defining socialism as a state or a place, we regard it as a process. In today’s Cuba, internal contradictions can no longer be hidden, nor can those who believe in radically transforming our world ignore the resilience of the Cuban people; there is something still going on there.
- Fighting Lynch Laws in America
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Rebecca Hill’s ambitious book highlights a major theme of American radical history. It brings together the history of labor defense campaigns with the concurrent movement to prevent the lynching of African Americans. In six individual studies from John Brown to the Black Panther Party, Hill achieves two notable goals: a substantive reinterpretation of these cases and a heightened recognition of their commonalities.
- 5 Things the Corporate Media Don't Want You to Know About Cannabis
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Recent scientific reports suggest that pot doesn't destroy your brain, that it doesn't cause lung damage like tobacco -- but you won't hear it in the corporate media.
- Five years of illegality
Time to dismantle the Wall and respect the rights of Palestinians Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Oxfam International presents testimonies of Palestinian men and women who recount their daily problems, arising from the construction of Israel's illegal Wall and its associated regime of land confiscation and permits, and settlement construction.
- The FMLN's Historic Victory
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 For the first time, the left will govern El Salvador. In the March 15, 2009 presidential elections, Mauricio Funes of the former guerrilla movement the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) defeated former police director Rodrigo Ávila of the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) by a thin margin of less than three percentage points.
- Focus Shifts to Trafficking of Men in Europe
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The public perception is that human trafficking victims are all vulnerable females forced into prostitution and sexual slavery. But this is not the case. It does not occur to many people that trafficking is much broader on its scale, and that it affects a sizeable amount of men.
- Food Among the Ruins
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Detroit, the country's most depressed metropolis, has zero produce-carrying grocery chains. It also has open land, fertile soil, ample water, and the ingredients to reinvent itself from Motor City to urban farm.
- The Food Wars
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Walden Bello presents an analysis of the various causes of hikes in global food prices and their effects on poverty in the countries of the global South.
- Football, Class and Sexuality in America
A Review of "Big Fan" Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Big Fan is an incredibly tender, painful, and tragic look at the state of masculine identity, social pressures of masculinity, and how masculinity relates to homophobia and class in America via the seemingly heteronormative industry of pro football.
- Footnotes in Gaza
A Graphic Novel Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A graphic depiction of an incident in Gaza in 1956, when Israeli soldiers massacred 111 Palestinians.
- For a Workers Recovery Plan - The Causes and Cures of a New Great Depression
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Economics is now not just for the experts. If anything is clear from the panic that started in mid- September, 2008, it is that workers must understand the economy. For clearly the 'experts' have no idea what they are doing.
- For Free Expression on Palestine
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- For the Reconstitution of the Movements from Below: Autonomy and Independence
A Reflection almost Ten Years After the Water War Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Within the grassroots there are mixed feelings of dissatisfaction, sadness and anger. The demand of re-appropriating the commons and natural resources like gas, petrol, minerals and water has fundamentally not been met. Transnational corporations continue to exploit and extract these resources, and the government manages them in a private, sectarian, inefficient and in many cases corrupt manner.
- Foremothers and Fathers
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Socialist feminism is usually said to have begun in the 1960s and ‘70s, but in fact it was a significant radical current 100-150 years ago.
- Forget Shorter Showers
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Why personal change does not equal political change.
- Frames of War
When Is Life Grievable? Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Butler explores the media's portrayal of war and its effect on audiences' understandings of human life. Such portrayals, Butler argues lead to the rationalization of modern warfare and state violence.
- John Hope Franklin's Message
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Three years ago the acclaimed historian, John Hope Franklin, who died in March at the age of 94, discussed his lifelong battle for equality and against racism. Franklin personally knew most of the major African American figures of the 20th Century — W.E.B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X -- and lived long enough to see Barack Obama be elected president.
- Joe Frantz, 1950-2009
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Joe Gelders Frantz died unexpectedly on February 4, 2009.
- Free Abdallah Abu Rahmah, Now!
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In a sense, Bilin is the Soweto, the Derry and the Chiapas of the beginning of the 21st century, with two specificities: it is a civic non-violent mobilization and it is based on a strong alliance between the local Palestinian population, the Israeli anti-colonialist movement and active international solidarity.
- Free Speech
A Very Short Introduction Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Covers a wide-range of controversial free-speech issues, from Holocaust denial and pornography to the status of modern copyright law. Offers a concise quide to many of the vexing issues concerning our right to speak freely.
- 'Free speech' - as long as it doesn't offend anyone
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On the issue of free speech most of the right and much of the left are in agreement, and so too are many liberals, activists, and human rights apparatchiks. They hold essentially the same position on freedom of expression: they are for it - in principle - but only so long as it isn't used to express views that they find unacceptable or offensive. What they disagree about is merely who gets to decide what ideas are unacceptable, i.e. who gets to censor who.
- Frequently Asked Questions about Sources
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 SOURCES is a media service that connects journalists, editors, authors and researchers with the sources they need for their work. SOURCES spotlights organizations, institutions, government agencies, companies, and individuals who want to share their expertise and points of view with the media. The SOURCES directory is used by thousands of reporters and researchers who need to find quotable sources and reliable information for their news stories or research.
- From Fatwa to Jihad
The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Tells the story both of the Rushdie affair and of its transformative impact on cultural and political landscape of the West. The book explores the issues that the Rushide affair raised. in particular the questions of muliculturalism, radical Islam and free speech, and shows how in responding to these issues Western liberals have betrayed the fundamental beliefs of liberalism.
- From Self-managed Solidarity Unionism to a Self-managed Society
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Capitalism is built on various forms of oppression and structural inequality. But the subordination and exploitation of the working class remains at the heart of the system. A liberatory program and strategy for a remake of society needs to explain how workers can escape the class cage.
- From the Ashes of Dying Newspapers Will Come Authentic News
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Every time a daily newspaper of the obsolete model lays off another round of reporters, more of them come to us to study and learn the craft anew from this very different and opposite angle: from below, as opposed to the top down model that encrusted around them and doomed the previous version of their careers. Truth is, there is a direct correlation between the space in the media sphere that gets freed up every time a daily newspaper loses circ or dies and the increased reach that we and others have as we replace them with a better more people-powered model. So don't mourn the American daily newspaper. Anything you liked about it will continue but from a different set of new media. The time will come when one or more of those publications, or a new one yet to come in the US, will turn to the models that work for the daily Por Esto! or El Libertador or others South of the border, kissing their slavish dependence on advertisers goodbye and throwing their lot in, instead, with the larger multitudes of society.
- From villages to New Delhi to Geneva: Indian farmers protest against the WTO
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The "liberalization" and 'corporatization' of agriculture under the World Trade Organisation would put at risk the livelihoods of more than 2/3 of India's 1 billion people.
- Fugitive Days
Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009
- Gaza 2009: De-Osloizing the Palestinian Mind
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The lesson we learn from Gaza 2009 is to harness all effort to fight the outcome of the Oslo Accords, and to form a United Front on a platform of resistance and reforms. This cannot be achieved without dismantling the PA and realizing that ministries, premierships, and presidencies in Gaza and Ramalah are a façade not unlike the South African Independent Homelands with their tribal chiefs. The classical national program, created and adopted by the Palestinian bourgeoisie has reached its end unsuccessfully.
- Gaza Peace Protester Is Prisoner In Own Home
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Nine months after he helped to organise protests against Israel's attack on Gaza, Samih Jabareen is a prisoner in his home in Jaffa, near Tel Aviv, an electronic bracelet around his ankle to alert the police should he step outside his front door.
- Gaza's Kite Runners
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Gazan children's kites are expressions of defiance, hope and the longing for freedom.
- Gender Equality (Real Utopias Series)
Transforming Family Divisions of Labor Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers propose a set of policies - paid family leave provisions, working time regulations, and early childhood education and care - designed to foster more egalitarian family divisions of labour by strengthening men's ties at home and women's attachment to paid work.
- General Perspectives on the Capitalist Development State and Class Struggle in East Asia
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A discussion regarding the rise of the leftist movement in East Asia.
- Getting the Balance Right
Gender Equality in Journalism Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Gender equality in journalism.
- Global Climate Change Lobby
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Inside the battle to influence the most important environmental treaty of our time.
- The Global Fight for Climate Justice
Anticapitalist Responses to Global Warming and Environmental Destruction Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Published: 2010 A guide to the debate on climate change, a sourcebook that makes the case for anti-capitalist action as the only effective way to stop global warming.
- Global Leveraged Buyout or the "Longest Boom in Capitalist History"?
A Reply to Robert Fitch Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Fitch's recent article, while making some good points about the unraveling of the world financial system, is seriously flawed.
- Globalization
A Systemic Marxian Account Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Smith examines the issue of globalization using a systemic dialetics approach. This two-part novel first examines the models of globalization and in the second part, reconstructs a Marxian model of socialist globalization.
- The Globalization of Garbage: Following the Trail of Toxic Trash
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Despite a near universal international ban on exporting toxic or hazardous material, most of electronic waste from the United States ends up in China, India, Vietnam, or in African countries like Ghana, and Nigeria.
- The Goldstone report and the battle for legitimacy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It may yet be the case that, as in the anti-apartheid struggle, the shift in the relation of forces in the Palestinians' favour will occur not through diplomacy or as a result of armed resistance, but on the symbolic battlefield of legitimacy that has become global in scope.
- Goodbye "Norma Rae"
Eulogy for Crystal Lee Sutton, Labor Hero Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Crystal Lee Sutton was a genuine hero. She will forever be remembered as one of the champions of organized labor, right up there with the Joe Hills, Bill Haywoods and Emma Goldmans.
- Grassroots activist and human rights defender Jamal Juma' arrested
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Jamal Juma's is the most high profile arrest within an intensifying campaign of repression of grassroots mobilization against the wall and the settlements. Initially only arresting local activists from the villages affected by the wall, the Israeli authorities have recently begun to shift their attention to the detention of internationally-known human rights defenders such as Mohammad Othman and Abdallah Abu Rahmeh.
- Grassroots Power and Non-Market Economies
An Interview with Beverly Bell Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 People are organized across many sectors that have never chosen to step out into the popular movement before. For example, indigenous peoples in the last 10 years or so have made a determination that they could no longer organize just as indigenous but had to become part of the so-called anti-globalization movement.
- The Great Fear of Israel's Leaders
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The great fear of Israel's Zionist leaders is that ordinary people in all of historic Palestine, no matter what their religion, will define the struggle against Zionism not as Jew versus non-Jew but as a struggle by those who seek equality under the law for all people, no matter what their religion, versus those who oppose that goal.
- The Great Financial Crisis
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Foster and Magdoff are able to examine the complex interconnections associated with rising debt, weakening production and investment, stagnant wages, burgeoning unemployment, rapidly growing class inequality, spiraling global economic instability, and spreading militarism and imperialism.
- The great 'success' of a carbon trading failure
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The right to pollute has never been more affordable. Energy companies and market speculators can buy a tonne of carbon for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. The low cost gives an incentive for companies to pollute more in the short-term and prices renewable energy alternatives out of the market.
- The Green Zone
The Environmental Costs of Militarism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Environmentalism - it's the word on everyone's tongue. Reusable shopping bags, hybrid cars, and green home energy solutions allow us to reduce our carbon footprint, but it's only the tip of the quickly melting iceberg. The Green Zone presents a sobering revelation: until we address the attack that the US military is waging on the global environment, the things we do at home won't change a thing.
- Grinding Down the U.S. Army
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Prolonging a stalemated war will only mean more hurt for both Afghans and Americans. The hurt to Afghans will undoubtedly be worse, for their homes are the battlefield, but our own hurt shouldn't be underestimated. More broken bodies and shattered minds. More echoes of the horrifying violence that accompanies war.
- Growing Poverty And Despair In America
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Increasing homelessness and hunger highlight the growing problem as, in the face of deteriorating economic conditions and growing human needs, administration policies are indifferent, counterproductive, uncaring and hostile.
- Guatemala: Murders of Women Recall Counterinsurgency Techniques
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The worst waves of brutal, unsolved murders of women in Latin America have been seen in Ciudad Juarez, on Mexico's northern border, where close to 400 killings have been reported since 1993, and Guatemala, where 527 women were killed last year alone.
- Guernica Written With the Hands and Hearts of Children
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The keynote speaker at the launch of the exhibition Gaza's childrens' paintings, referred to the paintings as 'a toxic cargo of beautiful but unwelcome images which it is necessary that we see and acknowledge.' Toxic because the blockade and assault on Gaza was, and is, toxic. Toxic because the paintings mirror back to our adult world the poisonous environment we have watched develop for these children. The paintings describe aerial bombardment of apartment blocks, mosques, schools, hospitals, ambulances. They portray phosphorous, helicopter and drone attacks on civilians. Gunboats fire inland from the sea. Bulldozers demolish homes. Everything happens in an enclosed space from which there is no escape.
- Guidelines for exiled journalists
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A guide for journalists driven into exile, to provide them with information about the procedures and potential obstacles in seeking asylum.
- Guinea Pigs Spell Independence for Women
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Raising guinea pigs has become an important means for Peruvian women to earn money to support their families, as well as to learn how to defend their rights.
- Half the Sky
Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Describes the health and situation of women worldwide by investigating issues such as rampant gendercide in the developing world and gender discrimation in the labour force. The authors aim to bring attention to the plight of women in developing countries.
- The Hate Crimes Bill: How Not to Remember Matthew Shepard
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The problem with the Hate Crimes Prevention Act is that it creates a thought crime and also categories of crime victims for disparate treatment. Goodbye to equality under the law.
- Health and environmental victories for South African activists
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In South Africa, major advances in health and the environment during the 2000s were only won by social activists by removing the profit motive.
- Health Care Around the World
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Overview of the various ways health services are provided around the world, as well as accompanying issues and challenges. Topics include health as a human right, universal health care, and primary health care.
- Health Care Unions at War
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and its former section United Health Care Workers-West (UHW) are at war after SEIU’s leadership ordered the seizure of UHW’s headquarters. UHW’s elected officers, deposed in the SEIU takeover, are forming a new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).
- The Height of Kitsch
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The attitude of the German government towards Israel is a Sonderbehandlung. It too says the Jews are something special. The "Jewish state" must be treated differently than all other states. That is to say, the Jews are different from all other peoples, their state is different from all other states, their morals are different from those of others.
- Helping you reach the media
How Sources can help you get more and better media coverage Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Media coverage is the most valuable kind of publicity there is because it is based on the news value or information value of what you do or say, and is therefore far more credible than paid publicity like advertising. SOURCES makes it possible for organizations, institutions, companies, and individuals to reach the media effectively, consistently, and inexpensively. SOURCES has been helping organizations, companies, institutions, and individuals get media attention for over 30 years.
- HERstory: Jeritan
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 A story of Indonesian female migrant workers who left their homes to work as domestic helpers in Macao, China, a community consisting of mainly Chinese as well as a city of casinos and entertainment parlours.
- Hold the Line
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 A restrained story-telling of the 2009 CUPE strike in Windsor, Ontario. Excellent shots of Windsor backed by a moody soundtrack, this film tells the story of the Windsor CUPE strike from the workers' point of view.
- Hope for Animals and Their World
How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Goodall illuminates the heroic efforts of dedicated environmentalists and the truly critical need to protect the habitats of endangered species.
- Hopes and Prospects
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Chomsky shows how new social struggles, from Bolivia to Venezuela, are challenging the Washington Consensus and posing democratic alternatives for the continent, and explores the potential for change - as well as continuity - under the new Obama administration.
- The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Arab scholars were exploring and extending the great works of the Persian, Hindu, and Greek civilizations. There were striking advances in the sciences and mathematics, but more fundamentally, the Arabs taught the importance of experimentation and rational thought. Eventually, through the efforts of men like Adelard, the accomplishments of the Arabs got through to the West, and shaped it.
- How Dare You Clean Up Our Mess?
Tweedle Destruction and Tweedle Disaster Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On the nauseating hypocrisy of our good friends on the regressive right. You know the rules. One set of sexual standards for us, another for them behind closed doors. Big thumping militarist patriotism when our kids go off to war, rather less when it's their turn. Itsy-bitsy small government ideology for the lil' folk, Washington as a great big candy-covered sugar teat for them. Etc., etc.
- How Islamist gangs use internet to track, torture and kill Iraqi gays
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Iraqi militias infiltrate internet gay chatrooms to hunt their quarry and hundreds are feared to be victims.
- How Israel Bought Off UN's War Crimes Probe
Report's Fate Sealed by Threats to Palestinian Economy Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Palestinian officials faced threats that Israel would retaliate by inflicting enormous damage on the beleaguered Palestinian economy, unless the Palestinian authority agreed to stop pursuing international action against Israel for war crimes.
- How Israel Created Its Monster
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 How and why Israel helped Hamas to power.
- How Israel Silenced its Gaza War Protesters
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A new report from Adalah shows how the courts and police attempted to stamp out opposition to Operation Cast Lead.
- How low will Israel stoop to win the propaganda war?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Israel Project's training manual is an unpleasant piece of work. It recycles many of the discredited techniques used by the advertising industry. And it serves to undermine with clever words the inalienable rights pledged by the UN and the world's civilized nations to all peoples, including the Palestinians.
- How Many Divisions?
Israel is losing this war Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In this war, as in any modern war, propaganda plays a major role. The disparity between the forces, between the Israeli army - with its airplanes, gunships, drones, warships, artillery and tanks - and the few thousand lightly armed Hamas fighters, is one to a thousand, perhaps one to a million. In the political arena the gap between them is even wider. But in the propaganda war, the gap is almost infinite.
- How not to understand Islamist politics
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- How the World Depression Hits Orissa
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The recession in the West is having a profound impact on the deep rural interior of Orissa.
- How to really fight anti-Semitism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- How US Tax Breaks Fund Israeli Settlers
Peace Group Targets Settlement's Charitable Status Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Human Nature
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Dowie sympathizes with the view that 'wildenress' is a human creation.
- The Humble Tuna
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The humble tuna, "the chicken of the sea", is an unfortunate metaphor for all that is dysfunctional about our contemporary, western, capitalist world. The story of the Tuna is the story of our triumphant world, and provides a unified theory of its runaway excess
- Hypocrisy over Cuba's 'political prisoners'
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Political prisoners and Cuba can be a confusing mix, in our time of mass propaganda. Three groups have attracted international attention over the past decade.
- I Am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now
The Denial of My Parole Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Given the complexion of the three recent federal parolees, it might seem that my greatest crime was being Indian. But the truth is that my gravest offense is my innocence.
- I Was Born There, I Was Born Here (Wulidtu hunak, wulidtu huna)
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Published: 2001
- "Illegals" of the World Unite?
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 An interview with David Bacon.
- Imperialism and Global Political Economy
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Callinicos critically assesses the classical theories of imperialism developed in the era of the First World War by Marxists such as Lenin, Luxemburg, and Bukharin and by the Liberal economist J.A. Hobson. He then outlines a theory of the relationship between capitalism as an economic system and the international state system. He also traces the history of capitalist imperialism from the Dutch East India Company to the specific patterns of economic and geopolitical competition in the contemporary era of American decline and Chinese expansion. Imperialism, he concludes, is far from dead.
- Impossibleism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Impossibleists want unrestrained sustainable growth in the face of its inevitable impossibility. It is a mystery how they think this way, knowing as they surely do that eventually the bill will come due, and the engine will run out of gas - literally. Think about it - growth that never stops, ever. Even with limitless resources, it is simple intuition that eventually, somewhere, sometime....
- In Memory of Tim Costello
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Remembering Tim Costello.
- In Support of the Palestinian Human Rights Community Call for International Action
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In the past the world knew how to fight criminal policies. The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves: its trade relations are flourishing, academic and cultural cooperation continue and intensify with diplomatic support. This international backing must stop. That is the only way to stop the insatiable Israeli violence.
- In Uganda, Rioters Strip Women Wearing Trousers
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Rioters attacked and stripped about 20 Ugandan women who were wearing trousers last week during deadly riots in Kampala. The humiliations were part of a major confrontation between a traditional kingdom and President Yoweri Museveni's government.
- Independent Groups Debunk Israeli War Propaganda
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 As the Israelis try to justify the massive loss of civilian life in Gaza, their arguments and counter-charges continue to be shot down either by the United Nations or by international human rights organizations.
- India's UID And The Fantasy Of Dataveillance
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The perils of establishing nationwide identity systems have always been a hot topic of debate in countries that attach great value to privacy and human rights of its citizens. In India, there is not even a whimper of protest from politicians and civil society groups.
- Interior Ministry protection programme for journalists also used for "close-quarters spying"
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Journalist Claudia Julieta Duque, who is under an interior ministry protection programme for journalists, has been harassed and intimidated by Colombia's intelligence services, who obtained information about her from her alleged protectors.
- Intersectionality Coming Alive
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It's hard to choose just one thing to recommend for a socialist feminist “must-read,” as there are so many writers that influenced my thinking, from Audre Lorde to Meredith Tax. However, when I think about the works that have had the greatest impact on my thinking, I’d have to focus on fiction. While I appreciate reading history and theory, I’ve found that novels give me the opportunity to visualize other worlds in a much deeper and lasting way.
- Introduction to Marx's Capital
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 This book is aimed to guide the first time reader through a difficult and intricate text. Harvey makes CAPITAL relevant to the understanding of contemporary capitalism.
- Introduction to Spain's Revolution & Tragedy
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The year 2009 marks a tragic 70th anniversary, not only globally – the beginning of the Second World War, which would claim the lives of tens of millions and give rise to a whole new lexicon that includes “genocide” and “nuclear weapons” — but also the final defeat of the Spanish Revolution and the onset of 26 years of fascist rule under Francisco Franco.
- Introduction to the POUM's Seven Decades
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 We present this leading participant’s account of the Party Of Marxist Unity (POUM) as an historical document. The POUM was the most important organization of the revolutionary left in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39. Its historic role is twofold: as a critical political and military force in the struggle against fascism, and as a target of the murderous Stalinist campaign that ultimately destroyed the revolution from within. Wilebaldo Solano was General Secretary of the Iberian Communist Youth — Juventud Comunista Ibérica (JCI) in 1936, member of the Executive Committee of the POUM, imprisoned until 1944 and later elected as General Secretary of the POUM (while in exile). He is the author of El POUM in la Historia. Andreu Nin y la revolución española, and founder of the Fundacion Andreu Nin.
- Inuit Are Living on the Front Lines of Climate Change
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Climate change is being felt in northwest Canada, and in a wide circle at the top of the world, stretching from Alaska through the Siberian tundra, into northern Scandinavia and Greenland, and on to Canada's eastern Arctic islands, a circle of more than 300,000 indigenous people.
- The Invention of the Jewish People
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 In this new book, Shlomo Sand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth century, rather than in biblical times - when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation.
- Iran and Leftist Confusion
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Why are some leftists siding with the Iranian rulers rather than the popular demonstrations against the regime?
- Iran in Christian Zionist crosshairs
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the United Nations has stirred up two leading Christian Zionists, Mike Evans and Joel Rosenberg, to once again open fire on Iran.
- Iran - The War Dance
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Iran: Which side are you on?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Why are some U.S. leftists siding with the repressive Iranian regime against pro-democracy protesters?
- Is Anti-Capitalism Enough? The New Crisis & the Left
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Whether or not the current economic crisis and a historic presidential election open up hidden potentials for renewed popular protest and collective action, it is obvious that the radical Left has lost a great deal of its size, visibility, élan and influence since the 1970s.
- Is It Realistic to Demand the Right of Return of Palestinian Refugees?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Is Socialism Really Dead in Europe?
After the German Elections Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 With over 12 percent of the vote, the Left Party became Germany's fourth strongest, just ahead of the Greens. This was a promising score, considering the way the mildly left Left Party has been ostracized by media and the political class as though it were a reincarnation of the Bolsheviks. For the media, a party calling for a minimum wage and a pullout from Afghanistan is the "hard left" not fit to be associated with. The SPD and the Greens stressed that they would never consider a coalition with such disreputable folk.
- Is the UN complicit in Israel's massacre in Gaza?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A friend forwarded to me the most original greeting for the New Year: "I wish in 2009 a horrible year for all war criminals and their accomplices." I could not but think of whether some United Nations officials can be counted among such "accomplices."
- The Israel Advocacy Push to 'Reclaim' York University
Putting Current Events in Context Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 York is a longstanding hub for "Israel advocacy" organizations (as they designate themselves). This reality expresses itself in various ways. At the grassroots level, far-right Zionist organizing has been common at York since at least the early 1980s, and seems to have even included direct recruitment for armed settler movements in the West Bank (and more commonly for the Israeli military itself). At the level of university fundraising, York has thoroughly integrated some of Canada's leading Israel advocacy figures into its main administrative bodies. And at the level of university governance, York has earned a reputation for deep association with the Israeli state and for heavy-handed regulation of campus politics in favor of Israel advocates.
- Israel and Palestine
Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Reflections on the causes and consequences of the Israel Palestine conflict, by the author of The Iron Wall.
- Israel and US apologists rattled by UN report on war crimes in Gaza
The 'democracy' that can do no wrong Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Paul J. Balles considers the, "...lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia" inherent in the hypocritical reactions of Israeli officials, and of Israel's apologists in the United States, to the UN report on war crimes in Gaza.
- Israel: Boycott, divest, sanction
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.
- Israel in Gaza: A Critical Reframing
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The critical reframing we offer, that of Israelis committed to human rights, international law and a just peace as the only way out of this interminable and bloody conflict, argues that security cannot be achieved unilaterally while one side oppresses the other and that Israel's attack on Gaza is merely another attempt to render its Occupation permanent by destroying any source of effective resistance.
- The Israel Lobby's Power Comes from The American Ruling Class
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 By ensuring that the American mass media refrain from telling Americans the true reason (Israel's ethnic cleansing) why Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims take up arms against Israel, the American ruling class ensures that Americans will believe the lie that Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims are hateful, irrational, anti-semitic terrorists who kill decent Israelis "just like us" and would likewise kill Americans if we fail to obey our upper class rulers who protect us from terrorism.
- Israel: Misuse of Drones Killed Civilians in Gaza
Sources News Release Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israeli attacks with guided missiles fired from aerial drones killed civilians during the recent Gaza fighting in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch says.
- Israel: Obama's "Bibiyahu" Problem
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Is this the government of Biberman [Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud Party, and foreign minister Avigdor Liberman of the ultra-right Israel Beitenu], or perhaps of Bibarak [Bibi and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak]?
- Israel Seeks Ways To Silence Human Rights Groups
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In a bid to staunch the flow of damaging evidence of war crimes committed during Israel's winter assault on Gaza, the Israeli government has launched a campaign to clamp down on human rights groups, both in Israel and abroad.
- Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews
"Lost" American Youth Urged to Come to Israel Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Israeli government has launched a television and internet advertising campaign urging Israelis to inform on Jewish friends and relatives abroad who may be in danger of marrying non-Jews.
- Israeli agents to screen judges before appointment
Fury as security service gets veto over judiciary Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israel's internal security service has been given a de facto veto over the appointment of judges.
- Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A readable introduction to the history and practice of apartheid in Israel.
- Israeli Doctors Collude in Torture
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israeli human rights groups charge that Israel's watchdog body on medical ethics has failed to investigate evidence that doctors working in detention facilities are turning a blind eye to cases of torture.
- Israeli guards 'humiliated inmates'
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A group of female former Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails have accused prison guards of subjecting them to intrusive and degrading treatment.
- Israeli Military Resisters' Tour Hits New York City
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A 19-year-old Israeli military resister explains why she refused to join the Israel Defense Forces.
- Israeli Rabbis Ban Marriage For Jewish 'Untouchables'
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 New immigrants to Israel from Russia with inadequate documentation have found themselves on a collision course with Israel's Orthodox rabbis, who regard themselves as guarding the Jewish people's ethnic and religious purity.
- Israeli refusers follow South African footsteps in the struggle against apartheid
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Shministim are conscientious objectors. We are Israeli high-school graduates who refuse conscription into the military, and are repeatedly imprisoned as a result. We will not take part of the occupation of another people, the Palestinians, particularly when doing so goes against human values and cannot be explained on grounds of security.
- Israeli Spying in the United States
Full-Spectrum Penetration Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S.
- Israelis Targeting Grassroots Activists
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israeli authorities are increasingly targeting and intimidating nonviolent Palestinian grassroots activists involved in anti-occupation activities who are drawing increased support from the international community. They see non-violent activists as a major threat because they undermine the legitimacy of Israel's occupation and apartheid policies.
- Israel's Arab Women Workers Need Not Apply
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israel's private sector is almost entirely closed to Arab women because of discriminatory practices by employers.
- Israel's Colonial War against the Gaza Strip
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israel is becoming a war machine, terrifying yet lacking in all moral grounding.
- Israel's Crimes, America's Silence
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 To date, too little mention has been made of investigations that show there is sufficient evidence to bring charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Israel's political and military leadership for their actions in Gaza. Recently, two comprehensive independent reports have been published on Gaza, and earlier this month a mission mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, and chaired by South African Richard Goldstone, visited Gaza to conduct a further investigation into Israel's offensive....
- Israel's School Apartheid Highlighted By Court Case
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Instances of Arab children being denied places at kindergartens and junior schools have become more common in recent years. Now, an Arab couple whose daughter was expelled from an Israeli daycare centre on her first day because she was Arab is taking the case to court.
- It's Never Been Easy
Essays on Modern Labor Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Most of the labor essays included here were written over the last seven years and appeared originally in various publications, including CounterPunch, The Exception Magazine, Liberalati, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, State of Nature, and Synthesis/Regeneration. This book is dedicated to working men and women everywhere, but particularly to the members of America's labor unions' those individuals who carry out the work, solve the problems, make it happen, but who, alas, rarely share in the treasure or glory.
- Jewish Canadians Concerned About Suppression of Criticism of Israel
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 We are Jewish Canadians concerned about all expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and social injustice. We believe that the Holocaust legacy "Never again" means never again for all peoples. It is a tragic turn of history that the State of Israel, with its ideals of democracy and its dream of being a safe haven for Jewish people, causes immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinian people.
- Jewish dissenters speak out over Gaza
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On Wednesday, a dozen Jewish women occupied the Israeli consulate in Toronto, demanding an end to the Israeli siege of Gaza. The women expressed "outrage at Ottawa's refusal to condemn the massacres," said spokesperson Miriam Garfinkle. They urged the media to report that "many Jewish-Canadians do not support Israel's violence and apartheid policies."
- Jewish Peace Activists Defend German Critic of Israel Calling for a Boycott of Israel for its Treatment of Palestinians is not Anti-Semitic
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 More than 370 Jewish peace activists from around the world signed a statement defending German politician Hermann Dierkes against charges of anti-Semitism.
- Jewish Women Occupy Israeli Consulate in Toronto
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A group of Jewish-Canadian women occupied the Israeli Consulate in Toronto in protest against the on-going Israeli assault on the people of Gaza.
See a video at http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ln0zFRg0kRU
- Jews Are Not an Equity-Seeking Group
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Anti-Semitism, pervasive and deadly only a couple generations ago, is no longer a form of oppression. Jews are not currently oppressed on the basis of Jewish identity alone. Measured in terms of social power, a white Jewish male is just another white male, his Jewishness of no more relevance than if he were Dutch or Irish.
- Jews of All Colors
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, a long-time feminist activist, disabuses the Jewish left of its most common assumptions: that Jewish culture is Ashkenazi culture and that Jews are white people.
- Journalists Killed since 1992
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A database of more than 700 journalists who have been murdered or killed on dangerous assignments since 1992. Interactive maps, timelines, and statistical breakdowns providing analysis by country, year, and type of death with a special emphasis on unsolved murders, a focal point of CPJ's Global Campaign Against Impunity.
- The Journey of James Neugass
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 At the age of 32, Isidore James Newman Neugass (1905-49), a lesser poet of the Lost Generation crowd who published as “James Neugass,” departed New York City to spend six months mostly on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. In late 1937 and early 1938, Neugass, serving as a volunteer ambulance driver as part of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, was present at Teruel, one of the conflict’s bloodiest battles, claiming over 100,000 casualties.
- Just Another Cog in the Machine
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 Using wordplay & a photocopier to promote starting a union.
- Just say no to Sharia law
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Let us support the courageous Muslims who, often at great personal risk, are campaigning against religious extremism.
- Justice for All?
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 An informative short on how Legal Aid fails low-income workers in BC.
- Justice in the News: A Response to the targetting of media in Gaza
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A mission to Gaza found that media were subject to intimidation and direct military assault and deliberately prevented from working freely. The findings confirm evidence of frequent targeting of media during the operations.
- Justifying What You Know Can't Be True
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Researchers looking at al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein explore why it is that people often steadfastly believe something even when they've been shown it ain't so.
- Keeping Books Safe
A Bad Law Threatens Our Past Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Imagine a dystopian horror tale in which virtually all books from the past were destroyed...Books that did not meet the ideologies of the publishers, the demands of the mass market, the trends of the day would be destroyed...That incredible scenario is actually playing out in terms of children's books under a law meant to protect toddlers from lead contaminant in toys. Called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), the law was passed in August 2008 -- quickly, without scrutiny and nearly unanimously.
- Keeping Independent Politics Alive
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It's important for us on the left at least to salute the most courageous candidacy of 2008: Cynthia McKinney (former Georgia congresswoman) and Rosa Clemente (Puerto Rican hip-hop cultural activist), the presidential and vice-presidential candidates of the Green Party.
- The Key to Happiness That No One -- Not Even the Happiness Gurus -- Are Discussing
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 There's just one pathway to happiness in which this deep, human need for power is given pride of place: democracy. By this I mean democracy as a living practice that enables us to have a real say in every dimension of our public lives, from school to workplace and beyond.
- Killing America's Kids
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Why is the Secretary of Defense so angry at having the war photographed? Easy: Spin control. Spin is so very important in war these days. While America is only barely a democracy, still, if the public, the great sleeping, acquiescent, ignorant beast, ever gets really upset, the war ends. The Pentagon is acutely aware of this.
- Killing Granny with the Laziness Bias
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 While it is often the case that the majority of Americans do see the light "about the need for healthcare reform, a new energy policy or affordable, high-quality day care." The dominant journalistic practices, especially in broadcast and cable news, dim the light in favor of noise. Far-right Republicans understand, almost instinctively, this preference for noise. And they appreciate "and know how to cultivate" the greatest bias in electronic journalism right now: the laziness bias. The laziness bias means you feature sensation over substance, provocative sound bites over investigative reporting, misinformation over fact.
- Knicker protest targets Hindu militants
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The socially conservative Hindu Sri Ram Sena (Lord Ram's Army) a group of vigilantes has attacked women in pubs and unwed couples, in an effort to protect what they call "Indian Culture". Indian women fought back by sending 40,000 pairs of pink underwear to their offices.
- LA Teachers Face the Crisis
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Interview with UTLA activist. Against the Current interviewed a longtime activist and current leader in the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) about the impact of California’s devastating budget crisis on public services and on education in particular.
- Land, Food, Freedom
Struggles for the Gendered Commons in Kenya Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009
- The Last Bundist
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Marek Edelman died last week [2009]. He was 90. He was buried on Friday. Marek Edeleman was the last surviving member of the Warsaw Ghetto. He was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and its last commander - after Mordechai Anelewicz was killed.
- Last Frontier
Local communities fight mineral exploration and eviction in the Andes Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Afro-descendant communities in Colombia are fighting to retain control of their ancestral goldmines in the face of pressure from private interests.
- The Last Refuge
Neve Gordon and the Boycott of Israel Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Let us admit the truth: The occupier deserves to be boycotted. As long as the Israelis pay no price for the occupation, the occupation will not end, and therefore the only way open to the opponents of the occupation is to take concrete means that will make the Israelis understand that the injustice they are perpetrating comes with a price tag.
- Latin America: Women in History - More than Just Heroines
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Women in Latin American struggles.
- Lawyers in EU draw up list of alleged IDF war criminals
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Lawyers in a number of European countries are collecting information on Israeli soldiers who are implicated in war crimes.
- Lazy Journalists are the Darlings of the Corporations
Indian Country and the Lessons of McCarthyism Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Lazy journalists are great friends of the corporations. They are known as "armchair journalists" because they sit in comfort and rewrite press releases from politicians and corporations. To spice it up a bit, they dial a few numbers, get a few comments and call it a news story. They are the "darlings of the energy companies," as Buffy Sainte Marie says.
- The Left Alternative
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Unger writes a manifesto that engages a vital question of our time: where should the Left go from here? In his analysis, Unger examines the major debates in the world today and he rallies for alternative forms of change.
- Left Needs Soul Searching
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The left fears that the people it is trying to persuade and mobilize aren't capable of imagining or accepting a truly radical vision of the future.
- The Left-Wing Media Fallacy
Jeremy Bowen, The BBC, And Other National Treasures Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The issue is not complex, not esoteric: in a world dominated by corporate power we rely on media corporations for news about that world. Future generations will surely be aghast that so few people today are able to perceive the perfectly obvious problem, the very clear source of mass control, that this implies.
- Legalize It!
Why Decriminalization of Drugs Won't Get the 10,000 Ton Monkey Off of Mexico's Back Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Decriminalization is turning into a bonanza for Mexico City cops who have taken to carrying scales to weigh confiscated drugs and shaking down those "criminals" who exceed the decreed limits. Shaking down small-time users and dealers is nothing new in this the most corrupt, crime-ridden, and conflictive city in the western hemisphere. Indeed, crooked cops have been planting drugs on unwary citizens as long as cops have patrolled these mean streets.
- The Lessons of Gaza 2009
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 First the numbers: "1285 Palestinians killed, mostly civilians, including 167 civil police officers. 4336 Palestinians wounded, mostly civilians. Two political leaders of Hamas assassinated, Nizar Rayan and Said Siam, in bombs that flattened their home and also killed many of their family members and neighbors. Tens of thousands of people forced to abandon their homes: 2400 houses completely destroyed, and 17,000 semi-destroyed or damaged. Tens of mosques, public civilian facilities, police stations, and media, health, and educational institutions either completely or partially destroyed. 121 industrial and commercial workshops destroyed and at least 200 others damaged."
- Lessons of the 1934 Minneapolis Strikes
Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A depiction of the Trotskyist union militants' organization of mass strikes in Minneapolis during 1934.
- Let's Not Be Cremated Equal
The combined Universites Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1959 - 1967 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Published in The Sixties in Canada: A Turbulent and Creative Decade, M. Athena Palaeologu ed. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2009
- A Letter to the ATC Editors
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A brief letter doesn’t allow much space to speak on markets and planning under socialism, but perhaps these few notes will help clarify the issues.
- Letters to the Editors: What Are You For? Democracy Vs. Politics
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 I’ve been reading Against the Current for a long time. I agree with 99% of it, because we’re against the same things. But what are you for?
- "Liberté de parole" - aussi longtemps que cela n'offense personne
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Life as Politics
How Ordinary People Change the Middle East Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Asef Bayat reveals how under the shadow of the authoritarian rule, religious moral authorities, and economic elites, ordinary people can make meaningful change through the practices of everyday life.
- The Life You Can Save
Acting Now to End World Poverty Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 This is the right time to ask yourself: "What should I be doing to help?" For the first time in history, it is now within our reach to eradicate world poverty and the suffering it brings. The people of the developed world face a profound choice: If we are not to turn our backs on a fifth of the world's population, we must become part of the solution.
- The limits of anti-racism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The contemporary discourse of 'antiracism' is focused much more on taxonomy than politics. It emphasizes the name by which we should call some strains of inequality -- whether they should be broadly recognized as evidence of 'racism' -- over specifying the mechanisms that produce them or even the steps that can be taken to combat them. And, no, neither 'overcoming racism' nor 'rejecting whiteness' qualifies as such a step any more than does waiting for the 'revolution' or urging God's heavenly intervention.
- LIVING IN THE U.X.A.
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 At the height of the Great Depression, a group of unemployed Oakland workers decided to take matters into their own hands. The system wasn't working, so they set up their own system. Money was nearly worthless, so they decided to live by barter. They called themselves the Unemployed Exchange Association and they soon went on to write a remarkable chapter in American economic history.
- "Local" Goes Loco
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Buying "local" has become a popular movement in American agriculture and commerce. Some corporations, however, are taking "local" a step farther.
- Long Before "Boondocks"
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 During the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s Black newspapers presented a picture of African-American life rendered invisible by the white media. Like white newspapers, they carried a funnies page where Black readers faithfully followed the foibles of cartoon characters like Ollie Harrington’s “Brother Bootsie,” Samuel Milai’s “Bucky” and Wilbert Holloway’s “Sunny Boy Sam.”
- Long March to Revolution
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Revolutions at first appearance may seem sudden or spontaneous events. But they are also built over the long-haul, through generations of resistance and the preservation in collective memory of traditions of struggle and solidarity.
- Looking at Che Guevara
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 That Che Guevara's silhouette has found its way onto walls and T-shirts around the world is nothing new. A traveler through Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s would have seen Che’s face spray-painted onto walls in working-class neighborhoods. In revolutionary Nicaragua Che graffiti was officially sanctioned, as was the massive outpouring of pro-Sandinista, anti-contra wall art. As a fallen martyr Che symbolized commitment and hope for anti-imperialist guerilla organizations throughout the Americas.
- Looting Africa: Canadian Company Eyes Gold in Democratic Republic of Congo
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A Canadian mining company is prepared to bring hundreds of millions of dollars in gold out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of Africa's most embattled and poorest countries. One expert says that to extract gold, the company will have to cut a deal with a violent African militia.
- The lying silence of those who know
Holocaust Denied Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In every war, Israel has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft or more and more land.
- A Magical Moment
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Penelope Rosemont, poet, artist and essayist, is the well known author of Surrealist Women. An International Anthology. Her new book is a lively and fascinating document, based on her personal notes from the 1960s, a time when a window to the impossible seemed to open. The story begins in Chicago, and takes us to Paris, London, and back to the United States; the author did not make it to the Seven Cities of Cibola, because they exist only in an Uncle Scrooge comic strip…
- Mainstream Media And The Propaganda Machine
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Mainstream media, especially the American media plays a vital role in shaping the world public opinion.
- Making a Killing
The Canada-Israel Military-Industrial Partnership Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 Canadian companies supply many essential components to Israel's war machine. This pamphlet provides information on the arms trade that will help to strengthen the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions.
- Malawi: Women Fight Harmful Cultural Practices
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Combatting traditional practices that harm women.
- Manchester's Radical History
Exploring Greater Manchester's Grassroots History Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Manchester Radical History Collective is a small group of politically active people living in Manchester. We share an interest in the city’s radical and grassroots history – the local struggles and campaigns that have shaped the city of Manchester and the towns that make up Greater Manchester, and the people that live in them. And we’re inspired by the way that Manchester’s people have maintained a spirit of independence and resistance which has endured down the years.
- A Mandel for All Seasons
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The German New Left activist Rudi Dutshcke declared just prior to his death in 1979 that his friend Ernest Mandel “continues to surprise and yet remains the same.” Dutshcke’s appraisal draws attention to the appeal of Ernest (born Ezra) Mandel (1923-95), the Belgian Marxist economist and revolutionary activist, for a generation of young people impelled toward Leftist politics in the 1960s era of decolonization, civil rights activism, and the student revolt.
- Manituana
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 1775. The conflict between the British Empire and the American colonies erupts in all-out war. Meanwhile, in the secluded Mohawk Valley, a utopian community thrives: white Irish, Scots and Native Americans live harmoniously together in "Iroquireland."
- Manual teaches intelligence agency employees how to spy on problem journalists
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The weekly Semana has revealed the existence of an instruction manual for employees of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS), Colombia's leading intelligence agency, that explains how they should spy on, threaten, intimidate and discredit NGOs, judges and journalists who create problems for the government.
- The Manufactured Doubt Industry And The Hacked Email Controversy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The fossil fuel industry has been working for years to create a smokescreen of doubt to obscure the facts of global warming.
- The Many Faces of Bank Nationalization
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Calls for nationalization of the banking industry have been bubbling since at least September 2008, when the current banking panic began in the wake of the Lehman Brothers' collapse, the initial AIG bailout, and the quick absorption of Merrill Lynch-Wachovia-Washington Mutual banks by their larger competitors, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase.
- Marek Edelman: A True Mensch
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors.
- Media Capitalism, the State and 21st Century Media Democracy Struggles
An interview with Robert McChesney Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Robert McChesney talks about contemporary media capitalism and 21st century media democracy struggles to understand and change it.
- Media Lies And The War Drive Against Iran
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Iran's crime is its independence. Having thrown out the US's favourite tyrant, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Iran remains the only resource-rich Muslim state beyond US control. As only Israel has a 'right to exist' in the Middle East, the US goal is to cripple the Islamic Republic. This will allow Israel to divide and dominate the region on Washington's behalf, undeterred by a confident neighbour.
- The Medical Cannabis Victory: A Textbook Case of Organizing and Resistance
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Shifting from mere activism and advocacy to a referendum strategy also forced significant swathes of drug policy reform movements to enter a new phase: that of community organizing. Referenda in most states require the collection of signatures, which means advocates had to get out of the circle jerk cycle of endless meetings and internal debate and go out there, door to door, to recruit from the general public. Once they got the proposed laws on the ballot that meant campaigning for votes. This marked a paradigm shift in what had been a self-marginalized reform movement: a wake up call.
- Meet the Real Death Panels
44,000 Americans a Year Die From Lack of Health Insurance Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.
- Meeting Alexandra Kollontai
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 My first encounter with Wikipedia was several years ago when I was looking up some female Bolsheviks — there was very little about them by way of normal Googling, and I had never tried this collective online encyclopedia before.
- Meltdown
The End of the Age of Greed Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Paul Mason, the economics editor of BBC Newsnight, discusses the current economic recession and how it has caused for the neo-liberal orthodoxy to be undermined. He explores the roots of the crisis , and envisions a new era of hyper-regulated capitalism.
- Los Mexicanos: The Struggle for Justice of Patricia Perez
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 Every year, some 4000 migrant foreign workers coming mostly from Mexico, labour in Quebec farms to plant and pick our vegetables. In the summer of 2006, Patricia Perez a pro-union militant speaking for the UFCW, launches a major drive to organize the workers in several farms south of Montreal.
- Mexico's Fake RCMP Report Backfires
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Murders committed by police are deemed not to have happened, or to have been justifiable force.
- Mexico's PATCO Moment?
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), made up of approximately 43,000 active and 22,000 retired workers in Mexico City and surrounding states, is fighting for its life. The union’s struggle has rallied allies in the labor movement and on the left in Mexico and solidarity from throughout the country and around the world, but if it is to survive the union and its supporters have to take stronger actions than they have so far, and time is not on their side.
- Mike Rogers: The Man Who Outs Closeted Right-Wing Politicians
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Mike Rogers talks about why it's important to report on the secret sex lives of gay conservatives who are in bed with anti-gay forces.
- Militarizing Latin America
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Establishing US military bases in Colombia is only one part of a much broader effort to restore Washington's capacity for military intervention. There has been a sharp increase in US military aid and training of Latin American officers, focusing on light infantry tactics to combat "radical populism" -- a concept that sends shivers up the spine in the Latin American context.
- Milwaukee League Comes to the Defense of Public Schools
Milwaukeeans vs. the Privatization Pandemic Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The battle to keep the public in control of the public schools.
- Mirrors
Stories of Almost Everyone Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Open any history book and you'll learn about revolutionary leaders, decorated generals, genius scientists and passionate artists. What about the leaders’ assistants? The loyal soldiers? The helpful lab assistants and the inspirations for great art? History books are so filled with greatness that the stories of the people are often neglected. Mirrors resolves this issue. Mirrors is a mosaic of humanity.
- The misbegotten 'war against cancer'
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Mobile Schools Help Nomadic Somalis Fight Drought
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Mobile schools - secular pre-schools which follow these groups as they move to find pasture and water for livestock - are an attempt to help nomadic communities develop more options as the climate becomes increasingly hostile.
- Mondragon Worker-Cooperatives Decide How to Ride Out a Downturn
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Mondragón Cooperative Corporation (MCC), the largest consortium of worker-owned companies, has developed a different way of doing business - a way that puts workers, not shareholders, first.
- Mountain Biking: Frequently Asked Questions
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Why do people mountain bike, and what harms does it do?
- Movement Pachamama: Indigenous Movements in Latin America
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It is no accident that most of the remaining natural resources are on indigenous land. First the white world destroys their own environment, then they come asking for the last pieces of land they have put us on, the earth we have protected.
- My Studs Terkel, and Yours
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 When Against The Current asked me to write a piece on Studs Terkel, I wondered why me? But after I pondered the idea, I thought, of course me. And you. All readers of his books, Against the Current and other magazines, large and small that serve as a mouthpiece for those with the desire for a better world and anger against the hypocrisy of our times.
- The Myths of Liberal Zionism
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Yitzhak Laor, one of Israel's most independent writers and prominent dissidents, demystifies the "peace camp" liberals.
- The NAACP at 100
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) marks its 100th anniversary this year. It plans a full celebration at its centennial national convention July 11-16 in New York City.
- Naomi Klein Shows You Can Boycott Israel Without Cutting Off Dialogue Over Palestine
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 An interview with Klein and Israeli publisher Yael Lerer on why boycotting Israel will pressure the country to live up to international law.
- Nature and Animal Conservation
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Conservation of ecosystems and the species within them would help to maintain the natural balances disrupted by recent human activity. Unfortunately, despite the effort put into conservation by organizations and activists, their work can easily be undermined by those who have other interests. This occurs, for example, from habitat destruction, illegal poaching, to influencing or manipulating laws designed to protect species.
- The new language of diversity
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Racial talk today is as likely to come out of the mouths of liberal anti-racists as of reactionary racial scientists.
- The New-Old World
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Perry Anderson presents an analysis of Europe's development since the end of the Cold War. In his analysis, Anderson cuts through some myths about continental Europe and the European Union.
- New World Coming
The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009
- Newspeak in the 21st Century
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Revealing the lethal bias in 'balanced' reporting.
- NGO Reports on Gaza War Belie Israeli Claims
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 This week, two respected human rights organisations - one Palestinian, one Israeli - each came out with very full reports into the extent of the damage caused by the assault Israel waged against Gaza last winter.
- 9500 Liberty
Resource Type: Film First Published: 2009 Prince William County, Virginia becomes ground zero in America's explosive battle over immigration policy when elected officials adopt a law requiring police officers to question people they have "probable cause" to suspect are undocumented immigrants.
- The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Finance
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 An incisive introduction to global finance – where money comes from, the current mechanisms and the need for control and reform.
- No, Not All Bi Women Love Threesomes
Silly Myths About Women and Bisexuality Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Being bisexual means that you are attracted to members of both sexes, even if you're not sleeping with them. Here are some things bisexuality doesn't mean.
- No One Else Will Stop The Killing
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Because we personally understand what war truly means, we have written, called and demonstrated repeatedly for an end to the killing in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- No Platform Won't Work
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It is ridiculous for anyone to think that you can defeat the BNP by silencing them. A sinister thought, when silenced, only gets wider currency in the subterranean world where everything 'establishment' is viewed as a conspiracy. Sunlight is the best disinfectant
- Norwegian Pension Fund Divests from Israeli Military Giant Elbit
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Norwegian Ministry of Finance has excluded the Israeli company Elbit Systems Ltd. from the Government Pension Fund - Global, on the basis of the Council on Ethics' recommendation. The Council on Ethics has found that investment in Elbit constitutes an unacceptable risk of contribution to serious violations of fundamental ethical norms as a result of the company's integral involvement in Israel's construction of a separation barrier on occupied territory.
- The not-so-hidden persuaders
The Israel lobby's global propaganda manual Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A major public relations manual for Israel lobbyists teaches pro-Israel propagandists how to hoodwink people about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how to silence critics and how to avoid making statements that produce negative reactions.
- Notes from the class struggle: small group workplace organising
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 This pamphlet aims to show what small groups and unions can achieve in workplace disputes. These examples and analyses of successful small-scale actions should prove instructive to workers in a variety of fields from a variety of backgrounds, whether they are in the transport or manufacturing sector, students or illegal immigrants, or are employed in another branch of industry.
- The NUHW Revolt
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The largest battle within the U.S. union movement in decades is happening right now. It is an organizing campaign to leave the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for the newly formed National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW).
- Obama on Israel-Palestine
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Noam Chomsky criticizes Barack Obama's vague stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict and warns that there is much importance in what he is not expressing.
- Obama's Afghanistan War: Morally Wrong, or Incompetently Waged?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 For our rulers, the point of a war is to make us Americans feel the way only a war can--determined to prevail over a dangerous foreign enemy by supporting our leaders when we would otherwise oppose them over domestic issues. Wars are waged for domestic social control and to justify enormous arms expenditures and contracts. Our leaders need wars to drag on so the enemy can be deemed sufficiently dangerous and implacable and thus the war made to seem important or necessary.
- Obama's "We Got No Money" Rap
Why It Augurs a Sinister Banksters' End Game Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Obama is deliberately precipitating another crisis on the advise of his chief lieutenants. Summers and Geithner are steering the economy back into recession so they can implement the same austerity measures and "structural adjustment" programs which have been used throughout the developing world. It's "starve the beast" all over again. As the stimulus dries up, revenue-depleted states will be forced to auction off public lands, resources, parks and other assets to the highest bidder. The banksters and robber barons will feast on the country's treasures while the middle class is crushed by the freefalling dollar, lost home equity, and persistent high unemployment.
- Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?
A re-assessment of Israel's practicies in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A study of the Israel-Palestine situation from the standpoint of international law.
- Occupation Industries: The Israeli Industrial Zones
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In a climate in which the call for a consumer boycott of Israeli goods is finally gaining strength, one area of Israel's economy is, as yet, surprisingly under-researched. Most of Israel's industrial zones in the West Bank are connected to illegal residential settlements and provide an indispensable economic backbone to the local settler economy. Business areas like the industrial zones are at the forefront of Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine, facilitating ethnic cleansing and acting hand-in-hand with the Israeli state in their quest for territorial dominance.
- Occupation on Trial - Palestinian village sues Canadian corporations for building illegal Israeli settlements
Sources News Release Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Bil'in, a Palestinian village that has become an international symbol of Palestinian popular non-violent resistance to the ongoing construction of the Israeli separation wall, is suing Canadian corporations for building illegal settlements.
- Of Sowing and Harvests
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Perhaps our word can manage to join forces with others in Mexico and the world and perhaps first it's heard as a murmur, then out loud, and then a scream that they hear in Gaza. We don't know about you, but we Zapatistas from the EZLN, we know how important it is, in the middle of destruction and death, to hear some words of encouragement.
- Olive oil, opposition and Gaza
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Rick Salutin writes about increasingly widespread Jewish opposition to Israel's actions.
- On Darwin's 200th Anniversary
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The year 2009 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, as well as the 150th anniversary of the publication of his celebrated book On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Darwin left an indelible mark on our understanding of the world we live in and our place in history.
- On Islam And Gender Equality
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A review essay on Salbiah Ahmad's book Critical Thoughts on Islam, Rights and Freedom in Malaysia.
- On Locational Privacy, and How to Avoid Losing it Forever
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Over the next decade, systems which create and store digital records of people's movements through public space will be woven inextricably into the fabric of everyday life. We are already starting to see such systems now, and there will be many more in the near future.
- On Palestinian Civil Disobedience
The Google Matrix Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Human rights organizations have documented the forms of repression Israel deploys against villages that resist the annexation of their land. Once a village decides to struggle against the annexation barrier the entire community is punished. In addition to home demolitions, curfews and other forms of movement restriction, the Israeli occupation forces consistently use violence against the protestors - and most often targets the youth -- beating, tear-gassing, as well as deploying both lethal and 'non-lethal' ammunition against them.
- On Richard Wright's Centennial: The Great Outsider
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In the spring of 1940, Richard Wright’s Native Son was published to such acclaim that Black Marxist C.L.R. James decreed the novel “not only a literary but also a political event.” By means of a riveting naturalist fictional technique, depicting the world through the eyes and ears of a 20-year-old unemployed African American named Bigger Thomas, Wright evokes the volatile brutality of poverty and segregation on Chicago’s South Side during the latter part of the Great Depression.
- On Rumours
How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Describes the social and pyschological forces that make the spread of misinformation inevitable. Its argument runs like this: whether or not we choose to believe something, and whether we feel inclined to pass it on, depends largely on what we already believe.
- On the Question of Revolutionary Organization: the Case of the NPA in France
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The challenge of creating an anti-bureaucratic, democratic revolutionary socialist party.
- The Only House Left Standing
The Middle East Journals of Tom Hurndall Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A journey through the life and thoughts of the late Tom Hurndall, a British photojournalist fatally wounded in Gaza in April 2003.
- An Open Letter From Anti-Zionist Jewish Youth in Canada
Sources News Release Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Let us not be silent bystanders while humanity suffers. Let us raise our voices, as Jewish youth, and demand a single, democratic state, with equal rights for everyone in Israel/Palestine.
- Operation Cast Lead: News control as a military objective
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Control of news in time of war has become a military objective.
- Ordeal of Australia's child migrants
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The story of the British child migrants sent to Australia has been described as a history of lies, deceit, cruelty and official disinterest and neglect.
- Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 David Harvey says that there is a lot of work to be done to coalesce various tendencies around the underlying question: can the world change materially, socially, mentally, and politically in such a way as to confront not only the dire state of social and natural relations in so many parts of the world, but also the perpetuation of endless compound growth? This is the question that the alienated and discontented must insist upon asking, again and again, even as they learn from those who experience the pain directly and who are so adept at organizing resistances to the dire consequences of compound growth on the ground.
- The Other
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 The Other is made up of a series of lectures that Kapuscinski delivered in Austria and in Poland, eloquent speeches in which he considers the history, the present and the future of our relationship with the Other, a term he employs to distinguish Europeans from "non-Europeans, or non-whites -- while fully aware for the latter, the former are just as much 'Others'."
- Our exclusive right to self-defense
Rattling the Cage Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We're entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism. And there are no limits on our right to self-defense. There is no such thing as "disproportionate."
- Outcry Over Israel's War Crimes
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Jonathan Cook describes legal actions underway to hold Israel accountable for war crimes.
- Overshadowed by Tea Party Movement, the Christian Right Scrambles to Claim It Isn't Racist
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Tea Party movement has the juice as the religious right is on the wane. Survival may mean joining up, but that presents an image problem for Christians.
- Tom Paine, restless democrat
Profile of a radical Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Mike Marqusee celebrates the life, work and ideas of the great revolutionary who declared that "my country is the world and my religion is to do good."
- Painting Red Square
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 7000 kilometres from Moscow, there's another Red Square. Witness the struggle of the labour-left in Whitehorse, Yukon to find a friendly watering hole where they can share a glass with their comrades and debate which shade of red is best.
- Palestine/Israel: A single state, with liberty and justice for all
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The notion of religious-ethnocentric entitlement and exclusivity for one people at the expense of another has been rejected the world over. Palestinians reject it and we assert that we are human beings worthy of the same human rights accorded to the rest of humanity; that we are worthy of our homes and farms, our heritage, our churches and mosques, and our history; and that we should not be expected to negotiate with our oppressors for such basic dignities. The two-state solution was and remains an instrument to circumvent the basic human rights of Palestinians in order to accommodate Israel's desire to be Jewish. Polls show that Palestinians refuse to be the enemies of our Jewish brothers and sisters anywhere, just as we refuse to be oppressed by them.
- The Palestinian Struggle and the Anarchist Dilemma
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A review of the discussion of the relationship between anarchism and the Palestinian/Israeli struggle by Uri Gordon, an Israeli anarchist, in his book "Anarchy Alive!".
- Palestinian Women Suffer as Israel Violates CEDAW
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Palestinian women continue to suffer abuse and denial of basic human rights at the hands of Israeli settlers and soldiers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
- The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction
Published in Monthly Review Volume 61, Number 6- November 2009 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A growing army of self-styled “sustainable developers” argues that there is no contradiction between the unlimited accumulation of capital and the preservation of the earth. The system can continue to expand by creating a new “sustainable capitalism,” bringing the efficiency of the market to bear on nature and its reproduction. In reality, these visions amount to little more than a renewed strategy for profiting on planetary destruction.
- The Path to Human Development
Capitalism or Socialism? Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 If we believe in people, if we believe that the goal of a human society must be that of "ensuring overall human development," our choice is clear: socialism or barbarism.
- Pay-to-Print
"News" Stories for Cash Scandal Rocks India Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On "paid news".
- Peace Prospects in the Middle East?
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The primacy of economic concerns notwithstanding, the interplay between peace and the Obama Administration’s policies toward the Middle East can be considered a defining measure of the new administration’s success. It was only natural and also telling that President Obama decided to cut the ribbons on his foreign policy making journey by initiating phone calls to leaders in the region.
- The Penal State in an Age of Crisis
Published in Monthly Review Volume 61, Number 2 - June 2009 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 We may be approaching a moment where it will be possible to open up a debate on the obscenity and absurdity of the present order and its punitive social control mechanisms. Smashing the penal state is job one for socialist politics as we put the neoliberal hell in our rearview mirrors.
- The Perils of Obamamania
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Reed discusses the Left's support for Obama as a phenomenon in which the "lesser evil" is supported at any cost. Reed examines the implications of this support seeing as Obama's policies are shifting toward the center ground. In his analysis, he suggests that progressive support for Obama may permanently shift American politics to the Right.
- Utah Phillips 1935-2008
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Bruce “Utah" Phillips, who died in May 2008, was a living, singing museum of radical working-class culture. Through his songs and stories he connected three generations to the living memory of class struggle martyrs, hobo lore and life, and the pacifists and anarchists of the early 20th century. In addition to being a world beloved folksinger and performer, Phillips spent time as a peace campaigner, a freight train hopper, and a union organizer. Phillips will be best remembered for his countless renditions of the songs of Joe Hill and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Wobblies.
- Pinkney Fight Continues
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Reverend Edward Pinkney was ordered released from prison last Christmas Eve while his conviction and 3-10 year prison term — for quoting Deuteronomy in regard to divine punishment of a racist judge — is on appeal. He remains under house arrest and is prohibited from speaking out on racism and corporate abuses in Berrien County, Michigan.
- Pirates of the Mediterranean
Israel Kidnaps Peace Boat Crew Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On June 30, 2009, the government of Israel committed an act of piracy when the Israeli Navy in international waters illegally boarded the "Spirit of Humanity" and kidnapped its 21-person crew from 11 countries.
- Playing the 'Anti-Semitism' Card Against Venezuela
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Even after the attack on a Caracas synagogue was shown to be an inside job, a robbery perpetrated by employees of the synagogue's security firm, the international media has continued to portray the incident as an anti-Semitic attack, while suggesting that the Chavez government is somehow to blame.
- Political Controls from Above
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 When in 1961 Fidel Castro proclaimed “inside the revolution everything; outside the revolution, nothing,” he left out the key question of who decided what was and who qualified as being “inside the revolution.” The slogan was immediately followed by repressive measures directed not against right-wing counterrevolutionaries but against non-Communist leftists.
- The Politics of Surrealism
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In the first notebook of his Grundrisse, composed in 1857, Marx predicted that the “romantic viewpoint” would “accompany [capitalism] as its legitimate antithesis up to its blessed end.” He believed that romanticism, with its celebration of the richness — real or imagined — of pre-capitalist life, would remain a perennial reaction to the reification of social life under capitalism.
- Poor No More
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 In the present economic crisis, many Canadians are destititute and many others are on the brink. Against this climate, a couple of Canadians go on a road trip to Ireland and Sweden, with comedian Mary Walsh as their guide, and get a chance to see how other countries have helped people like themselves.
- The POUM's Seven Decades
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (The Workers Party of Marxist Unification, POUM) was founded in Barcelona on September 30, 1935 in a small house in the Horta district. That was 70 years ago. The event was not public, since we were still in a phase of relative clandestinity imposed on the movement after October 1934, so we felt it prudent to limit the number of delegates.
- Power, illusion and America's last taboo
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Since 1945, the United States has overthrown fifty governments, including democracies, and crushed some 30 liberation movements, and supported tyrannies and set up torture chambers from Egypt to Guatemala. Countless men, women and children have been bombed to death. Bombing is apple pie. And yet, here is the 44th President of the United States, having stacked his government with warmongers and corporate fraudsters and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, teasing us while promising more of the same.
- Press for Conversion #64
November 2009 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2009 This 50-page issue on Canadian government and corporate complicity in the lucrative business of war, includes articles, tables and charts.
- The Price of A Bargain
The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Describes a world where the economy's collateral damage includes oil spills and the poisoning of developing nations' working poor; the low wages and illegal labour practices of corporations leading to the ultimate collapse of a system based on minimizing costs, high volume sales and low profit margins; and a world where debt is the cornerstone of the economy.
- Pro-Israel Group's Money Trail Veers Hard Right
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 An IPS investigation into the tax records of the donors to StandWithUs, which professes to be ideologically neutral, found a web of funders who support organisations that have been accused of anti-Muslim propaganda and encouraging a militant Israeli and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
- Pro-Israel Lobby Alarmed by Growth of Boycott, Divestment Movement
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel is emerging as one of the most important ways to demonstrate solidarity with Palestine.
- Property and Progress
The Historical Origins and Social Foundations of Self-Sustaining Growth Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A collection of texts on the origins of capitalism with substantive material on the debate regarding the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
- The Property Waiver Regime: Nicaragua's Continued Punishment
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Provocateur Cops Caught Disguised As Anarchists At G20
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 At every single major summit over the past few years, authorities have inserted agent provocateurs into protest groups in order to spy on them and if necessary, provoke violence to justify oppressive police brutality in the eyes of the watching world.
We have documented numerous different occasions where the leadership of the black bloc anarchists were actually working with the authorities to provide a pretext for a police state crackdown.
During the previous G20 protest in London, black bloc anarchists were allowed by police to smash up bank buildings while being accompanied by more press photographers than other protesters in what was obviously a stage-managed spectacle for mass consumption
- Queer theories and militant practices
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A critical look at queer theories.
- Rabbis Take on Settlers
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Away from the media spotlight that focuses on the widening chasm between Israelis and Palestinians, a group of Israeli humanists is quietly working to break down barriers with their Palestinian neighbours.
- Race and Class: African Americans in a Sick System
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The critical lack of quality and affordable health care is devastating for African Americans. Twice as likely as whites to go without insurance, African Americans suffer chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure and diabetes at an escalating rate.
- Race and Class: Downturn Undermines Black "Middle Class"
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Although the historic election of president Barack Obama has led to big cheers in the Black community and society in general, the reality for the vast majority of African Americans is growing uncertainty if not joblessness and poverty. Cities like Detroit, and the Rust Belt in the Midwest, are reeling under the blows of the recession and structural changes, including overseas outsourcing and shifting work to nonunion companies in “right to work” states.
- Race and Class in Civil War Mississippi
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The poor whites of Mississippi who fought the Confederacy alongside slaves did so because of working class values that they shared with slaves. The fact that poor whites may have believed some racist lies about blacks that constituted the dominant ideas of the day is not nearly as important or significant as the fact that their working class values led them to ally with slaves to fight the racist ruling class. Racism came from the upper class, and anti-racism came from the working class -- black and white.
- Race and Class: The Agenda of Pure Racism
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 There is a sinister aspect of the attacks by the far right against President Barack Obama that does not sit well with me, and with a vast majority of African Americans and other ethnic minorities, no matter our political or ideological point of view.
- Race Obsession harms those it is meant to help
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Ethnic monitoring does not just produce misleading data. The process of classification often creates the very problems it is supposed to solve. Local authorities have used ethnic categories not only as a means of collecting data but also as a way of distributing political power - by promoting certain 'community leaders' - and of disbursing public funds through ethnically-based projects. Once the allocation of power, resources and opportunities becomes linked to membership of particular groups, then people inevitably begin to identify themselves in terms of those ethnicities, and only those ethnicities.
- Race, Politics and Christianity in America
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 11:00AM on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in American life, and the implications of this stubborn fact have been known to unexpectedly erupt into our national political culture. In the invocation at the presidential inaugural, Pastor Rick Warren reminded us that we are not a nation united by race, or blood or religion — but he left our divisions on these grounds unarticulated, despite the role he has played in helping to generate them.
- Rachel Corrie Presente!
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The following is an excerpt from a statement from the family of Rachel Corrie.
- 'Rachel' screening in San Francisco shows a growing movement tired of being censored about Israel
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A wide spectrum of individuals and organizations attempt to enforce the axiom: there shall be no public criticism of Israel. This platitude ironically goes hand in hand with the view that "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East." Over the past several decades, self-appointed watch dogs of appropriate Israel discourse have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and poured out enormous doses of vitriol upon any individual or organization that dares to expresses even a drop of sympathy with the plight of Palestinians.
- Radical Digressions 6
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009
- The 'Radical trip' of the the Canadian Union of Students, 1963-69
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 MA Thesis, Trent University, 2009
- Rampaging Climate Deniers' Losing Battle
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Because of the flimsy comprehension of science and evolution of most writers in the mass media, those who venture to write about evolution feel constrained to present "alternative" views. But "alternative" views are not necessarily credible or true. The cliimate change deniers' arguments are no less articles of faith than those of the creationists. In the case of the former, the faith is not in a god but in the free market and capitalism. Almost without exception, those who are in staunch denial are those connected to, involved in or supportive of the traditional capitalist model of economic growth, and by implication opposed to anything that might constrain this model.
- The Rape of Irish Children
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A State which had genuine concern for its children would have responded to the report by taking decisive action to remove the Catholic bishops as patrons of primary schools. Three thousand of 3,200 primaries in the Republic have bishops as patrons - with the power to hire and fire and complete control over the school's 'ethos'. No less appropriate category of men could be imagined to have such power over the moral formation of children.
- Reading, Writing and Union Building
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The United States changed forever on November 4, 2008. It will undoubtedly change even more during the next four years — although just how remains to be determined. There has never been such a convergence of yawning crises facing an incoming U.S. government, including a collapsing credit system and the near-death spiral of the North American auto industry. It’s an entirely open question whether the sheer scale of the objective emergency might impose serious structural changes on the way capitalism is administered in this country.
- The Real Expenses Scandal
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 One of the consistent features of Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) is that the projects are reverse-engineered to meet the demands of corporate investors. This, for example, is how the £30m public scheme to refurbish Coventry's two hospitals became a £410m private scheme to knock them both down and rebuild one of them - containing fewer beds and fewer doctors and nurses.
- Reclaiming a Continent: Experiments in Radical Social Democracy
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 An in-depth and accessible introduction to Latin American politics. Avoiding superficial analysis and simplistic leftist cheerleading, this book addresses the complexity and diversity of the new Latin American left.
- Reclaiming Utopia: The Legacy of Ernst Bloch
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Bloch's Marxism was from the start unorthodox as the result of his abiding interest in the notion of utopia. This notion was held in disdain by many orthodox Marxists.
- The Red Army Faction, A Documentary History - Volume 1
Projectiles For the People Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 An in-depth political history of the Red Army Faction (RAF) which, in resistance to imperialism and state repression, was devoted to carrying out armed attacks within the Federal Republic of Germany.
- Reform Is Not A Tea Party
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Nobel peace price notwithstanding, Barack Obama’s presidency, contrary to the hopes of many, has not produced a big political space for the left, let alone “a seat at the table.” Most visibly, it has been the right wing that succeeded in seizing the initiative, in some truly grotesque ways that have thrown a spotlight on the deep paranoia — and straight-up old-style white racism — that persists in this society, and on the ways it can be opportunistically pandered to and manipulated. The tea-party mob phenomenon, however, cannot be dismissed as merely a freak show created by rightwing talk media and massive covert corporate funding, although that is certainly part of the story.
- Refuge from Militarism? The Canadian Movement to Support Vietnam Era War Resisters, and Government Responses,1965 - 1973
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 PhD Thesis, Carleton University, 2009
- Regroupment & Refoundation of a U.S. Left
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 Perspectives for socialist renewal in the 21st century.
- The Reification of Desire
Toward a Queer Marxism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A new theoretical approach to the relationship between Marxism and queer studies.
- Remembering Spain's Revolution
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On the second page of Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell's memoir of the Spanish Revolution, he writes, “I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing….it was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle.”
- Reporting Gender Based Violence
A Handbook for Journalists Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Violence Against Women has presented particular challenges to the media and to society because of the way it has been consigned to the "private" sphere -- dampening public discussion and stifling media debate. Yet, the media has the potential to play a lead role in changing perceptions that, in turn, can help galvanize a movement for change. This toolkit seeks to help reporters and news managers grapple with the challenge of reporting gender based violence is a way that doe snot perpetuate gender stereotypes but informs and encourages public debate.
- Republicans Have Decided to Call Anything a Democrat Ever Does or Says "Nazi"
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The cause du jour for the Republican Party is to make as many rapid-fire comparisons between the Democrats and the Nazis as humanly possible.
- The Resistable Rise and Predictable Fall of the U.S. Supermax
Published in Monthly Review Volume 61, Number 6 - November 2009 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The modern supermax regime is an aberration in American corrections. Based upon a penitentiary model that was dismissed as unsound more than 150 years ago, it was resurrected in the late 1970s and ’80s during the greatest period of growth of the penal state, and at a time of government anxiety about the rise of radical political movements, both in and out of prison. However, the enormous expense of supermax-style solitary confinement and its evident failure to decrease prison violence or recidivism, combined with lawsuits alleging abuse and a rising tide of public anger at U.S. complicity in torture, predicts its eventual demise.
- Resistance in Gaza: Young Palestinians Find Their Voice Through Hip-Hop
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Making music is a form of resistance to war and occupation, and also a tool to communicate the reality of life in Palestine.
- Resisting the Gutting of CUNY
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 New York state is experiencing its worst fiscal crisis since the 1970s, with profound impacts on the City University of New York (CUNY), the nation’s largest urban public university system. CUNY has been under public scrutiny since its founding in 1847 as The Free Academy, an institution dedicated to the experiment of providing education to “the children of the whole people” at a school “controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few.”
- Reviewing Red: Love and Revolution
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 At the dawn of the 1960s, the modest tradition of novels depicting men and women active in Marxist movements morphed abruptly from a comparatively marginal to a mainstream phenomenon.
- Revolt On Goose Island
The Chicago Factory Takeover, and What it Says About the Economic Crisis Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 The story of a workers' takeover.
- Revolutionary Suicide
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 An illustrated memoir by founding Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton.
- Revolutionary Traveller
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 John S. Saul draws on a series of his own occasional articles written over a span of forty years which, together with a linking narrative, serve to trace not only his own career as an anti-apartheid and liberation support movement activist in both Canada and southern Africa but also help recount the history of the various struggles in both venues in which he has been directly involved.
- Richmond, CA vs. Chevron
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 There was no shortage of attention-getting politics in the fall of 2008. Yet even in the context of the history-making national election, the local city council campaign and vote on business license fees in Richmond, California should be of interest to readers of a national magazine.
- Right-Wing Assault, Liberal Retreat
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The heat is on the Obama administration. The energized conservative base has taken over town hall meetings on health care. There are “birthers,” “deathers” and just pure haters. President Obama has been personally attacked as a racist, socialist, communist, Stalinist, fascist, Nazi, Pol Potist, foreigner and every other name the right finds in its vocabulary.
- Right-Wing Harassment Strategy Against Dems Detailed In Memo
'Yell,' 'Stand Up And Shout Out,' 'Rattle Him' Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Right-Wing Media Send Their Mobs of Crazy Fans to Go After Private Citizens -- Including Kids
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The right-wing is igniting the crazies by pushing them to snoop on everyday people.
- Right Wingers Marching in DC Is Big News -- But the Same Old Faces Are Pulling the Strings
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The right is never truly defeated; its leaders are patient, and they learn from their errors. When they're out of power, they stay busy, building institutions and mailing lists, all the while waiting for their moment to strike.
- The Right's Fringe Festival
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Milling around the crowd, it was impossible to miss the references to issues as disparate as blocking investigations of CIA torture, promoting assault weapons and God "judging" America for homosexuality. Confederate flags were flown, Obama was told to "go back to Kenya," and so forth and so on. The crowd itself was almost exclusively white--and its members had come to get their country back.
- Rights on Condition: Association for Civil Rights in Israel State of Human Rights Report 2009
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In Israel, the entire spectrum of rights is dependent on what we say or believe, what ethnic group we belong to, how much money we have, and more.
- Rockets from Gaza
Harm to Civilians from Palestinian Armed Groups' Rocket Attacks Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Documents rocket attacks on Israeli civilians by armed groups in Gaza.
- Franklin Rosemont (1943-2009)
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Poet, artist, historian, editor, labor militant, musician, amateur ornithologist and surrealist activist Franklin Rosemont, who died on April 12 at age 65 refused the limitations that civilization, especially under capitalism, attempts to imposes on us all. Not a “one dimensional man,” he was inspired by Charles Fourier’s ideas of what humanity could aspire to. He wrote, “All I know defiance and dream, the rest just comes naturally. A ‘Success in Life’? Don’t make me laugh! If you’re looking for me there, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”
- Ruling the Void
The Hollowing of Western Democracy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Analyzes democratic trends over the last few decades in Europe and America.
- Saving Corporations, Sacrificing Workers
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 President Obama’s March 30th report on what General Motors and Chrysler must do to obtain further government loans demands that all “stakeholders” make additional sacrifices.
- Saviours and Survivors
Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Mamadani examines the Darfur crisis within a context that considers Sudan's history. He illuminates the deeply rooted causes of the current conflict by examining its colonial and Cold War origins as well as its escalation during the 1990's. In his analysis, Mamadani is also critical of the world's response to the crisis.
- Say It Loud, Say It Proud: There is No God
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Season of Travesties
Freedom and Democracy in mid-2009 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Noam Chomsky criticizes the elections in Lebanon and Iran as being inherently flawed - unlike the "free and fair" election held in Palestine in 2006 for which the people were punished for voting the "wrong way". He tries to illustrate a general picture of the health of democracy and freedom in those areas which are of most concern to the US.
- Seeds of Peace
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 Jawdat Talousy worked in a Jewish Settlement located on the West Bank. He was fired because he established a labour committee in order to get equal labour rights as Israeli co-workers.
- Segregation and Black Labor Before the CIO:
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 C.L.R. James urged listeners at a 1971 Institute of the Black World event in Atlanta to study W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction as a way to understand the meaning of Marxism, the Civil War, and emancipation. James implored his audience to grapple with Du Bois’s statement that Reconstruction was “the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world had ever seen. It was a tragedy that beggared the Greek; it was an upheaval of humanity like the Reformation and the French Revolution.”
- Selective Vision: Iran, Israel and Nuclear Arms
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 For many years, the corporate media has been amplifying supposed "fear" in the West about Iran becoming a nuclear-armed nation alongside the US, the UK, France, Russia - and Israel.
- Self-Defense Against Peace
Israel's Unjust War on Gaza Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Legally and morally, an aggressor cannot rely upon self-defence to justify violence against resistance to its own aggression. The most plausible reason Israel is fighting Hamas (and the PLO before it) is 'self-defence', not against rockets and mortars, but against having to make peace with the Palestinians on the basis of the pre-1967 borders as required by international law.
- Self-Liberation
A guide to Strategic Planning for Action to End a Dictatorship Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Seven Answers To Climate Contrarian Nonsense
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 Within the community of scientists and others concerned about anthropogenic climate change, those deny climate change are commonly referred to as contrarians, naysayers and denialists. Not everyone who questions climate change science fits that description, of course - some people are genuinely unaware of the facts or honestly disagree about their interpretation. What distinguishes the true naysayers is an unwavering dedication to denying the need for action on the problem, often with weak and long-disproved arguments about supposed weaknesses in the science behind global warming.
- Seven Reasons Why I Advocate Parecon
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 As economies all around us gasp and constrict, more and more people are willing to seriously recognize what has always been evident - that even at its best and certainly at its worst capitalism is a decrepit monstrosity of a system. As a proposed replacement for capitalism, Parecon rejects: Private ownership, Authoritarian decision-making, Remuneration for property, power, or output, Corporate divisions of labor, and, Markets and central planning.
- Sex Scandals America
Politics and the Ritual of Public Shaming Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A comprehensive history of sexual scandals in America from colonial times, including Pocahontas and the Puritans, to today which exposes the scandals of national political figures and celebrities and ties these scandals to the deeper changes in sexual culture. It assesses the role of political scandals as a form of public shaming and shows how, scandals have changed, evolving from a morality tale to an entertainment distraction.
- Sex Workers' Rights in Kenya: "It's Better to Be a Thief Than Gay in Kenya"
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 "It's better to be a thief than gay in Kenya," says a gay sex worker. Both are often punished by death, but being the latter means never revealing yourself to the public and remaining perpetually closeted. It means dealing with homophobes at day and pleasuring them at night.
- Sexuality and Socialism
History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 An accessible analysis of many of the most challenging questions for those concerned with full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Essays on the roots of LGBT oppression, the construction of sexual and gender identities, the history of the gay movement, and how to unite the oppressed and exploited to win sexual liberation for all. Sherry Wolf analyzes different theories about oppression — including those of Marxism, postmodernism, identity politics, and queer theory — and challenges myths about genes, gender, and sexuality.
- Shadow Boxing
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Multiculturalists and clash of civilization warriors both start with the question: "Can Europe be the same with different people in it?." They give different answers. But the question itself is the problem. It assumes that minority communities are homogenous wholes whose members will forever be attached to the cultures, faiths, beliefs and values of their forebears.
- The Shape of the Suburbs
Understanding Toronto's Sprawl Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Examines the relationship between the development of suburbs, water, and sewage systems, highways and the decision-making of Toronto-area governments to show how the suburbs spread, and how they have in turn shaped the city. Also demonstrates the ways in which suburban political, economic, and cultural influences have impacted the older, central city, culminating in the forced Megacity amalgamation of 1998.
- Side with the Living
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A note to those who would demonize nature.
- 6 Ideas For Those Needing Defensive Technology to Protect Free Speech from Authoritarian Regimes
4 Ways the Rest of Us Can Help Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Published: 2010 The Internet remains one of the most powerful means ever created to give voice to repressed people around the world. Unfortunately, new technologies have also given authoritarian regimes new means to identify and retaliate against those who speak out despite censorship and surveillance.
- 'Smooth Operator?'
The Propaganda Model and Moments of Crisis Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 An article by Des Freedman on Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model for the mass media and moments of crisis (disagreements within the ruling class), focusing particularly on the Daily Mirror and its anti-war coverage in the build up to the Iraq war.
- Snake Oil Science
The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Illustrates how the placebo effect conspires to make medical therapies appear to be effective - not just to consumers, but to therapists and poorly trained scientists as well. Explores this phenomenom and explains why research on any therapy does not factor in the placebo effect will inevitably produce false results.
- Social Anarchism, Individualist Anarchism, the State and Leninism
A Reply to the International Socialist Organization Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 I take it that social or Left-anarchism and libertarian socialism are the same thing. Both stand opposed to Leninism, and both stand opposed to individualist anarchism.
- 'Socialism in One Country' Before Stalin, and the Origins of Reactionary 'Anti-Imperialism'
The Case of Turkey, 1917-1925 Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 Today's climate of "anti-imperialism" compels us to turn back to the history of such a profoundly reactionary ideology, deeply anti-working class both in the advanced and underdeveloped countries, by which any force, no matter how retrograde, that turns a gun against a Western power becomes progressive and worthy of critical or military support, or for the less subtle, simply support.
- Socialist Register 2009
Volume 45: Violence Today Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2009
- Socialists and the Capitalist Recession
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Anyone seeking to understand the ABCs of the meltdown would benefit greatly from reading this collection.
- Sources Calendar
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Published: 2013 Listings of events of interest to journalists, editors, researchers, publishers and others working in the media and in publishing, covering Canadian and international events, press conferences, meetings, festivals and holidays, as well as award deadlines.
- Sources Directory Main Category Index
Spokespersons, Experts, and Resources Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009
- Sources media training
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Media training to ensure that you are ready to handle media interviews. Topics include Message making, Staying newsworthy, Safe spokesperson techniques, Preparation and relaxation techniques, Media ethics and expectations. Simulations of all media venues including talk shows, double enders, stand-up interviews and scrums, print columnists, videographers, and editorial boards.
- Sources News Release Archive 2009
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 News releases from 2009.
- Sources (Portal für Journalisten and Autoren) - Wikipedia Artikel
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Sources ist ein Informationsportal für Journalisten, Redakteure, Autoren und Forscher mit dem Schwerpunkt auf Personen als Quellen: Fachleute und Repräsentanten, die bereit sind Fragen von Reportern zu beantworten oder sich für Live-Interviews zur Verfügung stellen.
- Sources Select Speakers
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2009 Speakers available to take media calls about their area of expertise, and available for speaking engagements.
- South Africa: Redouble Efforts to Reduce Maternal Mortality
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Maternal health has been under the spotlight in South Africa after an analysis of maternal deaths was released in July showing an increase in the country's maternal mortality rate. Researchers found that nearly four out of every 10 deaths (38.4 percent) were avoidable. They identified non-attendance and delayed attendance as common problems, together with poor transport facilities, lack of health care facilities and lack of appropriately trained staff.
- South African Workers Tackle Neoliberalism
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Can the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) be credited with a sudden high-profile career change — from central banker to academic — by Tito Mboweni? The Reserve Bank Governor made a mistake in May when he refused to take a petition from thousands of Numsa members marching to the Banks’ Church St. headquarters. In July Governor Mboweni was rewarded with early retirement.
- Spain Excludes Settlement University from Academic Competition
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The "University Center of Ariel in Samaria" (AUCS) has been excluded from a prestigious university competition about sustainable architecture in Spain. With this move, Spain joins the growing number of European governments taking effective, even though preliminary, steps to uphold international law by boycotting or divesting from institutions and corporations involved in or profiting from Israel's illegal Wall and colonial settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.
- Spot The Difference
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 When I first brought up the similarity between Prussia and Israel (in a chapter dedicated to this theme in the Hebrew and German editions of my 1967 book, "Israel Without Zionists") it might have looked like a baseless comparison. Today, the picture is clearer. Not only does the senior officers corps occupy a central place in all the spheres of our life, and not only is the huge military budget beyond any discussion, but our daily news is full of typically 'Prussian' items.
- The Squeeze: Oil Money and Greed in the 21st Century
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A review the big business of the oil industry across the globe, and the lengths (depths) to which they will go to maximise profits.
- Sri Lanka: Behind the Massacre
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 An interview with Ashok Kumar.
- Ssangyong Motors Strike in South Korea Ends in Defeat and Heavy Repression
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The hard-right Korean government is signaling with these measures -- its latest and most dramatic "take no prisoners" victory over popular protest in the past year and a half -- its intention to steamroller any potential future resistance to its unabashed rule on behalf of big capital.
- Staatlichkeit & Anarchie in der Spanischen Revolution
Proletarische Revolution statt Staatsverneinung Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Statement of the Trades Union Congress of Great Britain Regarding Boycott of Israel
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 To increase the pressure for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories, and the removal of the separation wall and the illegal settlements, we will support a boycott (where trade union members should not put their own jobs at risk by refusing to deal with such products) of those goods and agricultural products that originate in illegal settlements -through developing an effective, targeted consumer-led boycott campaign working closely with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign -and campaign for disinvestment by companies associated with the occupation.
- Stayin' Alive
The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A social and cultural history of the 1970s in the United States.
- Steel walls cannot contain the struggle for freedom
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 If siege is an act of aggression and war, then breaking out of it by any means is an act of self-defense and resistance.
- Stirring Up Racism
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In an attempt to discredit the progressive candidates, the Richmond Police Officers Association (RPOA) put out a flyer which claimed the Latino community and particularly undocumented immigrants were the source of Richmond’s drug and violence problem and that the progressive candidates opposed police efforts to control it.
- The Struggle for Tibet
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Wang Lixiong and Tsering Shakya debate Tibet's history under Communist rule. While both are critical of China's crackdown on resistance movements, Wang, a Chinese intellectual draws a picture of a struggle that is bureaucratic, religious and is opposed to Communism. Shakya, a Tibetan national historian, on the other hand, describes a struggle that is nationalistic and anti-colonial.
- A Struggle in Solidarity with Others: Lessons from a Student Campaign Battling a Giant Corporation
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 I am a graduate student from India, studying at a university in Michigan. Some time ago, I became involved in a campaign to kick the Coca Cola company off the campus because of their treatment of workers and the surrounding community at their plants in India and Colombia.
- Support the Iranian people, oppose Tehran's clerical fascism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Tragically, the leadership of the UK and US anti-war movements have been sleep-walking into making the same mistakes over Iran as they made over Iraq. They are silent about the regime's despotism and oppression. Mirroring the neo con indifference to human rights abuses in Iran, they refuse to show solidarity with the Iranian peoples' struggle for secularism, democracy, social justice, human rights and self-determination for national minorities. There is nothing remotely left-wing about this is sad and cruel betrayal. Put bluntly: it is collusion with tyranny.
- "Sure, Stick It In"
Who Will Organize the Organizers? Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 One has to recognize when the movement is all there, ready to go, and just needs a little impetus.
- Tácticas desesperadas: Acusaciones falsas de "antisemitismo" para silenciar reproches a la conducta de Israel
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Tactics of Desperation: Using false accusations of 'anti-Semitism' - Arabic text
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Tactics of desperation: Using false accusations of 'anti-semitism' as a weapon to silence criticism of Israel's behaviour
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Israeli state and its defenders are increasingly attempting to silence critics because they are losing the battle for public opinion.
- La tactique du désespoir : Utilisant de fausses accusations de l'antisémitisme comme arme pour faire taire toute critique sur le comportement d'Israël.
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Take Back the Land
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It is immoral for human beings to be forced to live on the streets while perfectly good structures stand vacant, sometimes just blocks away.
- 'Take me to your leader'
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Taktyki Desperacji: Uzywanie falszywych oskarzen antysemityzmu jako broni uciszajacej krytyke zachowania Izraela
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Targeting Earth First!
Dave Foreman and the First Greenscare Case Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The war on environmentalism.
- Taser Company Uses Facebook, Blogs to Improve Image Amidst Lawsuits
Stun-gun maker Taser blogs to beat bad buz Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The company, whose main product is a lightning rod for criticism, is increasingly using blogs and social networks to promote new products and dispel anxieties about them.
- Tax Havens; Undermining Democracy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Tearing Down the Gates?
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Peter Sacks describes Tearing Down the Gates as a work about the staggering injustices in the American educational system. Sacks utilizes a seldom-employed tool to analyze the educational system in the United States: the role of class. Importantly, Sacks understands class in a multi-faceted way, discussing not only the money a family has but its income-producing capital and its educational background and what he describes as its “cultural capital.”
- Terror Takeover
The monstrous march of the security state Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2009 Has our panic over terrorism given permission for unchecked abuse? The fear of terrorism has been used to curtail our liberties and violate human rights.
- Testimony of David U. Himmelstein, M.D. before the HELP Subcommittee
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A single-payer reform would make care affordable through vast savings on bureaucracy and profits. As my colleagues and I have shown in research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, administration consumes 31 percent of health spending in the United States, nearly double what Canada spends. In other words, if we cut our bureaucratic costs to Canadian levels, we'd save nearly $400 billion annually - more than enough to cover the uninsured and to eliminate co-payments and deductibles for all Americans.
- Théories et militantismes queer : réflexion à partir de l'exemple français
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Theories of Stalinism
Against The Current vol. 143 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Karl Marx and his comrades deemed their own approach “scientific,” as compared to “utopian” intellectual efforts on behalf of socialism, because they believed that practical efforts to challenge and ultimately replace capitalism with something better must be grounded in a serious study of economic, political, social, historical realities and dynamics.
- Thirty years on, the holocaust in Cambodia and its aftermath is remembered
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 John Pilger recalls the stricken society he found in Cambodia in 1979 which he described in his epic dispatches and documentary, Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia. He reminds us that the Pol Pot horror emerged from the bombing ordered by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and that Cambodia was again "punished" when its liberators came from the wrong side of the cold war and the Thatcher government send special forces to train the Khmer Rouge in exile.
- This Is About Us
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The talks at Copenhagen are not just about climate change. They represent a battle to redefine humanity.
- This Little Kiddy Went to Market
The Corporate Capture of Childhood Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Analyses how people and planet are being systematically subordinated to profit.
- Three Decades of Iranian Women's Activism
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Before the June elections and the protests that ensued, 2009 was hailed as a milestone in Iran for another reason: it marked the 30th anniversary of the 1979 revolution.
- Through the Lens of Young Slum Dwellers
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Two dozen young slum dwellers in Buenos Aires began filming a documentary about themselves this month, in an attempt to break down the negative stereotypes with which they are portrayed in the media.
- Time for a New Divestment Campaign
From South Africa to Israel Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 We must see Israel with the same eyes as we saw South Africa in the apartheid years - as a racist nation deserving of international isolation and sanctions.
- Timeline of the Congo Conflict
Against The Current vol. 142 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Too Damn Old!
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Ageism can strike anyone once they reach a certain age -- sometimes as early as 40 -- and it can make the victim feel unwanted, unneeded and oppressed.
- Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Provides a list and indepth analysis of the top 25 stories that were censored throughout the year in 2009.
- Top 50 US War Criminals
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Brief profiles of men and women who planned wars of agression and other war crimes.
- Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 As members of the Canadian and international film, culture and media arts communities, we are deeply disturbed by the Toronto International Film Festival's decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.
- The Torture Memos
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Chomsky comments on the revelations of and reactions to the White House report. He examines the proposed justifications and reasserts that despite the idea of "American exceptionalism", allowing instances of torture to be forgotten lays the foundation for future crime.
- Toward A New Socialism
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Richard Schmitt and Anatole Anton correctly insist in the introduction to their anthology Toward a New Socialism that we are in need of a new socialism for the 21st century. This claim has little currency in contemporary academic or even activist cultures. “To speak of ‘socialism’ in today’s academy in the U.S.,” says Anton, “is to betray a lack of academic breeding.”
- Towards a 'Israeli War Criminals Watch'
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It is upon us, every woman and man, in Israel and abroad, who fear for international public hygiene and international law, to unite forces in order to place before those war criminals the dilemma: risk being tried if they are found in countries in which the law permits this or remain locked in Israel.
- Transcending Pessimism: Rekindling Socialist Imagination
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 Between Marx's broad historically-inspired vision of revolution/transformation and his detailed critique of political economy, there was an analytical and strategic gap - unbridgeable without addressing the problematic of working class capacities - which later Marxists sometimes addressed, but never overcame. Every progressive social movement must, sooner or later, confront the inescapable fact that capitalism cripples our capacities, stunts our dreams, and incorporates our politics.
- Transforming Power
From the Personal to the Political Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Rebick champions new ways of achieving political goals by emphasizing co-operation and consensus over confrontation and partisanship.
- The Transition Initiative
Changing the scale of change Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 People never need communities more than when there are threats to security, food, and lives. The Transition Initiative recognizes how much we need this scale now, because of peak oil and climate change. But beyond this concrete need, the lack of a sense of community has negative psychological impacts on individuals across the 'developed' world, as people report persistent and widespread feelings of loneliness, isolation, dispossession, alienation, and depression.
- Transition Initiatives Primer
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A comprehensive document about embarking on a transition journey. A Transition Initiative is a community (lots of examples here) working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this BIG question: "for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"
- The Transition to Socialism
Against The Current vol. 141 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In his January, 2009 speech commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, President Raúl Castro, known popularly as Raúl, repeated Fidel’s oft-quoted 2005 speech to University of Havana students: “This nation can self-destruct… those who can’t destroy it are them [the U.S. imperialists]; we, yes, we can destroy it and it would be our fault.”
- Transitional demands
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Transition movement aims to move us from oil dependency to local resilience, using the power of community.
- Treading the Borders Between Life and Death
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 During Israel's Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 - January 2009, Israeli forces killed 16 emergency medical staff and injured 57. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), perhaps hundreds of those killed could have survived if emergency services had been able to access them promptly - the access denied to them can be defined as a deliberate violation of the Geneva Conventions and therefore a war crime.
- Tree Spiker
From Earth First! to Lowbagging: My Struggles in Radical Environmental Action Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Roselle - cofounder of the Rainforest Action Network and Earth First! - offers a memoir of his career in radical activism: from teenage Yippie to career environmentalist.
- Turn off the Canadian Media, Please
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 If you want to have the first idea what is happening in Israel/Palestine (or most of the rest of the world), the best thing to do would be to turn the Canadian media off completely.
- Turning Children Into Consumers
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Children are naïve about advertising and can easily be manipulated and exploited by marketers to want and demand their products. Corporate marketers believe that over time they can be shaped into lifelong consumers with brand loyalties and that can be profitable for decades to come.
- Turning Point?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Chomsky examines if Obama's speech in Cairo can reasonably be understood as an indication of a turning point in US Middle East policy. He expresses doubt in consideration of the intricate relationship between America and Israel.
- A turning point for the US solidarity movement
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 We have learned that change will not come from above. It will and must come from the grassroots, the people, those who have nothing to lose but their prison walls, the daily humiliation of life as a refugee, a second- or third-class citizen, or a non-citizen.
- Twenty Million Jobless by the End of 2009
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Throughout the past year, U.S. government statistics have consistently underestimated and underreported the extent of joblessness. The techniques by which this has been done were described in prior articles on the subject by this author. With November 2008’s Department of Labor report of 530,000 additional workers losing their jobs, it would appear that the government was finally reporting the true extent of rising unemployment in the United States.
- Twitterers Paid To Spread Israeli Propaganda
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israel's foreign ministry is reported to be establishing a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel. Internet-savvy Israeli youngsters, mainly recent graduates and demobilised soldiers with language skills, are being recruited to pose as ordinary surfers while they provide the government's line on the Middle East conflict.
- The Twitterest Pill
Policing Dissent in the Information Age Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Who judges the legitimate and illegitimate uses of communications technology in social movements? Which networked alliances have State-sponsorship, and which ones face criminalization and State-crackdown? Social media are relying on open network access, but this openness too easily sugarcoats itself in democratic notions (participation, interactivity, freedom). At the same historic moment, we are also witnessing an expansion, integration, and refinement of sovereign police power. When the two converge we begin to see an increase in repressive intervention into, and pre-emption of, information use.
- The Two Main Trends in Anarchism
Alternate Tendencies of Anarchism Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2009 The broad anarchist tradition of class struggle anarchism overlaps with libertarian interpretations of Marx.
- "Two State Solution" Equals Racism
Palestinians and Jews CAN Live Peacefully as Equals in One Democratic State Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The mutual fear and distrust between Jews and non-Jews in Palestine today is no more innate to these people than the belief in anti-black stereotypes so widely accepted by white Americans in the past was innate to white people. The animosity between Palestinians and Israeli Jews was deliberately fomented by Israeli Zionist leaders with the help of British and American leaders for decades. It was not the presence of Jews in Palestine, per se, that angered the native Palestinians; rather it was the intention (and then the reality) of Zionists removing non-Jews from their homeland to turn most of it into an exclusively Jewish state.
- 2009 Journalist Conference in Israel: No News
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The support provided by Israel's primary media to the security and political moves of the government - any government - is not new in Israel. The perception that media is committed to the ethics of the "public's right to know," in numerous cases even against strong currents that demand the silencing and concealment of information, serves more as a title for academic conferences and less as a rule that guides the media establishment in Israel. Not only this, but the journalists' association adopted the official governmental approach in relation to international forums concerned with human rights. This approach places obstacles of suspicion and hostility before anyone who does not follow the official line of Israeli patriotism. Legitimate criticism of unprofessional and unethical conduct of media that volunteers for national or military service is countered with the contention that the source of criticism is anti-Semitic.
- Uganda: Carbon Trading Scheme Pushing People off Their Land
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Carbon trading schemes are causing the displacement of indigenous persons as western companies rush to invest in tree-planting projects in developing countries.
- The UN in Israel's Crosshairs
Nowhere to Run to, Nowhere to Hide Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 History will record Israel's onslaught in Gaza as noteworthy not only for the wide destruction of institutions of state and civil society, but for the deliberate targeting of the United Nations and the refugees it aided and sheltered. And it certainly would not be the first time Israel has done so.
- U.N. Team on War Crimes Condemns Israel, Hamas
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A four-member United Nations fact-finding mission, which has just concluded an investigation into last year's brutal conflict in Gaza, makes a strong case for war crimes charges against Israel for its unrelenting 22-day military attacks on Palestinians, largely civilians, including women and children.
- Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Mark Rudd recalls his personal journey from idealistic freshman to student radical to the Weather Underground. He says: "It's about good organizing (Columbia), leading to worse (Weatherman), leading to horrible (the Weather Underground). I hope it's useful to contemporary organizers, as they contemplate how to build the coming mass movement(s)."
- Unintended Consequences
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill! Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It will prove difficult to separate speaking against members of protected classes, or criticizing their practices, from hate. The two things are easily conflated. Once enacted, hate crimes will become independent of specific violent acts. An eventual likely outcome will be that speaking against members of specially protected classes will itself become a violent act of inciting violence.
- The United States and Gaza
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The courageous Israeli journalist Amira Hass, in her 1996 book Drinking the Sea at Gaza, tells us that in Israeli slang “go to Gaza” means “go to hell.”
- United States: The Ultra-Right Pot Boils Over
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The appearance of right-wing mobs at town meetings organized by Democratic Party representatives to discuss the proposed health-care reform has set off alarm bells, in particular because of the blind fanaticism of the right-wing protesters and their threats of violence, including armed violence. These outbursts show many features of historic fascist developments and on a scale as yet unseen in the United States.
- An Unlikely Alliance: Indigenous and Campesinos Build an Alliance for Self-Defense
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In Colombia, campesinos are mostly non-indigenous family farmers who have often been pitted against indigenous people by wealthy landowners and corporations. Yet despite being traditional rivals, the Barí and campesino communities have been driven to a partnership by common enemies, including multinational mining companies, complicit Colombian regulatory agencies, and the US government.
- Uranium Corporation of India Limited: Wasting Away Tribal Lands
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Radiation and health experts across the world charge that toxic materials and radioactivity released by the mining and processing operations are causing widespread infertility, birth defects and cancers.
- Urban Cavemen (Living Life out Of Balance)
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Pediatricians nowadays see fewer kids with broken bones from climbing trees and more children with longer-lasting repetitive-stress injuries, which are related to playing video games and typing at keyboards. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, calls this "nature deficit disorder."
- Urban Honey
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In the winter of 2003, three Chicago beekeepers joined forces to create a bee farm on the former Sears-Roebuck property right in the heart of our city. We abut an old railroad embankment wall with both prairie remnant and concrete in equal amounts.
- U.S. & Israel: Dog Wags Tail Wags Dog
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A tremendous amount of ink and energy has been expended interpreting the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel. The debate over Israel’s influence on U.S. Middle East policy has engaged critics across the political and ideological spectrum. While some have long questioned the reasons for the unparalleled U.S. military and economic support bestowed on the “Jewish state,” the debates over Israel’s influence on U.S. foreign policy have increased dramatically in the wake of Bush administration military responses to September 11th.
- U.S. Poetry and the Politics of Form
Against The Current vol. 140 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Laura Bush's 2003 “Poetry and the American Voice” symposium is infamous because it never happened. Intended to be a White House celebration of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes, the event was cancelled when several poet-invitees (including former laureates) declined the invitation and, instead, composed poems protesting U.S. involvement in Iraq. When the symposium was called off, the First Lady’s spokesperson explained that a celebration of poets was in danger of being turned into a political event.
- US Workers Starved Into Military Service
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Humanity has passed the tipping point - economically, culturally and environmentally. The "consuming and killing" model embraced by Americans as cultural norm is, in reality, a cultural aberration. It is destroying everything and everyone in its wake - including those who are fighting and dying to preserve it.
- Utopia or Auschwitz: Germany's 1968 Generation and the Holocaust
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 In 1968 various student movements had risen up in post-war Europe. The movement in Germany, however, had the long shadow of their parents' roles in Nazism and World War Two.
- Valuing Folk Crop Varieties for Agroecology and Food Security
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Agricultural sustainability consists of long-term productivity, not short-term increase of yield. Ecological agriculture, which seeks to understand and apply ecological principles to farm ecosystems, is the future of modern agriculture.
- Veolia tries to bail out of one apartheid project, two to go!
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In 2005, just after the publication of the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid, Palestinians began calling for an international boycott campaign against Veolia, a company involved in the Citypass Consortium, a scheme to build a tramline on occupied territory in the West Bank. Veolia is a huge multinational, that arguably has the biggest financial commitment of any international company to Israel's colonisation of the West Bank.
- Victors's Justice
From Nuremberg to Baghdad Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Victors' Justice is an articulate polemic against the manipulation of international penal law as an instrument of Western power. Zolo's key thesis is that contemporary international law functions as a two-track system: a made-to-measure law for the hegemons and their allies, on the one hand, and a punitive regime for the losers and the disadvantaged, on the other.
- Victory in Chicago: Republic Workers' Occupation
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 “For once in our lives we had the perfect storm. Usually we don’t get any support from politicians or any coverage from the mass media...but this time, everything came together,” said Tim Curtin, International Representative for United Electrical workers (UE).
- Vincenzo Pietropaolo: Witness to the Harvest Pilgrims
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 Vincenzo Pietropaolo has documented the story of Mexican migrant workers over a number of years. This is a brief look into that story.
- Voices of the World
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Voices of the World is a collection of life stories from activists in the global justice movement.
- Walter Benjamin
Or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Eagleton's goal here is to to contemplate Benjamin's approach to language, history, and art and to chart a dynamic new course for contemporary socialist criticism.
- Waltz with Bashir
A Lebanon War Story Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A graphic novel depicting an Israeli soldier's experience during Israel's war in Lebanon. See also the film with the same name.
- The War in the Country
How the Fight to Save Rural Life Will Shape Our Future Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Chronicles the gradual disappearance of Canada's family farms.
- War Is Peace
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Because the United States does not look like a militarized country, it's hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere at any moment.
- The War Isn't Over, But Israel Has Lost
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The Israelis - and their backers in the American political establishment - appear incapable of grasping that which is empirically obvious: Hamas and its ilk grow stronger every time Israel seeks to eliminate them by force.
- We are NOT the 'Story', It's Not Just Our 21 Kidnapped Passengers
Sources News Release Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 On June 30th 2009 Israeli Occupation Forces forcibly boarded the Free Gaza boat, SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, and kidnapped 21 human rights workers and journalists who were on their way to deliver much needed humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to Gaza.
- Welcome to Orwell's World 2010
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that "extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan" to "disorderly regions and diffuse enemies". He called this "global security" and invited our gratitude.
- West Bank land belongs to Jews says Israeli judge
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Major Adrian Agassi is a senior Israeli judge who first served in the legal department that oversaw the confiscation of land in the West Bank to build Jewish settlements and was then appointed to the military court that decides -- and almost always denies -- Palestinian appeals against the seizure of their property, and that also rules on legal disputes between Jewish settlers and Palestinians. Judge Agassi maintains that people like himself, a Jew born in Britain, have more right to live in Palestine than people who were born there. He denies, however, that his beliefs affect his ability to make fair and impartial rulings.
- What It Takes to Build a Movement
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Activism = self-expression; organizing = movement-building.
- What Needs To Be Done: A Socialist View
Published in Monthly Review, Volume 61, Number 6 - November 2009 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 What is worth fighting for? Perhaps this severe recession offers us an opportunity to ask this question. This crisis has revealed the rotten foundation of our economy and called into question the neoliberal policies and ideology that have deepened the rot.
- What Obama's Victory Means About Race and Class
Against The Current vol. 138 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 There was euphoria in every Black community household November 4. High fives and tears of joy. No one could believe it. It didn’t matter Obama’s politics. A Black man had won! The election of the first Black president of the United States has a dual meaning: social and political.
- What Should Be Done in Palestine
Israel Shamir's Talk at the Ankara Conference Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Indeed, the whole story of Palestine is a story of immigrants taking over a country. Such things happen: immigrants from Britain took over North America and Australia. This is a sad thing, but it happened. Now it is not realistic to hope that they will sail back to England - they won't. It is wrong to try and create an 'independent state' for the native Americans - such independent states are called 'reservations'. The right answer is equality for native and immigrant alike. Some Jews would complain that they want a state of their own. We shall answer them: you have built on sand, and a house built on sand can't stand forever. If you want a state of your own without anybody else, find yourself a lonely uninhabited island. Palestine was, and is, populated; the best you can wish is to be equal citizens in Palestine with everybody else.
- What Some US Reporters Don't Get About Brazil and the Honduras Crisis
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Clueless desk editors like those at the New York Times titled these conflicts "Riots in Honduras." But you don't need to be able to understand Spanish to see and hear that, distinct from rioters, the young people of the neighborhood that came out and violated the military curfew to defend their neighborhood from this police invasion know and have memorized complicated political slogans and rhymes which they chanted in unison. "Riots" are disorganized explosions. This neighborhood, and others like it, however, have been forced by the realities of the coup to organize themselves to a greater extent than ever before.
- What the Left Should be Learning From Iran
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 There are those on the left who mirror neocon thought: They argue that since Washington is in opposition to it, Iran must therefore be considered a 'good' government, worthy of solidarity. Others argue that if the Iranian state offers social programs and even if it only somewhat resists global capitalism then therefore its violent and authoritarian actions can somehow be justified, forgiven or denied.
- What's at stake in Copenhagen
The crucial debates at Copenhagen Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Tere is no chance of achieving binding greenhouse gas reductions within the current framework for an agreement. Instead the problem is being redefined to fit the business-as-usual assumptions of neoliberal economics.
- What's the Border Fence Good for? Subsidizing Mexican Scrap Metal Entrepreneurs
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 It was obvious from the very beginning that Bush's push for a border fence was nothing more than a political show to boost Republicans' creds with their base.
- Which side are you on?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The women's question has haunted the Islamic regime from the start. The Islamic Republic has been in continuous conflict with the women's liberation movement, which has grown considerably in the past decade in opposition to the misogyny and gender apartheid of the Islamists. Despite brutal assaults on this movement, the regime has not succeeded in silencing it.
- While We Were Sleeping
Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Public health has made our lives safer--but it often works behind the scenes, without our knowledge, that is, "while we are sleeping."
- The White Cop and the Black Professor
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Police are trained to act as authoritarian thugs when they are dealing with people who are not obviously of, or loyal to, the very wealthy elite who rule the nation. The police are trained to enforce law and order in an unjust and unequal society, and a big part of doing this requires that they make ordinary people obey them out of fear.
- White Flag Deaths
Killings of Palestinian Civilians during Operation Cast Lead Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Documents incidents where Israeli soldiers fired on civilians with small arms during Israel's military operations in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009. These attacks killed 11 civilians, including five women and four children, and wounded at least another eight.
- Who Controls The Black Bloc Anarchists?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Whose interests do the violent actions of the black bloc benefit? The interests of the general public in using free speech as a means of political change? Or the interests of the authorities in providing the perfect pretext with which to crush and outlaw that free speech? You can't overthrow the entire system by smashing one bank and starting a bonfire. Real political change takes generations of struggle, decades of building respected educational platforms, and a gargantuan grass-roots movement focused on taking power on the local level and expanding upwards. Throwing a brick through a window isn't going to achieve anything other than making the vast majority of the general public despise you even more, and support the very systems of power that you are supposedly opposing. The black bloc sect exist to provide the media with violent footage with which to demonize legitimate protesters.
- Who Killed Chea Vichea?
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 Chea Vichea served as president of Cambodia's garment workers' union until he was gunned down on the street in 2004. Filmed over four years, this film explores motives for Vichea's assassination and unravels a police plot that framed two men, who were sentenced to 20 years in prison.
- Whom Should We Support in Iran?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The people we should support in Iran are those who are trying to make Iran more equal, more democratic and more friendly to the principle of solidarity--concern for one another. Since we want the world to move in this direction, we should support those who are pushing it in that direction. The people doing this are working class Iranians.
- Who's afraid of the BNP?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 How should a liberal democratic society respond to an organization such as the BNP? Should the political mainstream ostracise the BNP or engage with it? And if engage, how?
- Why Canada must limit the influence of corporate media
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Traditional news departments follow unwritten but well-understood guidelines concerning what they should not cover. Most people in the newsrooms have been so thoroughly indoctrinated in corporate ideology that they seldom suggest a story that falls outside of the guidelines.
- Why Consensus Decision-making Won't Work for Grassroots Unionism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Wetzel contrasts consensus decision-making with democratic decision-making to explain why the latter is more suited to activist groups.
- Why Is Israel Killing Gazans?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009
- Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?
Justice is 33 Years Overdue for America's Most Famous Political Prisoner Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Leonard Pletier is a political prisoner who has spent more than 33 years in U.S. prisons for a crime he didn't commit.
- Why Israel Won't Survive
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 If there was ever a moment when the peoples of the region would accept Israel as a Zionist state in their midst, that has passed forever. Israel's "military deterrent" has now been repeatedly discredited as a means to force Palestinians and other Arabs to accept Zionist supremacy as inevitable and permanent. Now, the other pillar of Israeli power - Western support and complicity - is starting to crack. We must do all we can to push it over.
- Why Israeli Leaders Love Qassam Rockets
A Reply to Michael Neumann Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Israeli leaders want Jews to believe that they are surrounded by violent anti-Semites. This is how the billionaires and generals and politicians who rule over the Israeli population get away with what they are doing: getting richer and more powerful while driving the rest of the population down economically. They need the Israeli population to believe that the rulers of Israel are protecting Jews from the "real enemy"--violent anti-Semitic Arabs. To make sure the "real enemy" remains credible, non-combatant Jews must die at the hands of apparent anti-Semites.
- Why Not Sanctions for Israel?
Gross Violations of Human Rights Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The US led the imposition of sanctions against South Africa because of South Africa's apartheid practices. The sanctions forced the white government to hand over political power to the black population. Israel practices a worse form of apartheid than did the white South African government. Yet, Israel maintains that it is 'anti-semitic' to criticize Israel for a practice that the world regards as abhorrent.
- Why Not Socialism?
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 Is socialism desirable? Is it even possible? In this concise book, a political philosopher presents a compelling moral case for socialism and argues that the obstacles in its way are exaggerated.
- Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Published: 2012 An article decoding the important differences in terminology, underlying philosophy, and value systems between two similar categories of software.
- Why Right-Wing Demagogues Are Trying to Peddle Ludicrous Conspiracy Theories
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Even before Obama was sworn in as the 44th President, the internet was seething with lurid theories exposing his alleged subversion and treachery.
- Why The U.S. Government Hates Venezuela
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Having lost in the realm of ideas, those supporting capitalism must compensate by other means.
- Why We Left Our Farms to Come to Copenhagen
Speech of Henry Saragih, general coordinator of Via Campesina at the opening session of Klimaforum Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Climate change is already seriously impacting us. It brings floods, droughts and the outbreak of pests that are all causing harvest failures. I must point out that these harvest failures are something that the farmers did not create. Instead, it is the polluters who caused the emissions who destroy the natural cycles. So, we small scale farmers came here to say that we will not pay for their mistakes. And we are asking the emitters to face up to their responsibilities.
- Wildlife Need Habitat Off-Limits To Humans!
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Environmentalism can most simply be defined as the extension of the Golden Rule to include other species. Wildlife must be given top priority, because they can't protect themselves from us.
- A winning formula
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Intelligent community-based campaigning exposes the BNP for what it is, as well as providing a defence of civil society.
- Woman Leads Tribals Against World's Steel Maker
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The fight against the world's biggest steel maker, ArcelorMittal, is being waged from a tiny tea stall in Ranchi, eastern India.
- Women Are Not Wallpaper
Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli interview filmmaker Erik Gandini Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Something new is appearing on the Italian screen. About time, some may say.
- Women of the revolution
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Thirty years after the toppling of the Shah in Iran, Azar Sheibani looks at how Iranian women have defied the reign of misogynist terror.
- Women Recycle for Income and Environment
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The women of this town in northern Venezuela no longer say "garbage" but rather "secondary raw material," and instead of referring to recycling, they talk about "separation at point of origin."
- Women Soldiers' Testimonies
Breaking the Silence Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A collection of testimonies selected from interviews with more than forty Israeli women soldiers breaking their silence, and is an additional example of the ethical and societal cost of the missions with which the Israeli Security Forces have been charged.
- Wonderful Wonderful Carbon Haven!
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 With the activists gearing up outside and developing countries in no mood for compromise - climate justice is definitely on the agenda this time round.
- World at Gunpoint
Or, what's wrong with the simplicity movement Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Global warming (or global climate catastrophe, as some rightly call it), as terrifying as it is, isn't first and foremost a threat. It's a consequence. we'll have a better chance of succeeding if we recognize it as a predictable (at this point) result of burning oil and gas, of deforestation, of dam construction, of industrial agriculture, and so on. The real threat is all of these.
- Worst Companies for Union Organizing Highlighted for International Human Rights Day
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) has released "Working for Scrooge: Worst Companies of 2009 for the Right to Associate," a list of the four worst multinational corporations for union organizing.
- Yes to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Against Israel
An Answer to Uri Avnery Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 The BDS campaign was initiated by a broad coalition of Palestinian political and social movements. No Israeli who claims to support the national rights of the Palestinian people can, decently, turns his or her back to that campaign: after having claimed for years that "armed struggle is not the way," it will be outrageous that this BDS strategy will too be disqualified by those Israeli activists. On the contrary, we must all together join to "Boycott from Within" in order to provide Israeli support to this Palestinian initiative. It is the minimum we can do, and it is the minimum we should do.
- You Don't Play With Revolution
The Montreal Lectures of C.L.R. James Resource Type: Book First Published: 2009 A collection of never-before-published lectures by the Marxist cultural critic C.L.R. James, delivered in Canada in 1967-68, at the height of James's political maturity.
- You, Me & the SPP: Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2009 What do secrecy, police provocateurs, an assault on democracy and infringements on citizens' rights have in common? The Security and Prosperity Partnership.
- The Young Lords' Legacy of Puerto Rican Activism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A short history of the Young Lords, a group that used confrontational tactics to bring services and attention to the residents of East Harlem, or El Barrio, and beyond.
- Your Money, Or Your Life
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Single Payer will save lives, but it also will save money. The exorbitant salaries of Insurance Company CEOs will be eliminated. The profit motive for investors will be eliminated. Administrative costs will be reduced because one single payer will replace a large number of insurance companies - all with different forms, different standards, and different requirements for an endless stream of mind-numbing paper work.
- Zionism Boycotts the Funeral of Marek Edelman
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 A sad farewell to Marek Edelman - the last surviving Commander of the Bund. The article describes his funeral in Warsaw, where he was buried, although he lived in Poland's second city, Lodz.
- Zionism - tried and failed: Interview with Akiva Orr
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 In the end, the Zionist thing is basically, from a Jewish point of view, a failure. It's not safe and it doesn't preserve the Jewish identity.
- Zionism vs. Zionism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2009 Mainstream and right-wing Zionism has always been tangled up in this catch 22: wanting to be normal, yet at the same time wanting to be seen as totally unique, singled out, attacked more unfairly than any other nation and, thus, quite abnormal. The more Israelis have tried to become normal by naming and defeating their enemies, the deeper they've entrenched themselves in their myth of being the uniquely persecuted people.
2008
- The Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo
A Saga of Injustice and Hypocrisy Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The West's entire approach to Kosovo has been marked by sordid dishonesty and bad faith, supporting national self-determination and the right to secession in one place and territorial integrity in another, cheering on ethnic cleansing by one ethnic group and demanding war crimes trials for another, trumpeting the virtues of majority rule when it's convenient to do so and threatening to impose sanctions and penalties on majorities when that's convenient. For the Americans, Kosovo is nothing more than the hinterland of a giant military base.
- Access Denied
The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information -- often about politics, but also relating to sexuality, culture, or religion -- that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in over three dozen countries.
- Adding Insult to Injury
Debating Redistribution, Recognition, and Representation Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 This volume collects the responses of leading American social theorists to issues dealing with the rise of identity politics. Nancy Fraser's widely-cited work looks at ways to combine multiculturalism with a commitment to egalitarianism.
- After Pakistan's Election
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Throughout Pakistan the massive anti-Musharraf vote on 18 February, 2008 spoke volumes: We do not like the military dictatorship; we want Musharraf out.
- An Agenda for Change
The Right to the Freedom of Expression in Nepal Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Publication on the Agenda for Change: The Right to Freedom of Expression in Nepal.
- Agrarian-Industrial Revolt
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Reformers and radicals in the post-reconstruction South faced a daunting set of circumstances. Many of these are well known: In the former confederacy, Black laborers were eventually shut out of the electoral process via disfranchisement, terrorized by legislation, a lien system not dissimilar to slavery, and rampant violence. The convict-lease system put the state, via farmers' prisoners (largely Black men), in conflict with free labor that might be organized. Prospects for organizing biracial resistance were slim as the color line was diligently policed by force and ideology.
- Algonquins vs. Frontenac Ventures
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 I recently returned from a little-publicized “political hotbed” ignited by Frontenac Ventures Corporation (FVC), a private mining company causing grave injustices against the Ardoch First Nation community in Ontario, Canada.
- All options on the table?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Chomsky responds to the 2008 meetings of world powers which addressed the topic of nuclear proliferation. He highlights the numerous ways in which these talks failed to live up to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
- Allan Bérubé, 1946-2007
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 An inspiring and broad-ranging queer historian, Allan Bérubé died at the age of 61 on December 11, 2007. He left us with major contributions of exciting historical work, but also important unfinished work that needs to be continued.
- Anti-Semitism and Socialism
A Reply to Gorelick Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Defense of Palestinian Rights
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Appreciating Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. passed away on April 11, 2007, from a head injury sustained from a recent fall. Despite his best efforts to do away with himself by smoking heavily for many years, cigarettes, he had joked, were unable to do the job they promised. “If the washing don’t get you, the rinsing will” as the blues song says. So it goes.
- Arab Sexualities
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The issue of same-sex sexualities in the Arab world is a political and intellectual minefield, and more so since 9/11 than before. In a bizarre twist, neoconservatives and other rightists who were hostile for decades to the lesbian/gay movement have repackaged themselves as defenders of oppressed Arab women and gays. Responses from the left have been divided.
- At the Nuclear Precipice
Catastrophe or Transformation? Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 This book explores the present nuclear predicament, and how to step away from the precipice. It examines the intersections between international law and national policies; and between nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and nuclear disarmament.
- Australia's 'stolen' children get apology but no cash
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The stolen generations were Aboriginal children - mainly mixed race - who were removed from their families and sent to institutions or adopted into white families during the last century. Some children were snatched from their mother's arms, others were taken under the guise of court orders.
- Authors denounce Tesco over Thai defamation cases
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Nick Hornby and other leading British authors accuse Tesco of mounting a "disproportionate" legal response to criticism over its operations in Thailand.
- Bill Banta, 1941-2008
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Bill Banta, a member of the Chicago branch and founding member of Solidarity, died of pancreatic cancer in a Chicago hospice on August 20th. He was 67. Bill was a revolutionary socialist his entire adult life.
- Becoming a Revolutionary
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Against the Current: Which events of 1968 were you involved in? How did that event/those events affect you personally and politically at the time?
- Behind the Dirty Cleansing of New Orleans
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Commentaries on the viciousness of Congressman Richard Baker’s (R-LA) oft-cited comment that “we couldn’t get rid of public housing, but God did” often miss the fact that it is, in many ways, an accurate assessment of the intentions of U.S. public housing policy.
- Beyond Homelessness
Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Beyond Homelessness looks at the socioeconomic, ecological and spiritual dimensions of homelessness. Going further than seeing housing as being bricks and mortar the authors see it as a search for belonging, identity and security. They argue that if we see the world as holy instead of earth as home and we understand the Gospels, faith will heal the disharmony in which we have mired ourselves.
- Beyond the Hoax
Science, Philosphy and Culture Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Exposes the faulty thinking and outright nonsense of the postmodernist critique of science, which asserts that facts, truth, evidence, even reality itself are all merely social constructs.
- The Biggest 'October Surprise' Of All: A World Capitalist Crash
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Today we see the Western bourgeoisie, disarmed by its own neo-liberal ideology, falling back in a flash on Keynesianism, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking system to stave off collapse, and dusting off forgotten laws and powers from 70 years ago to push through their emergency measures.
- A Biological Walk Down Wall Street
Economics, Symbiosis and Parasitoids Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 Wall Street today, with the collapse of Freddie Mac, Fanny Mae, AIG, Lehmann Brothers, Washington Mutual and the rest as to come, is highly reminiscent of that scene in "Alien" (Ridley Scott, 1979) where the parasite begins to burst out. The host is the free market. Feeding the parasitoid more, in sense of allowing it to nourish on public funds as new host, will have the same denouement, only this time the host will not just be a particular market, but the whole market, and the society reliant upon it.
- Bitterly Divided
The South's Inner Civil War Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Historian David Williams lays bare the myth of a united confederacy, revealing that the South was in fact fighting two civil wars — an external one that we know so much about and an internal one about which there is scant literature and virtually no public awareness.
- B.J. Widick, 1910-2008
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 On June 28, 2008, Branko J. Widick, known to everyone as “B.J.” or “Jack,” died at age 97 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Widick was a prominent figure in the history of U.S. Trotskyism and above all in the unorthodox political tendency known as the “Shachtmanites.” In the Great Depression, he was directly involved in the rise of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and was a participant in General Motors sitdown strike of automobile workers.
- B.J. Widick and the UAW
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A look at the darker side of Canada's foreign policy record.
- Black Immigrants, 'Model' Minority? Plus: Don Imus
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 'Black' is a label which obscures more than it illuminates.
- The Blackest Streets
The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- Blue Gold: World Water Wars
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2008 A documentary, based on the book Blue Gold, by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, which examines environmental and political implications of the planet's dwindling water supply, and posits that wars in the future will be fought over water. The film also highlights some success stories of water activists around the world and makes a strong case for community action.
- Bolivia After the Referendum
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The month following Bolivia's recall referendum on August 10, 2008 tragically confirmed the class polarization of that country. The right-wing autonomists of the Santa Cruz, Pando, Beni, Tarija and Sucre departments (states or provinces) escalated their destabilization campaign against the Morales government, while the latter singularly failed to assert its rightful democratic control over all Bolivian territory. A small, racist and virulently right-wing minority has been able to shut down large parts of the country and spill indigenous peasant blood with impunity.
- Bolivia's Autonomist Right -- A Dangerous Threat
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Autonomist right-wing forces in the Bolivian department (state) of Santa Cruz — acting through the offices of the prefecture (governorship) and Santa Cruz Civic Committee — held an illegal May 4 rerendum on departmental autonomy. According to the consulting agency Captura Consulting the “yes” side won 85% of the votes cast, with 15% against. However, many organizations within the left-indigenous bloc of the department had called for a boycott of the referendum, and were successful in obtaining an abstention rate of over 40%. Compare that to the remarkably low abstention rate of 15% in the December 2005 general elections that brought Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, to office at the national level. Nonetheless, the right declared results a triumphant victory.
- Broken Barricades: The Oaxaca Rebellion in Victory, Defeat, and Beyond
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 An analysis of the 2006 Oaxaca rebellion and its contradictions. Its diversity encompassed workers, indigenous groups, Stalinists, anarchists and others. Its weapons and tactics included general assemblies, strikes, barricades, mirrors and fireworks.
- Burma: Ripe for change
New Internationalist May 2008 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2008 A look at Burma's attempts to speak out against political injustice.
- Bush's bankrupt vision
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Looking at the stops during Bush's visit to the Middle East, Chomsky offers an explanation of the ambitions Bush aimed to establish as his legacy; namely, good relations with those regions rich in resources, especially Saudi Arabia and Israel.
- Bottomfeeder
How the Fish on Our Plates is Killing the Planet Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- Can a Democrat change US Middle East policy?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In response to the Bush Administration's open disregard for public opinion polls, Chomsky considers the likeliness of a Democrat taking a new stance on the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. He asserts that the possibility is somewhat greater - even if only marginally.
- Can Soldiers Resist?
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Interviews with Tod Ensign and Phil Aliff.
- Canada's 1960s
The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A history of social movements of the 1960s, including student and anti-war movements, the rise of women's liberation, labour struggles, and Quebec nationalism.
- The Case Against Alan Dershowitz
Plagiarism, Cover Up and Misrepresentations Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Documents numerous instances of plagiarism and misrepresention by Alan Dershowitz in his smear campaigns against critics of Israel.
- Chasing a Mirage
The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 According to Tarek Fatah, "Morality is doing what is right, regardless what we are told; Religious dogma is doing what we are told, no matter what is right." Fatah argues that since Islam's advent, there have been two parallel strains of the religion that are in clash. The first "state of Islam" is a person's moral compass; the way Islam governs an individual's personal life. By contrast, the yearning for "an Islamic state" has been bloody and fruitless.
- Columbia's Paramilitary Politics
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In a surprise move in the early morning of May 13th, Colombian President Álvaro Uríbe announced the extradition of fourteen top paramilitary leaders to the United States, where they are charged with cocaine trafficking and money laundering. His move has provoked an outcry from victims’ and human rights groups, who fear that the extraditions will undercut efforts to hold the paramilitaries accountable for massacres, disappearances, torture, extra-judicial executions, and the displacement of thousands of people in Colombia.
- Coming Home to the Struggle
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 I became a political activist at the age of 12, when I marched for open housing in Evanston, Illinois. We lived next to the Black community in Evanston; African-American students made up 40% of my grade school. At the local YWCA girls club my sister and I were the only whites. The young Black women I became close to helped me overcome painful shyness. Later my father, a Methodist minister, was arrested trying to integrate churches in Jackson, Mississippi.
- Communist Organizing in the Jim Crow South
What's Not in The Great Debaters Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The Great Debaters is a well-made movie. But in its paeans to dedication and debate, it downplays the real social struggle that was going on in the U.S. in the 1930s, including by black people in the South.
- Confronting the Climate Change Crisis
An Ecosocialist Perspective Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008
- Confronting the -isms
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 I love the name Against the Current and would add that to be active in the Women’s Liberation Movement at the beginning of 1968 was to be “against the current.” And “the current” then was as much the Left and the Black Nationalist Movement as it was the society as a whole. We were mostly white women, mostly middle class in background. Who we were was used against us opportunistically by the Left and the Black Movement to keep from having to address the issues of sexism — a word we didn’t even have back then.
- Congo's War, Women's Holocaust
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Which current war has taken more lives than the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur put together?
- Connexions Calendar Expired Events 2008
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2008
- Connexions Information Sharing Services - Dutch text
Connexipedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2010 Connexions (volledige naam Connexions Information Sharing Services) is de voornaamste online bibliotheek en het archief voor Canadese organisaties voor sociale verandering. Dit project dat geen winstoogmerk heeft, beheert ook een uitgebreide gids van Canadese en niet-Canadese verenigingen en niet-gouvernementele organisaties.
- Connexions Information Sharing Services - Wikipedia Article - Arabic text
Connexipedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2009
- Connexions Information Sharing Services - Wikipedia Article - English text
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Connexions (full name Connexions Information Sharing Services) is the central online library and archive for Canada's movements for social change. The non-profit project also maintains a comprehensive directory of Canadian associations and NGOs.
- Connexions Information Sharing Services - Wikipedia Article - Farsi text
Connexipedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2009
- Connexions Information Sharing Services - Wikipedia Article - Korean text
Connexipedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2011
- Connexions Information Sharing Services - Wikipedia Artikel - Deutscher text
Connexipedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2010 Connexions ist die Zentrale Online Bücherei und Archiv für Kanada's Bewegung für gesellschaftlichen Wandel.
- Connexions - Services de partage d'information Connexions - Wikipedia Article - French text
Connexipedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2009 Connexions -- dont le nom complet est Services de partage d'information Connexions [Connexions Information Sharing Services] -- est la bibliothèque et l'archive en ligne centrale pour les mouvements canadiens partisans du changement social. Le projet à but non lucratif entretient également un vaste répertoire d'associations canadiennes et d'organisations non gouvernementales.
- Connexions Servicos de Compartilhamento de Informacoes - Wikipedia Article - Portuguese text
Connexipedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2009 Connexions (Connexions Serviços de Compartilhamento de Informaçoes) é a biblioteca central e arquivos eletrônicos do movimentos do Canadá para mudanças sociais. O projeto sem fins lucrativos também mantém uma lista completa de associaçoes e ONG's canadenses.
- Connexions Servis Udostepniania Informacji - Wikipedia Article - Polish text
Connexipedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2009 Connexions Information Sharing Services (pe?na nazwa Connexions Serwis Udostepniania Informacji) jest to internetowa bibliteka i archiwum dla kanadyjskich organizacji zajmuja;cych sie; przemianami spo?ecznymi. Ten bezprofitowy projekt zajmuje sie; prowadzeniem i uaktualnianiem obszernej ksija;z'ki adresowej kanadyjskich zwija;zków i organizacji pozarzadowych.
- Conquest
How Societies Overwhelm Others Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Tells the gripping history of conquest, illuminating the ways in which invaders have justified their conquests, highlighting a bloody and often prolonged process that can last centuries. He argues that while each individual conquest in ultimately unique, they nevertheless often share a number of qualities.
- Contaminated Meat, Contaminated Water: From Walkerton to Listeria
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The current listeria outbreak has the feel of deja vu all over again. Once again, we are hearing about companies and industry associations lobbying for fewer inspections and less 'interference', and about a compliant right-wing government only too eager to give them what they want.
- Costos y riesgos socializados vs. Ganancias privatizadas
La crisis en los Estados Unidos Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Covering Israel-Palestine: The BBC's Double Standards
An Exchange With The BBC's Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The priorities of the news media mean that the more Palestinians are killed, the less importance their deaths have to news organisations. Conversely, the fewer Israelis killed the more seriousness their deaths are accorded.
- Creative Destruction: The Madness of the Global Economy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The current system of economics, particularly the latest stage of 'turbo-capitalism', known inoffensively as 'neoliberalism', is built upon painful boom-and-bust cycles fuelled by corporate greed and maintained by cynical deception of the public. The costs to the planet - in terms of human suffering and environmental collapse - are staggering.
- 'Creative Destruction' - The Madness of the Global Economy - Part 2
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The dominant system of economics is unstable, inimical to social justice and lethally damaging to the environmental support systems on which we all depend. A major failure in professional journalism has been the refusal to analyse this; or even to report that real growth rates in the developed world have been declining since the 1970s.
- The Crisis Beneath the Bailout
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In early September, 2008 the Department of Labor reported that the U.S. economy in August had lost another 84,000 jobs. This was followed on October 2 with an announcement that officially recorded September job losses accelerated to 159,000. That made nine consecutive months of increasing unemployment, adding up to well over one million jobs lost over the past year.
- Criticism not disloyal
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Support for Palestinian rights thus need not come at the expense of concern for Israelis - in fact, advocating changes to Israeli policies that perpetuate war, anger, and resistance is the truest promotion of Israelis' well-being.
- Crossing Hitler
The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Explores the first full-length biography of Litten, the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic and the terror of Nazi rule in Germany after 1933.
- Dark Days
The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 An exposé of Canadian national security investigations, Kerry Pither's Dark Days exposes a disturbing record of human-rights abuses, both at home and abroad, and ultimately questions our notion of the "Just Society".
- The Death of Retirement?
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Age Shock: How Finance is Failing Us, Robin Blackburn’s followup masterpiece to Banking on Death (2002), is another sobering and insightful examination of retirement security. In Age Shock, Blackburn delves into the realities of an ageing demographic in the midst of the disintegration, from both a monetary and social obligation perspective, of sound financial conditions for the elderly.
- Decolonization and Empire
Contesting the Rhetoric and Reality of Resubordination in Southern Africa and Beyond Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 John Saul scrutinizes the subjects of empire and the new neocolonialist states of Southern Africa funded by the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization and World Bank. The gap between rich and poor continues to grow as the unequal opportunities and material outcomes of the free market entrench themselves. This hierarchy is in part self-creating and self-sustaining but also locked into place by these international institutions.
- Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A methodical deconstruction of Edward Said's Orientalism.
- Defiant Publics
The Unprecedented Reach of the Global Citizen Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Drache says that the new communications technologies of the contemporary information revolution are permitting new forms of transnational communication that are creating global consciousness and global citizenship.
- Democracy Against Politics
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 “¡Que se vayan todos!” shouted rebellious crowds during the Argentine economic crisis of 2001, “Out with them all!” The call soon spread throughout Latin America: for a new politics without politicians and a new society without social elites. Many radicals have been inspired by the movements that seemed to rise with so much energy and idealism from this foundational fire. Others have been quick to criticize the inadequacy of movements which seem to have forgotten that economic exploitation is more fundamental than political oppression, and that exploitation is held up by political power which must be seized rather than ignored.
- Detroit Politics Embroiled
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Detroit is a city entangled in a chain of interlocking crises, all the way from the world economic crisis, to deindustrialization in America, down to the regional and local levels of the housing market hemorrhage and a tidal wave of utility cutoffs in poor people’s homes. Some 40,000 Detroiters now are without water — the most shocking example, perhaps, of daily life in a city on the brink.
- Devastating Crisis Unfolds
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Bob Brenner, for the ATC editors. The current crisis could well turn out to be the most devastating since the Great Depression. It manifests profound, unresolved problems in the real economy that have been — literally — papered over by debt for decades, as well as a shorter term financial crunch of a depth unseen since World War II. The combination of the weakness of underlying capital accumulation and the meltdown of the banking system is what’s made the downward slide so intractable for policymakers and its potential for disaster so serious. The plague of foreclosures and abandoned homes — often broken into and stripped clean of everything, including copper wiring — stalks Detroit in particular, and other Midwest cities.
- A Dictionary of Environment and Conservation
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Contains over 8500 entries on all aspects of the environment and conservation. Embraces a broad spectrum of environmental areas including sustainable development, biodiversity, conservation, environmental ethics, philosophy, and history, resource management, sociology, and policy on the environment.
- Direct Action
An ethnography Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Graeber undertakes the first detailed ethnographic study of the global justice movement. The case study at the center of Direct Action is the organizing and events that led to the one of the most dramatic and militant mass protests in recent years-against the Summit of the Americas in Québec City.
- Dirty Wars
Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Historian Mark Curtis, presents the history of the British government's sponsorship of radical Islamic terrorism, from Iran, Afghanistan and Libya to the July 7 bombings.
- The Dismal Science
How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- Domestic Work and Rights in China
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 When China adopted the “open door” policy in 1978, south China, especially the Pearl River Delta area, was the first industrial area created to attract foreign investment, particularly from Hong Kong. In the late 1990s, China accelerated this policy, opening consumer markets to foreign investment. Since 1999, the average annual gross domestic product grew 10%, far ahead of other developing countries.
- Don't socialize the losses - take the whole thing!
Socialize all of finance under democratic control! Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 A demand that a few weeks ago would have seemed leftist utopianism is now entirely reasonable and indeed the only practical solution. If ALL the financial institutions- banks, insurance companies, saving and loans, pension funds - become state property, their worthless loans to each other can be wiped off the books as the mere paper that they are.
- Doubt is their Product
How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitious tactics spawned a multimillion-dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Offers concrete, workable suggestions for how it can be restored by taking the politics out of science and ensuring that concern for public safety, rather than private profits, guides our regulatory policy.
- Dropping the bomb: How to ban nukes and save the planet
New Internationalist June 2008 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2008 A look at nuclear weapons and their transportation in Britain.
- Dubai Labor Fighting Back Vs. Indentured Globalization
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 October, 2007 saw the government of the United Arab Emirates halfway through a "humane" immigration amnesty which, in turn, paved the way for a clampdown on labour. In November a huge strike wave erupted, culminating in pitched battles between militant laborers and Dubai police.
- Economics for Everyone
A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- Edible Action
Food Activism and Alternative Economics Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- The Election, Economy, War, and Peace
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Chomsky points out that the Democratic triumph in the 2008 election was indeed historic, but also relatively slight. He explores the factors that played a role in preventing a landslide victory for President Obama.
- The Elephant in the Room
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Much of the world is fascinated by the U.S. presidential election. The main reason is that the country may be ready to do something that most developed countries wouldn’t consider: electing a representative from an oppressed minority as head of government or state. (Try to imagine an Arab citizen of Israel or France as either country’s prime minister or president; or a British prime minister of South Asian descent.)
- Elissa Karg Chacker, 1951-2008
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Elissa Karg Chacker, a longtime member of Solidarity and previously the International Socialists (IS) in Detroit, died Sunday, May 11 from injuries suffered in an accident a week earlier. Riding her bicycle home after a Solidarity meeting, she was struck by a car and never regained consciousness. Her daughters Sasha and Nina stayed with her in the hospital, where many comrades and friends maintained a vigil throughout the week.
- Empire, Religion and Liberation
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 “At least 10 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Sunday by Israeli fire,” today’s New York Times reports as I write this review, “bringing the number of Palestinians killed since Wednesday… to more than 100.” One Palestinian in Gaza laments, “There is an attack every five or ten minutes. It keeps our nerves on edge and our senses strained. There is so much rage at what is happening; especially the scenes of murdered children and babies.” According to the Israeli human-rights group, B’Tselem, approximately half of the dead were unarmed civilians, and a quarter were children.
- The End of Poverty?
Resource Type: Film First Published: 2008 Today, global poverty has reached new levels because of unfair debt, trade and tax policies -- in other words, wealthy countries exploiting the weaknesses of poor, developing countries.
- Environmentalists Do Not Support Nuclear Power
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Everything's on the Line at AAM
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The strike of 3,600 UAW-represented workers at American Axle and Manufacturing plants in Michigan and New York has forced the idling of more than 40,000 workers in 30 GM plants and shut down a number of parts plants throughout North America. Eighty percent of AAM’s axles, chassis components and forged products are shipped to General Motors, but AAM also produces parts for other automakers, including Chrysler and Toyota.
- The Evil of the Lesser Evil
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Lesser-evilism as a progressive strategy has succeeded -- succeeded in making American politics progressively more and more right-wing.
- Exposing Bush's historic abuse of power
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Salon has uncovered new evidence of post-9/11 spying on Americans. Obtained documents point to a potential investigation of the White House that could rival Watergate.
- Facebook Facts
Finding Friends and Foes Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Unions and workers are making much use of the latest web fad: social networking sites. But are sites like Facebook really adding anything to our ability to organize? If yes, how, exactly? And where are the pitfalls in using online commercial sites for organizing?
- The First Legal Russian Strike in a Decade
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The almsot month-long strike at the Ford-Vsevolozhsk assembly plant, a small plant near St. Petersburg, ended December 16 with an agreement that negotiations would resume. The strike began on November 17, 2007, after four months of talks failed to produce any result. In fact, Ford management had initially refused to hold negotiations “during or under the threat of strike.”
- FLOW
For Love of Water Resource Type: Film First Published: 2008 A critical expose of the privatization of water infrastructure. 'Flow' confronts the disturbing reality that our crucial resource is dwindling and greed just may be the cause.
- Forty Years of Defying the Odds
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 My work area is a shambles. Projects I’ve been meaning to get to for forty years tumble from wherever I’ve shoved them.
- France: A Sea Change on the Left
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In contrast with the United States, where the political arena has been dominated by two entrenched parties for a century, France has gone through major changes since the end of World War II. Back then, workers' demands were mostly put forward by the French Communist Party (PCF) which had over 30% of the vote, and the fear of a revolution forced the ruling class to concede to demands such as universal healthcare (called Sécurité sociale).
- Free Speech and Acceptable Truths
Statement of the Alumni for Responsible Speech Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 While we support freedom of speech and academic freedom, we believe that university administrations have a duty to provide a safe learning environment in which students and faculty are protected by incorrect or harmful ideas. To achieve this safe learning environment, it will be necessary for the university authorities to cleanse the university's libraries of harmful books, to block inappropriate Internet sites, to ban guest lectures who hold improper views, and to identify and prosecute students and faculty who are guilty of thought crimes.
- Free speech for me - you shut up
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The right to express offensive views is at the very heart of the principle of free speech.
- From Resistance to Power!
Manifestos of the Fight for Indigenous Rights in Central and South America Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Funding Revolutions?
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Nearly every person I have encountered who is seeking liberation from the various oppressive-isms of this world has asked the fundamental question, “How do I free myself (and others) from such an insidious system?”
- The Future of Israel/Palestine
Against The Current vol. 139 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2009 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s address to both houses of the U.S. Congress in May, 2006 was the clearest, most explicit presentation of Israel’s conception of where it is going vis-à-vis the Palestinians. It is perhaps the most skilled use of Newspeak since George Orwell invented the term in his novel 1984.
- Gaza: Health System in Collapse
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The extremity of suffering in Gaza is little known in the West. Underlying the health emergency is the Israeli military's destruction of Gaza's basic infrastructure and Israel's closure of all Gaza's borders.
- Gaza, The World's Largest Outdoor Prison
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Sara Roy couldn't have predicted the deterioration of Gaza since the 2005 unilateral pullout of Israeli occupation forces and settlers any more effectively than in her book Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. For those seeking a thorough understanding of the failure for peace to spontaneously erupt upon the exit of the settlers from Gaza, Failing Peace is a valuable resource.
- Gaza's Shocking Devastation
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 A Canadian Jew's visit to the territory left him ashamed by what he saw.
- The Global Battle Against Noise Pollution
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Studies done in several European countries have demonstrated that noise can be a major killer. Awake or even asleep your brain and body react to sounds that increase the levels of stress hormones.
- Global Crisis and Opportunity
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Ben Terrall interviews Mike Davis. Mike Davis is a veteran writer and activist who cut his progressive teeth in the 1960s civil rights and antiwar movements. He has worked as a meat cutter, long-distance trucker, and currently teaches history at UC Irvine.
- The Global Gang Thang
A World of Change: Armed Young Men and Gansta Culture (Globalization and Community) Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- Globalization and Feminism
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In the concluding chapter of this innovative and insightful anthology, Torry Dickinson and Robert Schaeffer argue that “A key development for both theory and politics has been that the intersection of different global hierarchies has led to the rise of global, intersecting social movements. Many of the movements that have emerged are feminist-inspired and women-centered because women have been targeted by male-dominated institutions as new sources of accumulation, profit, and greed.”
- Globalization in the Academy
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 With the social movements of the 1960s, it was a good thing that Marxists pushed their way into the academy after being excluded for so long. Generations of college students were exposed to and benefited from Marxism’s challenge to mainstream social science.
- The God Question
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Why is everyone talking about God? From the English scientist Richard Dawkins to the American philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, from the leading French thinker Alain Badiou to the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the Almighty is suddenly back on the agenda, summoned back on to the public stage at just the moment when he must have been looking forward to a well-deserved retirement from such a demanding career.
- The God That Failed
The 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Perhaps the most striking fact revealed by the global financial crash -- or rather, by the reaction to it -- is the staggering, astonishing, gargantuan amount of money that the governments of the world have at their command. In just a matter of days, we have seen literally trillions of dollars offered to the financial services sector by national treasuries and central banks across the globe.
- Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A history of the sanitation worker strike in Memphis.
- "Good News," Iraq and Beyond
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Chomsky explores why the issue of Iraq seems to have fallen to the wayside following the 2006 mid-term election. He cites the necessity for diversion of the masses away from (lacking) political options to PR-created "character" and "good news". But he insists that the question of "the clash of civilizations" must indeed remain prominent in the minds of voters.
- Great Game II
From Tallinn to Seoul and Tokyo, by Way of Kiev, the Declining American Superpower Lashes Out on the Borders of Russia and China Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The US is playing the Great Game II from Estonia to Korea as a strategy to keep the Eurasian powers off balance and to preserve the ever-growing mass of nomad dollars from deflation and displacement.
- Great Peacemakers
True Stories from Around the World Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Profiles 20 world's most effective activists in this five-part book. Each part highlights different types of peacemakers. Part One recognizes activists who stand out for their efforts of choosing non-violence for change. Part Two covers those who spent their lives living peace. Part Three showcases people who have made their life’s work honouring diversity. Part Four highlights those who value all life. Part Five deals with those who have dedicated their lives to the health of the planet.
- Great Peacemakers: True Stories from Around the World
True Stories from Around the World Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- Guantanamo North
Terrorism and the Administration of Justice in Canada Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 After September 11, 2001, Canadian governments made significant changes to the law so that non-citizens with suspected links to terrorism could be held indefinitely with no due process. The Courts held that these and other changes including "judicial interrogations" and "convictions for terrorism without intent" are consistent with the Charter of Rights. The range of state secrecy extends now to everything related to national security. Diab contends that these measures are unnecessary and contrary to human rights and freedom.
- Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for
themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries
in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of
private corporations.
- HAMAS Under the Spotlight
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In a seemingly dramatic move in mid-2004, Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement which hitherto refused to participate in the Palestinian political system, expressed its willingness to be a part of that system.
- Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Advice and technical tips for the best way to launch a blog and how to get round online censorship. It includes an explanation of how to blog anonymously and contains articles by bloggers, particularly in Egypt and Burma.
- A Hard Rain Fell
SDS and Why it failed Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- Health Care Professionals In Canada Join with PHR-Israel
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Canadian health care professionals are linking with Physicians for Human Rights - Isreal to support their work in struggling and advocating for human rights, in particular the right to health, for people both in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
- History on the Printed Page
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 A small volume could be produced listing the books dealing with the times I have written about here. I will offer only a couple dozen.
- Hitting the Maternal Wall
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The “Maternal Wall” is not a new method of contraception, and it’s not the look mom gives when the kids miss curfew. In this slim and accessible book The Motherhood Manifesto, Blades and Rowe-Finkbeiner update the two-dimensional “glass ceiling” to describe the maternal wall as “employment discrimination against a woman who has, or will have, children.”
- Honoring Mahmoud Darwish
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Mahmoud Darwish lived through every major event in recent Palestinian history, and his experiences and his art made him a hero to his people and a companion of every Palestinian. Beloved and revered, he will continue to move every generation of Palestinians. As Nathalie Handal put it, "no other poet captures the Palestinian consciousness and collective memory the way he does… His work speaks of his internal exile and uprootedness, his meditations on his historical, collective, and personal past."
- The 'Honor' Killing of Aqsa Parvez
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Feminists and reformist left have for the most part met the spate of 'honour' killings within Canada with disgraceful silence.
- The Housing Mess
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Despite recent CNBC and MSNBC media hosts suggesting we may be at the ‘bottom’ of the housing market crisis, and Market Watch June 3rd commentary headlines like “Housing market may turn more quickly than you expect,” statistics continue to say otherwise, in sobering fashion.
- How to Avoid Action on Climate Change
The fine art of greenwash in Canadian politics Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Human Rights: in a time of terror
New Internationalist January/February 2008 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2008 A look at human rights in various countries including women's and sex rights.
- Humanitarian Imperialism
The New Doctrine of Imperial Right Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Chomsky considers "humanitarian intervention" and "the responsibility to protect" as new norms in international affairs by examining the institutional structures which produced the policies responsible for such developments.
- Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Hungry City details the transformation of the food industry and it's not so benevolent impact on humanity. Obesity, diabetes and heart disease are the by-products of a system that is characterized by over consumption in one part of the world and starvation in others. Output and the complex international infrastructure that supports are controlled by profit. Steel also documents how production of food is controlled by fewer companies accountable to no one but themselves. Her examples include the following: 90% of milk in the United States comes from one breed of cow; the same proportion of commercial eggs from a single breed of hen; British supermarkets have reduced the 2000 varieties of apples down to two. The food chain becomes vulnerable to disease, contamination or terrorism. As well as a guide to the the history of the food chain from farm to plate to landfill it is also a warning on the waste and destruction of our current food systems.
- Identity is that which is given
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In this age of globalisation many people fret about Western culture taking over the world. But the greatest Western export is not Disney or McDonalds or Tom Cruise. It is the very idea of culture.
- If I Am Not For Myself
Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 In a journey through family memory and leftwing history, Marqusee introduces us to Jewish heretics and heroes. In proudly reclaiming the Jewish radical tradition, he reminds us that cultures are not the exclusive franchises of nation-states, and that Zionists and anti-semites share the same sinister, racialized concept of group identity.
- If I Can't Dance ....
Why is the Left So Boring? Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Rovics asks, why is so much of the left in the US so attached to being so dreadfully boring? Why do so many people on the left apparently have no appreciation for the power and importance of culture? And when organizers, progressive media and others on the left do acknowledge culture, why is it usually kept on the sidelines?
- In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Gabor Mate looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them, and outlines what he thinks is needed to liberate ourselves from their hold on our emotions and behaviours.
- Inclusao ou Exclusao?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Enqanto isso acontece, nós vamos preferir acreditar que as "comunidades étnicas" nao tem interesse nenhum em tais assuntos e nenhuma posiçao na luta que está sendo travada em volta deles?
- Inclusión o exclusion?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Inclusion or exclusion
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 People who advocate a vision of distinct communities that speak different languages, keep apart from each other, and communicate with the structures of the larger society only through interpreters, are doing more harm than good. What they are advocating is not diversity but entrenched division.
- Inclusion or Exclusion - Arabic text
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Inclusion or Exclusion - Chinese Text
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Inclusion or Exclusion? - Farsi
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 People who advocate a vision of distinct communities that speak different languages, keep apart from each other, and communicate with the structures of the larger society only through interpreters, are doing more harm than good. What they are advocating is not diversity but entrenched division.
- Inclusion or Exclusion - Japanese text
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Inclusione o Esclusione?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Indianapolis' Extortion Dome
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The Indianapolis Colts’ new Lucas Oil Dome portends to be exorbitant for the taxpayers of Marion County, where Indianapolis is situated. But the cost is genteelly hidden, so the taxpayers are liable to overlook what this new Dome is going to cost them. This is the new Dome the Colts’ owning Irsay family insisted had to be built for them by public funds, or else they’d leave as they formerly abandoned Baltimore.
- Inhuman Bondage
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Looks at slavery in the American South, desribing black slaveholding planters, the rise of the Cotton Kingdom, the daily life of ordinary slaves, the highly destructive slave trade, the sexual exploitation of slaves, the emergence of an African-American culture, and much more.
- Insurrection & Organisation
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 An attempt to analyze the role of insurrection in the class struggle, in relation to the problem of revolutionary organization.
- Integracja czy wykluczenie?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Integration oder Ausgrenzung?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Intégration ou Marginalisation?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Intellectual Cleansing Part 1
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Keeping the media safe for big business.
- Intellectual Cleansing: Part 2
Former Guardian and Observer Journalist Jonathan Cook Responds Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Most ambitious journalists start out on a daily local newspaper owned by one of a handful of large media groups. There one quickly feels all sorts of institutional constraints on one's reporting. As a young journalist, if you know no better, you simply come to accept that journalism is done in a certain kind of way, that certain stories are suitable and others unsuitable.
- Intellectual Cleansing: Part 3
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The tendency to self-deception appears to be greatly increased when we join as part of a group. Groups create a sense of belonging, a "we-feeling", which can provide even greater incentives to reject painful truths.
- "Intersectionality" in Real Life
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Interview with Loretta Ross. Loretta Ross is National Coordinator of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, a network of 80 organizations.
- Is Bayh-Dole Good for Developing Countries? Lessons from the US Experience
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Recently, countries from China and Brazil to Malaysia and South Africa have passed laws promoting the patenting of publicly funded research, and a similar proposal is under legislative consideration in India. These initiatives are modeled in part on the United States Bayh-Dole Act of 1980.
- Israel and the Clash of Civilisations
Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Cook examines Israel’s key role in persuading the Bush administration to invade Iraq, as part of a plan to remake the Middle East, and their joint determination to isolate Iran and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons that might rival Israel’s own.
- Israeli Deaths Matter More
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The reality is that by devoting disproportionate coverage to Israeli deaths over Palestinian deaths, the BBC's claims to 'impartial' reporting are simply demolished. With great consistency, lives in the 'Third World' are presented as being of far less importance than those who are 'like us'.
- An Israeli in Palestine
Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Jeff Halper's book is, in part, the story of the evolution of a "white moderate" peace campaigner from Hibbing, Minnesota, to a radical Israeli campaigner for justice for the Palestinians.
- Israeli minister threatens "holocaust" as public demand ceasefire talks
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Israel's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai has threatened Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip with a "holocaust." The comments came a day after Israeli occupation forces killed 31 Palestinians, nine of them children, one a six-month-old baby, in a series of air raids across the Gaza Strip.
- It makes economic sense to kill people
Britain's approach to climate change puts a price on human lives. And the richer you are the more yours is worth Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 A study of the economics of climate compares the costs of halting runaway climate changewith the costs of inaction. The "costs" of climate change are calculated in part by calculating the reduction in consumption that would result from death and disease in the third world. Monbiot challenges the ethics of this economic model.
- It's Fantasy Economy!
Some Expert Views on What Should Happen Next Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 What happens next should be up to the public. It's striking to note that this is not even an option here.
- It's the Oil, stupid!
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Noam Chomsky questions why the USA is in Iraq. He determines that the suspicion of oil-induced motivation is indeed an understatement.
- Jealousy, Friendship, and Bisexual Chopped Liver
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 According to this theory, bisexuals could never, ever have any friends at all. We couldn't be friends with gay men, straight men, straight women, lesbians. And we definitely couldn't be friends with other bisexuals. According to this theory, the fact that we're attracted to both women and men makes us ineligible to be friends with anybody, of any gender, ever.
- Jonathan Cook - Response to Intellectual Cleansing Part 1
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 However grateful we should be to the tiny minority of dissident writers, their relegation to the margins of the commentary pages of Britain's 'leftwing' media serves a useful purpose for corporate interests. It helps define the 'character' of the British media as provocative, pluralistic and free-thinking - when in truth they are anything but. It is a vital component in maintaining the fiction that a professional media is a diverse media.
- A Journey from Satire to Legal Suite to Defense of Democratic Rights
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 An account of CanWest's lawsuit arising out of a parody satirizing the Vancouver Sun's biased reporting on Israel and Palestine.
- "Just Say No!" to the Robin Hood-in-Reverse Bailout
And What to Do Instead Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 The reverse Robin Hood deal to bail out the rich cannot be allowed to stand. It's time to take to the streets.
- Kenya's Opposition Party
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 That the elections in Kenya were rigged is no longer in question. And for most people that the culprit is the sitting president, sworn in so quickly that the ceremony has been jokingly likened to a lightning wedding, is no longer a question.
- Kicking Ass for the Working Class
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 There it was, staring at me from the AFL-CIO’s very own blog: a black sign with bold red letters saying “KICKING ASS FOR THE WORKING CLASS,” signed AFL-CIO. Surely they meant to say “working for,” or in SEIU-speak “uniting” “working families” or “working people” or some other euphemisms for struggle and class. Had the decline and split of organized labor pushed our otherwise moderate business union leaders to new extremes?
- Killer Coke Exposed
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In their September-October 2006 Against the Current (ATC 124) article “The Real Life Side of Coke,” Camilo Romero and Leslie Gill documented the growing movement of students and labor organizations that developed as a response to calls for international solidarity by victims of torture and intimidation at Coke bottling plants in Colombia starting in the 1990s. Joe Zacune wrote in the same issue about a movement of communities in India fighting to preserve their water and their health from a series of infractions on Coke’s part.
- Killing Hope
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Is the United States a force for democracy? William Blum serves up a forensic overview of U.S. foreign policy spanning sixty years. For those who want the details on the U.S.'s most famous actions (Chile, Cuba, Vietnam, to name a few), and for those who want to learn about lesser-known efforts (France, China, Bolivia, Brazil, for example), this book provides a window on what U.S. foreign policy goals really are. "If you flip over the rock of American foreign policy of the past century, this is what crawls out… invasions … bombings … overthrowing governments … occupations … suppressing movements for social change … assassinating political leaders … perverting elections … manipulating labor unions … manufacturing “news” … death squads … torture … biological warfare … depleted uranium … drug trafficking … mercenaries … It’s not a pretty picture. It’s enough to give imperialism a bad name."
- The Korean Working Class: From Mass Strike to Casualization and Retreat, 1987-2008
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Labor on the Ropes
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition, Kim Moody focuses on why the organized labor movement went into decline and points to potential signs of revival. The author’s explanation begins with the worsening economic situation in the 1970s and a harsher anti-union climate, both politically and in the workplace, as “business refined its ability to act as a class.”
- Labor's Disaster at American Axle
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The 87-day strike earlier this year at American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM) ended in a rout that has devastating implications for the organized U.S. labor movement. Begun on a snowy morning early February 26, the strike ended on May 22, a late spring day just before the Memorial Day weekend.
- Law and the wives of others
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 How does a modern, plural democratic society deal with the desire of some minority groups to observe cultural norms at odds with the law of the land?
- Leader and Vassal
Bringing Death and Destruction to Muslims Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Americans do not think of themselves or of Israel as terrorist states, but the evidence is complete and overwhelming. Thanks to the power of the Israel Lobby, Americans only know the Israeli side of the story, which is that evil anti-semite Palestinians will not let blameless Israelis live in peace and persist in their unjustified terror attacks on an innocent Israeli state.
- The Legacy of 1968
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In 1989, the world systems theorists Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein wrote the following five short sentences: “There have only been two world revolutions. One took place in 1848. The second took place in 1968. Both were historical failures. Both transformed the world.”
- Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage: What is at Stake?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 There are good people on either side of the same-sex marriage debate. Unfortunately, however, it has been one of the most divisive issues in society. Opponents of same-sex marriage perceive the other side as part of a cabal of gay activists and social-engineering judges and politicians, intent on making a mockery of important social values. Proponents of same-sex marriage often perceive the other side as "homophobic" bigots or religious fundamentalists who want to deprive gay or lesbian couples of a right enjoyed by others because they hate homosexuals. The debate over same-sex marriage has divided people who share common values and beliefs on many fundamental questions--war and peace, economic security, democracy versus the increasingly anti-democratic and repressive nature of American society. This divisive debate cripples the ability of ordinary Americans to unite around the things that we agree on.
- Lenin Rediscovered
What is to Be Done? in Context Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- Letters from the Edge
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A powerful collection in which women home in on nuances of life in far-flung countries.
- Li Ta-Chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- The Liberal Defence of Murder
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A searching examination of the influence of the "pro-war Left" on US foreign policy.
- La "libertad de expresión", siempre y cuando no ofenda a nadie
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- The Lion and the Gazelle
On Jewish History Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 If we, the Israelis, want to consolidate our nation, we have to free ourselves from the myths that belong to another form of existence and re-define our national history. We must recognize the difference between myth and history, between religion and nation, between a Diaspora and a state, in order to find our place in the region in which we live and develop a normal relationship with the neighboring peoples.
- Looking Back -- and Ahead
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The year 1968 stands out as one of those pivotal years on multiple political and cultural levels. Against the Current will devote considerable space to discussing what the upheavals of that year meant then, and now. Conventional media retrospectives will concentrate on the spectacular and appalling visual images — street rioting over the Vietnam War and the Martin Luther King assassination; the murder of Robert Kennedy; the debacle of the Democratic convention in Chicago, with police beating heads while Hubert Humphrey proclaimed “the politics of joy” in his nomination acceptance speech.
- Loosing Another Round
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The strike at American Axle, which we reported on in ATC 134, ended when workers voted to go back under a concessionary agreement. The 25% who voted no didn’t feel they were close to winning but they said they couldn’t look themselves in the mirror if they voted yes. Yet the strike idled nearly three dozen assembly plants and put enormous pressure on GM. The UAW did not develop a longterm relationship with the union at the AAM plant in Mexico. All during the strike that plant produced 6,000 axles a day, thus enabling GM to keep some production going.
- Loser Take All
Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008 Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 The U.S. election system is a shambles, run by private corporations with a partisan agenda, and largely based on a technology that anyone can rig.
- Machismo and Its Discontents
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The one clear memory I have of 1968 (as opposed to all those other antiwar and pro-civil rights struggles in which I was engaged in the 1960s and ‘70s) is that I was a member of a faculty ad-hoc group, mostly from UMass Amherst (but there was also someone who taught at Amherst college and his wife).
- The Magna Carta Manifesto
Liberties and Commons for All Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Linebaugh shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny -- and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture -- are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state.
- The Making of Jericho Road
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 An interview with Michael Honey. The paperback edition of Michael Honey’s Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign is released this January 2008.
- Merkel in the Knesset
Israel, Israel Above Everything! Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 We are still confronted with the phenomenon that critics of the Jewish State are labeled as anti-Semites or as self-hating Jews, respectively.
- Mexico at War
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Mexico is at war. The drug war has become all the news this fall: Real war. Bloody war. With bombings, massacres and body counts.
- Michel Foucault: friend or foe of the left
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Examines why a man who was a technocrat working for the state came to appeal to people both on the left and the right of the political spectrum.
- Mining Town Crisis
Globalization, Labour and Resistance in Sudbury Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- Mistaken Identity
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 Historically, antiracists challenged both the practice of racism and the process of racialisation; that is, both the practice of discriminating against people by virtue of their race and the insistence that an individual can be defined by the group to which he or she belongs. Today's multiculturalists argue that to fight racism one must celebrate group identity. The consequence has been the resurrection of racial ideas and the imprisonment of people within their cultural identities. Racial theorists and multiculturalists, the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut observes, have 'conflicting credos but the same vision of the world'. Both fetishise difference. Both seek to 'confine individuals to their group of origin'. Both undermine 'any possibility of natural or cultural community among peoples'. Challenging such a politics of difference has become as important today as challenging racism.
- Model scientists
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In contrast to the plethora of day-to-day conversations on how to fit into the
administrators directives, this essay provides a historical context, particularly though its extensive bibliography, to encourage today's biologists to question authority and question nature.
- Models of Coming U.S. Interventions: Iraq or Haiti?
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Ben Terrall interviews Mike Davis.
- The Moronic Sport: ORVs on Public Lands
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 I do not accept the premise that abuse of our lands is something that we must tolerate as inevitable. It is our land. It is our children's land, and their children's land. We have a responsibility to pass these lands on to the next generation in better condition than we found them.
Talking about promoting 'responsible' ORV use is like suggesting we ought to promote "responsible wife abuse" or "responsible child abuse."
- The Most Wanted List, International Terrorism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Revealing the difference between America's use of the term "the world" and the conception which would actually include the entire globe, Chomsky demonstrates that if the "world's" voice were heeded, other terrorist concerns would likely top the agenda.
- 'The movement is ours!': Lesbian activist critique
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 We have recently claimed a right to reciprocity in the support of our struggles, but how many in the Queer rights movement have actively worked for the liberation of those groups whose endorsement we demand?
- My 1968 in the Heartland
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 “Ezekiel's brother got arrested. He’s a Communist!”
- My Year of Transition
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The year 1968 was a crucial transition for me, from the Black struggle against White Supremacy to the Chicano struggle against White Supremacy. The first struggle began in 1959, when I became involved in the Robert Willliams Defense Committee.
- Myths of Cultural Dysfunction
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 This is another “blame the victim” book faulting Latino immigrants for not being as prosperous as other ethnic and racial groups, such as the Asians, in the United States. According to the author, the cause is Latino culture, particularly its “counterproductive” values such as living for the moment, valuing and having large families, and, most important of all, resisting and not wanting to learn English.
- The Nakba
Why Israel's birth was Palestine's catastrophe and what's the solution? Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008
- The necessary revolution
Working together to create a sustainable world Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Published: 2010 Originally published in 2008 as: The necessary revolution: how individuals and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world.
- The New Chinese Nationalism
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Corporate globalization has been remarkably successful in driving down wages and the welfare of working people across the world. Resistance to this is necessary and inevitable, hence the birth of the anti-globalization movement. The movement is vastly heterogeneous, but internationalist aspirations are strongly visible.
- A New Phase of Economic Crisis
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In early AprilL 2008 the general consensus was that the U.S. economy had clearly fallen into recession. A long list of key economic indicators from November 2007 through March 2008 were all flashing red — from retail sales, job loss, business and consumer confidence and spending to industrial production and other prime indicators.
- The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Terrorism
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Political and moral analysis of the causes and contexts of terrorism the world over.
- The No-Nonsense Guide to The United Nations
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Conveys the complexity of the UN, assesses its record, and considers options for reform.
- The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A world tour of food—from industrialized production and consumption to community food security.
- No Outside Saviors!
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Against The Current spoke with Gwendolyn M. Patton as part of our retrospective on the events of 1968 and the surrounding years.
- Noam Chomsky on 1968
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Chomsky explores the milestones achieved in this monumental year, including human and ethnic rights, global solidarity, environmental concern, etc. Despite simultaneously tragic realities of 1968, the results have been long-lasting and positive.
- Notes from a Revolution Dying
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In June 1922, five years on from the Russian Revolution, a group of Moscow communists gathered to discuss a letter by Vladimir Petrzhek, an auto worker, tendering his resignation from the communist (or Bolshevik) party. Petrzhek was one of the worker communists who swelled the party’s ranks during the civil war of 1918-19, when the communist “Reds” had defended the revolution from the western-supported “White” generals.
- Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 As capitalism continues to corral every square inch of the globe into its logic of money and markets, new practices are emerging through which people are taking back their time and technological know-how. In small, under-the-radar ways, they are making life better right now, simultaneously building the foundation, technically and socially, for a genuine movement of liberation from market life.
- The Oaxaca Commune
The Other Indigenous Rebellion in Mexico Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Obama and "I Have a Dream" in 2008
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 As we enter the 2008 presidential election, it is noteworthy that Illinois Senator Barack Obama is still a serious contender for the Democratic Party nomination. I say “noteworthy” because his campaign has been marked throughout with ambivalence among many African Americans.
- Obama and the Empire
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 As Barack Obama’s campaign shifted focus to battle John McCain following his victory over Hillary Clinton, various observers began to suggest that Obama had begun to “move to the center” in order to get elected. Supporters explained that shift as a necessary pragmatic step; others, airing varied degrees of disappointment, went so far as to suggest that he had somehow “lurched to the right.”
- The occupation of Gaza and the West Bank must end
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The occupation of Gaza and the West Bank must end. The dispossession of the Palestinians must be fully acknowledged and Israel must reach out to embrace the full rights of Palestinians to nationhood and viability. Only then will the nightmare end that is the reality of the Palestinian people living in the Occupied Territories and the refugee camps. And only with that can there be any hope for a real peace.
- Of National Lies and Racial America
Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 To some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not on that day that "everything changed." To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, only to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being on the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life.
- The OIC does not speak for Muslims
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Tarek Fatah says that "To suggest that any criticism of Islamism, the political ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian Ayatollahs, is anti-Islamic is a bogus and fraudulent position. I would contend that my religion Islam demands that I stand up to these bullies and take away from their right to put padlocks on poetry and chastity belts on independent thinking."
- On Hunger and Capitalism
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 On September 11, 2001, approximately 35,000 of our brothers and sisters died from what is perhaps the worst possible cause of death — starvation. A decade after the 1996 World Food Summit set the goal of cutting the rate of hunger in the world by half, today approximately 854 million people are still starving, which is a great increase in comparison to the 842 million in the year 2000.
- On Kindness
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- On May '68
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Interview with Michael Löwy. Michael Löwy is the author of numerous works on socialist thought from Marx to the present as well as on liberation theology in Latin America.
- Opa Nobody
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In Opa Nobody, Sonya Huber — an activist struggling to reconcile her politics with the demands of human relationships and the realities of contemporary U.S. life — undertakes an ambitious task: the political nonfiction novel.
- Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Drawing on in-depth interviews with over a hundred women and men, Opening Up explores the real-life benefits and challenges of all styles of open relationships — from partnered non-monogamy to solo polyamory.
- Ossetia-Russia-Georgia
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Chomsky points out the hypocrisy of threatening Russia with exclusion from international society due to the violation of the international principle of respecting other nations' sovereignty. He further explores how to integrate and handle Russia in the context of the modern world order and the threat of a Cold War II.
- Our History Recovered
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 For thirty-six years since its apogee in the late 1960s during the worldwide movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam, the global Left, including the Left in the United States, has been in decline. Globally, perhaps the most significant causal factor accelerating decline at the beginning of the 1990s was the collapse of the Soviet Union as a perceived alternative to dominant capitalist economic and governmental modes.
- Our Spirits Don't Speak English
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2008 A documentary film about the Native American boarding schools.
- A Parable of Women's Liberation
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Interview with Meredith Tax.
- Paradise Lost at Sea
Rethinking Cruise Vacations Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Klein's book looks at the hidden realities of cruise ships. The cruise lines prefers to keep some of the ugly truths from media scrutiny: cruise ship safety, sexual assaults, onboard crime and injury and death from accidents at sea. He also questions their claims of environmental protection and its impact on local communities to protect their marine nature. Further exposed are the health risks and medical care and the dark side of life below deck. He concludes by summarizing the issues and challenges that must be faced by all who use curise ships.
- Participatory Democracy
Prospects for Democratizing Democracy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Twenty or more arguments for participatory democracy written contributors including Goerge Woodcock, Murray Bookchin, Gerry Hunnius, Colin Ward, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, and Don Calhoun.
- Patricia Isasa's Quest for Justice
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Patricia Isasa turned 16 on April 24, 1976 in her home town of Santa Fe, Argentina. She was an honor student, a delegate of her school and a member of a Catholic group in support of the poor - all completely open and legal activities.
- Peace
A History of Movements and Ideas Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Cortright shows that it is possible to prevent the scourge of war and create a more just and peaceful future, if we are prepared to learn the lessons of history and apply proven peacemaking knowledge.
- Peace Beyond Annapolis
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 What are the prospects for progress toward Israeli-Palestinian and regional peace coming out of the one-day conference called by president George W. Bush? One leading Arab-American organization offering a positive vision “hopes to see a just, comprehensive and lasting peace result out of the initial Middle East peace discussions taking place in Annapolis, Maryland.”
- People First Economics
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Toxic debt, rising job losses, collapsing commodity prices and expanding poverty. How can we rein in these beasts unleashed by the free market economy?
- People's struggles in Latin Asia & Philippines, colonial protests during the Spanish era
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 At the end of the nineteenth century, the Philippines was the first country in Asia to be liberated from colonial power. The first anti-colonial revolt against Spanish rule occurred from 1896 to 1898.
- Perché tante storie per l'omicidio di una ragazza musulmana dalla pelle scura?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Picture This
Posters of social movements in Québec (1966 - 2007) Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A collection of posters which offer a veritable journey through Quebec’s social history and political imagination of the past four decades.
- Plowshares into Swords
From Zionism to Israel Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 An authoritative history of Zionism and Israel.
- The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The first student uprising in 1968, year of millennial hopes and young insurrections, took place in Warsaw. But the west's media commemorations of 1968 - selective, supercilious about such idealism, and yet faintly nervous in case a new generation feels tempted into imitation - overlook Poland entirely.
- Por que fazer um alarido sobre o assassinato de uma garota muçulmana morena?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Por qué protestar por el asesinato de una chica musulmana de piel oscura?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Porn can be good for you
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 While pornography can be dehumanising and exploitative, it can also be educative, liberating, empowering, fulfilling and immensely socially beneficial. It all depends on how it is made, who makes it, what it depicts and why it is being used.
- Postmodernism: Paralysed by postmodernism
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 A great deal of "theory" in the humanities and social sciences -- and not just postmodern theory -- involves the creating of a kind of conceptual landscape filled with curious kinds of abstract objects -- "language", "power", "justice", "state", "culture", "government", "the polity", "the economy" and a host of others, which are viewed "theoretically" from somewhere way "outside" or "above" them. But it is just this way of looking at things -- from "on high" -- that makes it so difficult to see how people in the landscape are able to create and re-create the world in which they live, and are not simply trapped or formed by it. In fashionable postmodernist treatments of identity or subjectivity, language, as the ultimately hollow and imprisoning object, is put together with the notion that anybody who uses words must be committed to the standard definition of those words, to produce the conclusion that "language" determines the meaning of "identity" words such as man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, natural, normal -- and thus "constructs" (as it is said) human identity or subjectivity itself.
- Pourquoi faire toute une histoire a propos du meurtre d'une musulmane a peau mate?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 L'Histoire donne de nombreux exemples de mouvements sociaux qui avec le temps adoptent des positions directement opposées aux principes sur lesquels ils ont été fondés.
- The Power of Women United
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Interview with Kipp Dawson.
- Power to the (Palestinian) People!
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 I am not a Palestinian; I am not one of the oppressed. I only hope I can use my privilege in an effective way in order to redeem the gift the people of Gaza have given all of us: the realization that the people do have power and can prevail even in the face of overwhelming power. We may each express our responsibility towards the people of Gaza in whatever way most suits us, but as the privileged we must do something.
- Press for Conversion #62
May 2008 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2008 The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) helped overthrow the democratically-elected government of Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004. In the years prior to this US-led regime change, although Aristide and his Lavalas government were extremely popular among the country's poor citizens, CIDA drastically cut bilateral aid. CIDA then poured millions into extremely partisan Haitian groups that represented the interests of Haiti's corporate elite.
- Press for Conversion #63
November 2008 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2008 CIDA-funded "NGOs" in Canada rationalized the destabilization and overthrow of Haitian democracy and then covered up the atrocities of the Canadian-backed dictatorship after the coup. This issue examines major themes in the propaganda war against Aristide's popularly-elected Lavalas government.
- A pro-Israel group's plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Electronic Intifada exposes a secret scheme by a pro-Israel pressure group to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.
- Profit motives behind sexualization of 'tween girls
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The sexualization of 'tween girls - those between the ages of 8 and 12 -- in pop culture and advertising is a growing problem fueled by marketers' efforts to create cradle-to-grave consumers.
- Public Universities in Peril
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 It's hare to imagine that only a year ago the privatization of a public university would emerge as a major political issue in Bloomington, Indiana. That is not to say the topic took the community by surprise. As early as 1994, the Indiana University’s Board of Trustees formed various tasks forces to evaluate the university’s potential for privatization.
- Puerto Rico, The Oldest U.S. Colony
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 When I was a high school senior, my history teacher promised the class that the Americans “would land” in Puerto Rico by the New Year. What he meant to tell us was that, different from most Puerto Rican history courses, our class would spend considerable time studying more recent historical events, and therefore the most controversial period of Puerto Rican history — the American Century. He kept his promise and many of us, including me, left the class with a deep sense of uneasiness against Puerto Rico’s colonial condition under the United States.
- Putting Technology to Work for Palestine Activism
Palestine Activism Handbook Module Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Race, Incarceration, and American Values
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Glenn Loury argues that the extraordinary mass incarceration rate in the USA is not a response to rising crime rates. Instead, it is the product of a decision to become a more punitive society. He connects this policy to our history of racial oppression, showing that the punitive turn in American politics and culture emerged in the post-civil rights years and has today become the main vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchies.
- Racism and Responsibility
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Malik Miah writes in Against the Current 131, “[Orlando] Patterson, and others in Black academia and middle-class civil rights organizations, are right to point to internal problems within the Black community. But the ‘take personal responsibility’ critique targets only a secondary factor. It has little to do with addressing racist attitudes still prevalent among many whites, even as a large majority of whites and society oppose blatant racial discrimination.”
- Racism and Structural Solutions
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 When Barack Obama raised the specter of race in a March 18 speech that went far beyond what one would expect from the Democratic Party, some of us on the left were hopeful. Since the 1970s, race-speech in presidential campaigns has been increasingly buried in coded language like, “welfare moms,” “inner-city,” “street crime,” “states’ rights” and so on. We all welcomed a shift away from such discourse. By dealing a bit more squarely with the issue, the speech had the potential to ignite a national debate that could grapple with the “racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years,” as Obama put it.
- Radical Digressions 5
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2008
- Raymond Williams, and Why Culture Matters
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 This year sees the 20th anniversary of the death of Raymond Williams, one of the towering socialist thinkers of the 20th century. A superb biography of him, Raymond Williams: A Warrior's Life, has just been published by Dai Smith, who ranks among the finest scholars of Welsh culture and history of our time. Smith charts Williams's passage from the Welsh border country, where his father was a railway signalman, to Cambridge and then into adult education, a vocation he chose for political motives along with his New Left colleagues Richard Hoggart and E.P. Thompson.
- Reading Orientalism
Said and the unsaid Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 An extensive discussion of Edward Said's influential 1978 polemic 'Orientalism'. Varisco mounts a sustained critique on Said's flawed methodology, his skewed and selective handling of literary evidence, his inadequate historical knowledge, and his distorted and tendentious conclusions.
- Real Utopia
Participatory Society for the twenty-first century Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Real Utopia identifies and obliterates the barriers to an egalitarian, bottom-up society, while convincingly outlining how to build it.
- The Realities of China Today
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Interest in the post-1978 Chinese market reform experience remains high and for an obvious reason: China is widely considered to be one of the most successful developing countries in modern times. The Chinese economy has recorded record rates of growth over an extended time period, in concert with a massive industrial transformation. Adding to the interest is the Chinese government's claim that this success demonstrates both the workability and superiority of "market socialism."
- Reasoning Otherwise
Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada 1890 - 1920 Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Examines the people and events that led to the rise of the left in Canada from 1890 to 1920, and highlights how a new way of looking at the world based on theories of evolution transformed struggles around class, religion, gender, and race, and culminates in a new interpretation of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.
- Rebranding Fascism: National-Anarchists
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 On the organizational and intellectual history of national anarchism.
- Recovering Forgotten Voices
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 A lover of American literature will come away from reading Alan Wald’s Trinity of Passion: The Literary Left and the Antifascist Crusade excited about the prospect of investigating a long list of currently unheralded writers who collectively constitute a voice that deserves to be recognized as major.
- Reinterrogating the Classical Marxist Discourses of Revolutionary Democracy
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Marik attempts to re-examine the "common sense" claim that Marxism had been an authoritarian political theory and practice.
- A Rejoinder to Joel Kovel
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Joel Kovel is to be congratulated on the successful struggle to overturn the outrageous University of Michigan Press decision to halt distribution of Overcoming Zionism. To whatever extent the controversy has boosted the book’s sales and stimulated discussion of the issues it raised, so much the better.
- Religion and the Rise of Labor and Black Detroit
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Historians and other scholars have given Detroit plentiful attention, including some very important books, yet in this vital new study Angela Dillard manages to approach the Motor City’s past in several crucial yet previously neglected ways. What’s most valuable about the book is her attempt to encompass such subjects as race, labor radicalism, Black religion and the civil rights movement all in one narrative.
- A Reluctant Memoir of the '50s and '60s
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 I have been asked to write a memoir that would give a sense of the old left/new left realities of the 1950s and ‘60s. That seems quite odd to me (why would I be writing such a thing?), until I look in the mirror and see this old guy looking back at me. As I reflect, it does seem to me that I went through a lot of experience, met a lot of people, and perhaps learned from all that…So I will share some of my story.
- Reluctant Memoir, Part 2
Against The Current vol. 135 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 I think it was in 1963 that I first became aware of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). My older sister Patty had married a very nice guy named Earl Brecher, with whom she went to Liberia as one of the first Peace Corps volunteers, in a program, sending idealistic college graduates to “help” downtrodden areas in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, launched by the Kennedy administration.
- Remember the '80s
Social Movements Between Woodstock and the Web Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The history of 1980s activism deserves to be remembered and studied by those fighting for change today.It always helps to have a fuller view of the past, to figure out what to keep and what to discard.
- Remembering Jim Campbell
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Canadian anarchist.
- Renewing Socialism
Transforming Democracy, Strategy and Imagination Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- A Reply on Overcoming Zionism
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 David Finkel and I see eye to eye on most basics where Israel is concerned, and he is generous in praising my recently published Overcoming Zionism. For years I have known him to be a stalwart anti-Zionist and one of the best-informed people on the socialist left concerning this most vexing and intractable of conflicts.
- Report from Winter Soldier
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 On Friday, Day 2, testimony began at 9 AM with a panel about the "Rules of Engagement". Speakers from the Army and Marine Corps recounted the atrocities that they not only witnessed but participated in. The stories they were telling about the rules of engagement they learned while training at boot camp, or on a military base "back home," were the same as what I had heard from my son. I broke down sobbing. The photographs they were showing on the five viewing screens of bloodied bodies torn apart by close gunfire, 50-calibre Machine guns, rocket launchers, and every other damn weapon our great military industrial complex has created, were all too familiar to me.
- Resistance
One Woman's Defiance in Occupied France Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Published: 2009 The memoir of a French resistance fighter and museum worker who chronicles the undergroud network of resistance in Paris during the occupation. She then chronicles her imprisonment and the slave labour she endured in Germany. The final section of her memoir recounts her release by the Americans and the time she spent helping them hunt Nazis after the war.
- Response to George Fish
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 George Fish raises an important point about the “taking personal responsibility” debate taking place within the Black community, especially at the academic and leadership level. But his criticism of my argument that it is a “secondary factor” to prevalent institutional racism is way off.
- Responsible Polyamory
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- The Returns of Zionism
Myths, Politics and Scholarship Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Leading Israeli scholar with a major re-evaluation of Zionist ideology and literature.
- Rev. Edward Pinkney Imprisoned
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The corruption and deceitfulness continues in the Berrien County, Michigan courthouse. My husband, Reverend Edward Pinkney, leader of Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO) was convicted in March 2007 by an all-white jury motivated by something other than the truth. He has now been thrown in prison for writing an article about the case and the injustices in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
- Reverend Wright and Black Liberation Theology
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The groundswell of broad support for Barack Obama (both among Blacks and whites) is a phenomenon that deserves a serious analysis and understanding. It cannot be down played by passing it through the lens of pure-and-simple lesser-evilism.
- Review: Riding the Bus to Freedom
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The 1961 Freedom Rides challenged a racially segregated society by openly defying its customs, riding in interracial groups on interstate buses going South and desegregating the stations’ facilities. Asserting their constitutional right to travel, participants employed direct action in the face of intimidation, violence and police complicity with the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens’ Councils.
- Revolution of the Snails
Encounters with the Zapatistas Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Give the Zapatistas time -- the slow, unfolding time of the spiral and the journey of the snail -- to keep making their world, the one that illuminates what else our lives and societies could be. Our revolution must be as different as our temperate-zone, post-industrial society is to their subtropical agrarianism, but also guided by the slow forces of dignity, imagination, and hope, as well as the playfulness they display in their imagery and language.
- Rhetoric for Radicals
A Handbook for Twenty-first Century Activists Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Activists often suffer from a credibility gap because of their lack of coherent message and strategic delivery. Rhetoric for Radicals addresses and helps solve these problems. It provides the tools to develop the all-important communication skills necessary to be effectively heard.
- Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine
The "Hideous Nakedness" of Imperial Wars Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Luxemburg's discussion regarding capitalism and democracy speaks to the world we live in today. Imperial war, she wrote, shows capitalism in 'all its hideous nakedness.' This bloody nakedness is not only essential to capitalist development, but depends on it. Indeed, it is the most cataclysmic and radical of all capitalist shocks.
- The Russian-Georgian Clash
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Interview with Ronald Grigor Suny.
- The Russian Revolution in Retreat
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The relationship between “Leninism” and Stalinism has been a highly controversial topic between the political left and right as well as within the left itself. The “totalitarian” school of thought, historically associated with the political right and with many liberals, has held that there are no qualitative differences between the two regimes and that the main source of Stalinism was the Bolshevik ideology and politics that existed before the October Revolution.
- Edward Said's shadowy legacy
Tricky with argument, weak in languages, careless of facts: but, thirty years on, Said still dominates debate Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 So many academics want the arguments presented in Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) to be true. It discourages any kind of critical approach to Islam in Middle Eastern studies.
- School Zone
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2008 Humourous video that explores the benefits and protection the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation has gained for members through advocacy and collective bargaining.
- Servizi di condivisione dell'informazione Connexions
Connexipedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Connexions (nome intero Servizi di condivisione dell'informazione Connexion [Connexions Information Sharing Services]) è la biblioteca centrale online e l'archivio dei movimenti per i cambiamenti sociali del Canada.
- The Seventh Decade
The New Shape of Nuclear Danger Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 The Seventh Decade reveals many things. Amongst them is the history of global nuclear politics and the Bush government's policies that endanger the security of Americans and the world. Schell asserts that the Bush/ Cheney administration has forsaken traditional diplomacy and treaties that restrain nuclear proliferation preferring a first-strike military option. In so doing they have attacked Iraq using the excuse that they had WMD's, and have threatened North Korea and Iran with no results-North Korea now has the bomb and Iran is on the way. The administration has also encouraged the development of new generations of such weapons. He contends that the policies of the American government has intensified the trafficking of nuclear weapons which pose a renewed threat to humanity.
- The single-state solution
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Bringing about a single secular state in which Jews and Palestinians have equal rights will not be easy, but ultimately it is the only solution to the conflict. A state based on respect for the human rights of all its citizens is a better safeguard against anti-Semitism and racism than one based on ethnic nationalism and inequality.
- 6 Floors to Hell
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2008 On the outskirts of Tel Aviv, in an underground world, live hundreds of Palestinian workers sleep in this hell in order to find a day's work in Israel and bring money home to their families in the West Bank.
- Slavery by Another Name
The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 An account of how African Americans were forcibly enslaved by a corrupt legal system in the southern States, from the end of the Civil War through WWII.
- Social Reproduction for Beginners: Bringing the Real World Back In
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 We can grasp the social reproductive dimension of the post-1973 crisis in various phenomena in the U.S., but none stands out more sharply than the disappearance of the one-paycheck working-class family.
- Socialist Register 2008
Volume 44: Global Flashpoints Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2008
- Soldiers' Testimonies from Hebron 2005-2007
Breaking the Silence Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A booklet of testimonies from combatants who served in Hebron between 2005-2007, describing how IDF soldiers were required to exert absolute, daily and almost limitless control over the Palestinian residents of the city.
- Sources News Release Archive 2008
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 News releases from 2008.
- Sources (portal for journalister og skribenter)
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2010 Sources er en informationsportal for journalister, freelance skribenter, redaktorer, forfattere og forskere som især fokuserer på menneskelige kilder: eksperter og talsmænd som er parate til at svare på journalisters sporgsmål eller som er disponible til live interviews.
- Sources (portal for journalists and writers) - Wikipedia article
Connexipedia Article Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 An information portal for journalists, freelance writers, editors, authors, and researchers, focusing especially on human sources: experts and spokespersons who are prepared to answer reporters' questions or make themselves available for on-air interviews.
- Sources (portal para jornalistas e escritores)
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2010
- Sources Wikipedia Article - Arabic
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Sources Wikipedia Article - Chinese
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Sources Wikipedia article - Korean
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Published: 2011
- The spectre of socialism for the 21st century
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Building socialism is the only alternative to barbarism.
- Spies for Hire
The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Published: 2009 According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, the CIA and other American intelligence agencies now have more contractors working for them than they do spies of their own. Often former staff hired back at double or triple their former government salaries, these private contractors do everything from fighting in Afghanistan to interrogating prisoners, aiming spy satellites and supervising secret agents. Shorrock gives a comprehensive rundown of the players in the industry.
- Steps in the RIGHTS direction
365 Human Rights Celebrations & Tragedies that Inspired Canada and the World Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Stephen Hammond has researched one human rights fact for each day of the year.
- Storming Heaven
1968 Revisted Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The eruptions of 1968 challenged the power structures north and south, east and west. Countries in each continent were infected with the desire for change. Hope reigned supreme.
- Strange Fruit
Why Both Sides Are Wrong in the Race Debate Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Malik makes the case that most anti-racists accept the belief, also held by racialists and outright racists, that differences between groups are of great importance. While racialists attribute the differences to biology, anti-racists attribute them to deep-rooted cultural traditions which are typically seen as inherent in the group. Malik argues that these positions are actually quite similar, and makes the case that racism and racial inequality are best combatted by focusing not on our differences but on what unites us. Malik also strongly criticizes the cultural relativism of many anti-racists, and their increasing tendency to reject science as some kind of western imperialist conspiracy to oppress the rest of the world.
- Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 The History of SDS as You've Never Seen It Before. Captures the idealism and activism that drove a generation of young Americans to try to transform the world.
- Bird and Fortune - Subprime Crisis
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2008 The Subprime mortgage crisis explained. John Bird and John Fortune (the Long Johns) brilliantly, and accurately, describing the mindset of the investment banking community in this satirical interview.
- The Survival of Education
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 I remember reading Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities as a student activist, when becoming a teacher was an abstract and somewhat romanticized idea floating around my head. I was moved by the politically sharp but also deeply humanizing way in which Kozol documented how institutional racism and class inequality shape the experiences of students in American schools, a reality that all of us who have been educated in this country have experienced first-hand in one way or another.
- Survivors
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The enormous role played by Jews in the events of May 1968 in Paris and their aftermath is striking. All currents of the far left, anarchist, Trotskyist, Maoist had Jews among their primary leaders. Though they did not act as Jews, that they were Jews, and occupied a particular place in post-war French society because of this, cannot but have weighed in their participation.
- Talk on Anarchism and Capitalism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Tanaka-san will not do Calisthenics
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2008 Filmed in Japan, this film follows Tanaka-san who was let go from his job at Oki Electric Manufacturing Company 25 years ago when he refused to conform to militaristic working expectations. Tanaka-san sings in front of his old office each day.
- "The struggle of memory against forgetting"
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 This excellent address by filmmaker and journalist John Pilger reminds us all of an uncomfortable truth - that all the great breakthroughs in history, like the end of apartheid in South Africa, happened because ordinary people fought for it.
- The Thin Blue Line
How Humanitarianism Went to War Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 An account of the failure of humanitarian intervention in places like Iraq and Somalia. Conor Foley explores how the doctrine of humanitarian intervention has been used to allow states to invade other nations in the name of human rights.
- This Land Is Their Land
Reports from a Divided Nation Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A look at the effects of corporate Americ on the general populace, pointing out the tactic of side-tracking those who would protest onto more superficial issues.
- The Throes of Democracy
Brazil since 1989 Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008
- A Time for Learning
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 I don't recall being aware of the events in France in May-June 1968. I was in college, beginning to get radicalized on several fronts, notably the war. Something called the “Free University” was started in Washington, D.C., and I signed up for a class on communes. I remember well a presentation that spring, in which the speaker kept referring to “the Establishment.”
- A Time to Speak Out
Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 A collection of strong Jewish voices, drawing on an established tradition of Jewish dissidence, come together to explore some of the most challenging issues facing diaspora Jews, notably in relation to the ongoing conflict in Israel-Palestine.
- Toolkit for a New Canada
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 A pamphlet providing a snapshot of what the contributors, brought together by Canadian Dimension magazine, believe are the big issues facing Canada in the first decade of the 21st century. The articles are all short and offer concrete suggestions for the way forward.
- Trick or Treatment?
Alternative Medicine on Trial (North American title: Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine) Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Evaluates the scientific evidence for acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal medicine, and chiropractic, and briefly covers 36 other treatments. It finds that the scientific evidence for these alternative treatments is generally lacking. Homeopathy is concluded to be completely ineffective: "It's nothing but a placebo, despite what homeopaths say"
Although the book presents evidence that acupuncture, chiropractic and herbal remedies have limited efficacy for certain ailments, the authors conclude that the dangers of these treatments outweigh any potential benefits. Such potential risks outlined by the authors are contamination or unexpected interactions between components in the case of herbal medicine, risk of infection in the case of acupuncture and the potential for chiropractic manipulation of the neck to cause delayed stroke.
- Triple Jeopardy and the Struggle
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Being bi- and female in the Asian movement also means putting in double, triple, quadruple time. The Third World Women’s Alliance, an offshoot of the Black Women’s Liberation Committee of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, dubbed this our “triple jeopardy” dilemma as women of color who have our hands, heads, hearts in multiple movements because of our race, gender and class status.
- The Trouble with Theory
The Educational Costs of Postmodernism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Postmodern theory has engaged the hearts and heads of the brightest students because of its apparent political and social radicalism. Yet Kitching writes: "At the heart of postmodernism is very poor, deeply confused, and misbegotten philosophy. As a result even the very best students who fall under its sway produce radically incoherent ideas about language, meaning, truth, and reality."
- Tug-of-War: The working Class and Political Change in British Colombia, 1948-1972
PhD Thesis, University of New Brunswick, 2008 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- 20 Ways to Save Mother Earth and Prevent Climate Change
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Capitalism's glorification of competition and thirst for limitless profit are destroying the planet.
- Two Years Later in Oaxaca
Commentary from Oaxaca Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 A sketch of what has changed since the brutal repression of the 2006 social movement’s five month control of the city of Oaxaca.
- A Union Defeated at United Air Lines
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The April 1 certification of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) was no April Fool’s joke for the 8600 eligible mechanic and related United Airlines (UAL) employees who voted in the March 31 representational election. The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA), which served the members for nearly five years under very difficult circumstances in the aviation industry, lost the vote by 4,113 to 2,631.
- Universities at Risk
How Politics, Special Interests and Corporatization Threaten Academic Integrity Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 An anthology examining the relationship bewteen institutes of higher learning and powerful external sponsers, it's implications and threat to academic integrity and intellectual freedom.
- Update on Pakistan: After the "Emergency"
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 General Pervez Musharraf has “taken off the uniform” and lifted the emergency as of December 15th. But Labour Party Pakistan rejects the Musharraf’s claim that the emergency is lifted. It is “lifted” with the Constitution amended, and with all the repressive measures protected by a decree.
- Victor Serge: For Our Time
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Viewpoints
Where now for capitalism? Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Noam Chomsky discusses the failure of financial institutions to calculate costs to those who do not participate in transactions and the effects of this in the wider context.
- The Violence of Incarceration
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Argues that the revelations of extreme brutality perpetrated by allied soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo represent the inevitable end-product of domestic incarceration predicated on the use of extreme violence including lethal force.
- Violence Today
Actually Existing Barbarism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Looks at violence in many contexts: violence by men against women, violence by the state in inner cities, prisons, politically motivated violence and terror and the superabundance of weapons. Reflection is given to the sources of imperialism and globalized capitalism. The opening essay offers an overview of the scale and variety of contemporary violence while also taking up once again the question of socialism versus barbarism. Other essays analyze the nature and roots of paradigmatic cases and types of violence today around the world. Several essays deal from various different standpoints, with the still important question of whether violence has any place in socialist strategy in the context of today's actually-existing barbarism.
- Visualizing Justice for Labor
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Viva Yasuni! Life vs Big Oil
New Internationalist July 2008 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2008 A look at the Yasuni rainforest in Ecuador and its imminent destruction by oil companies.
- Voices of Asian Americans
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Asian Americas: The Movement and the Moment is an anthology of some 30 entries written by Asian Americans who initiated or participated in social and community movements in the late 1960s and 1970s. It is about how they perceived the world, how they became involved in the movements, what they think they accomplished and learned through their involvement, and how their experiences and lessons shaped their own lives and can be linked to present-day struggles for social justice.
- Voter ID Laws, Voter Fraud
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The close primary election inside the Democratic Party between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton shows that every vote counts. The fiasco in the 2000 presidential election because of “hanging chads” also proves that every vote “not counted” does matter. And voter suppression under any circumstances — not just when elections are close — is a crime, a violation of basic rights and an attack on democracy.
- War Crimes Airbrushed from History
Evidence of Israeli "Cowardly Blending" Comes to Light Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 A report written by a respected Israeli human rights organisation, one representing the country's Arab minority not its Jewish majority, has unearthed evidence showing that during the 2006 Lenanon war Israel committed war crimes not only against Lebanese civilians -- as was already known -- but also against its own Arab citizens.
- The war everyone forgot
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Chomsky probes what prompted the issue of Iraq to disappear from the agenda following the 2006 mid-term election.
- A War Plan Scuttled?
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 As the Bush era draws to a close, there been increasing speculation on whether or not the United States will attack Iran. Spurred by the posturing and rhetoric coming from the White House and a subservient media, much of that discussion has narrowly focused on Iran potential nuclear threat and the character of the current administrations in Washington and Tehran.
- War(s) With No Exit
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The raging debate on “war policy” between the corporate presidential campaigns has come down to this:
- The Water Cure
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 A look back at the use of the torture method known as the 'water cure', which was employed by the United States on citizens of the Philippines during its occupation at the turn of the century. The article specifically examines the subsequent investigation, trial and testimonies, as well as the moral and political implications during this period.
- We need to think about Toilets
New Internationalist August 2008 - #414 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2008 A look at the history and facts about toilets. A look at sanitation and employment opportunities surrounding toilets.
- We're not celebrating Israel's anniversary
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 We will celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.
- What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 Independent journalists should not go silent or soft because of an election result or a change of parties in power.
- What Is a Liberal to Do?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Seventy percent of African-American voters in California voted for Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage. Liberals, however, say that opposing same-sex marriage is a form of bigotry no better than the racism of those who wanted inter-racial marriage to be illegal and Jim Crow laws to remain. How, liberals wonder, can African-Americans--the victims of racism-- switch from being champions of equality to champions of bigotry? It is a true paradox. Liberals, by definition, support the victims of racism. But how can they do that when those very same victims are bigoted against gays? Oh dear! What is a liberal to do?
- What Is America?
A Short History of the New World Order Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 "All who delve into American history must contend with a language of misnomer and condescension," Wright states in his author's foreword. "Whites are soldiers, Indians are warriors; whites live in towns, Indians in villages; whites have states, Indians have tribes."
- What We Mean By Social Determinants of Health
International Journal of Health Services, Volume 39, Number 3, Pages 423-441 Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 Published: 2009 Analyzes the changes in health conditions and quality of life in the populations of developed and developing countries over the past 30 years, resulting from neoliberal policies developed by many governments and promoted by international agencies. Critiquing a WHO report on social determinants of health, Navarro argues that it is not inequalities that kill people; it is those who are responsible for these inequalities that kill people.
- What's the Matter with the System?
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- When Human Beings Are Illegal
Against The Current vol. 136 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Once the government assumes the task of separating citizens from "impossible subjects," historian Mae Ngai points out, "the border" is everywhere, not just between countries. Thus, the border has come to the Midwest. In the two years since the immigrant rights marches of spring 2006, there have been federal ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids of workplaces, especially meatpacking plants, in Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska.
- When the Prisoners Ran Walpole
A true story in the movement for prison abolition Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 In the months before they took over running the Walople maximum-security facility in 1973, prisoners and outside advocates created programs that sent more prisoners home for good. This account reveals what can happen when there is public will for change and trust that the incarcerated can achieve it.
- Where has all the rage gone?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 In 1968, fury at the Vietnam war sparked protests and uprisings across the world: from Paris and Prague to Mexico. Tariq Ali considers the legacy 40 years on.
- Where's the Iraqi voice?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Despite the "shared beliefs" identified amongst Iraqis, for example the belief that the presence of foreign troops is a main cause of the escalation in violence, only the conquerors - in this case America - can decide when troops should be withdrawn.
- White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 White Cargo is the story of the thousands of Britons who lived and died in bondage in Britain's American colonies.
- The Whole World Stopped Watching
"Diversity of Tactics", Repression, and the RNC protests in St. Paul, Minnesota (Part I) Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 I must engage those of my activist friends who believe in the "Diversity of Tactics" framework, the now established modus operandi of summit and convention protests. I have come to believe a sorry record of repeated protest failures must be laid squarely at the foot of this ideologically tainted utopia.
- Whose Wipeout? Whose Bailout?
Against The Current vol. 137 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Is this what 1931 looks like? Years ago, we recall, two themes for popular cinema were people trapped in burning skyscrapers ("Towering Inferno") and market sharks engaged in financial manipulations ("Wall Street"). After September 11, 2001 the former disaster movie genre suddenly seemed much less fun, and we suspect that after September 2008 the spectacle of stock market crashes on the big screen may not be so entertaining either.
- Why both sides are wrong in the race debate
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2008 For all the talk about culture as fluid and changing, multiculturalism, no less than old-fashioned racism, invariably leads people to think of human groups in fixed terms.
- Why make a fuss about the murder of a brown-skinned Muslim girl? - Arabic text
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Why make a fuss about the murder of a brown-skinned Muslim girl? - Chinese version
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Why make a fuss about the murder of a brown-skinned Muslim girl? - Japanese text
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Why make a fuss about the murder of a brown-skinned Muslim girl? - Korean version
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008
- Why make a fuss about the murder of a brown-skinned Muslim girl?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 History gives us numerous examples of social movements which come, over time, to adopt positions directly opposed to the principles on which they were founded. It appears this has happened to the 'feminists' who seek to silence those who speak out about violence against Muslim women.
- Why the US has really gone broke
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 There is an enormous anomaly in the U.S. economy above and beyond the subprime mortgage crisis, the housing bubble and the prospect of recession: 60 years of misallocation of resources, and borrowings, to the establishment and maintenance of a military-industrial complex as the basis of the nation's economic life.
- Why They Voted For Obama But Against Same-Sex Marriage
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 People who think that it is wrong to make same-sex marriage legal because it would give social approval to the practice of using sperm or egg donors to conceive children who will, by design, not know their biological mother or biological father are, according to liberals, "hateful and bigoted." In the world of these liberals, placing the welfare of children before the desires of adults is "hateful and bigoted."
- William Godwin
A Biographical Study Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 A biography of the influential writer and thinker described by Woodcock as the first prophet of libertarian socialism.
- Winter Soldier 2008
Against The Current vol. 134 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 More than 250 veterans and military families gathered from March 13-15 outside Washington, DC for the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) Winter Soldier Investigation: Iraq and Afghanistan. Videos of their testimony on their experiences are posted at www.IVAW.org.
- The Wisdom of Whores
Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Pisani's book The Wisdom of Whores is a scathing attack on the bureaucratic international aid communities that deal with HIV/AIDS. Topics include: injection of drugs and the idea of harm reduction by the use of clean needles and methadone to prevent the spread of HIV, the question of economic resources and how and where they are spent, the concept of abstinence and how the U.S. administration views has undermined the use of condoms.
- Wobblies & Zapatistas
Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical Theory Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 Wobblies and Zapatistas offers readers an encounter between two generations and two traditions. Staughton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic meet in dialogue in an effort to bring together the anarchist and Marxist traditions, to discuss the writing of history by those who make it, and to remind us of the idea that 'my country is the world'.
- Women Stand Up, Fight Back
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 What would it mean to truly end gender-and-race-based violence? How can radicals acknowledge the totalizing violence of white supremacy while also accounting for the very diverse, and sometimes conflicting, experiences and survival strategies of Arab, Asian, Native, Latina and Black women?
- A Working-Class Hero Is Something To Be
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 As a 35-year veteran of union activity in America, I can personally attest that Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (OCAW) was a rare bird, perhaps the last of his kind.
- The World According to Monsanto
Resource Type: Film First Published: 2008 An investigation into the United States multinational corporation, Monsanto, uncovers controversial findings.
- World Cup 2010: Showcase South Africa
Against The Current vol. 132 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 September 15, 2007, marked the beginning of a 1,000-day countdown to the 2010 International Federation of Football Associations World Cup hosted by South Africa, the first African nation ever to host the event. President Thabo Mbeki calls the premier soccer tournament “a golden opportunity to showcase Africa to the world” and adds that the South African government is determined to “show that the African renaissance is upon us and Africa’s time has come.”
- The world food crisis: what is behind it and what we can do
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 The World Food Program's description of the global food crisis raises the spectre of a natural disaster surging over an unaware populace that is helpless in the face of massive destruction. With billions of people at risk of hunger, the current food crisis is certainly massive and destructive.
- The Wrecking Crew
How Conservatives Rule Resource Type: Book First Published: 2008 How Republican conservatives govern in Washington and how they enrich others through their methods.
- The Year of Awakening
Against The Current vol. 133 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2008 Against the Current: Which events of 1968 were you involved in? How did that event/those events affect you personally and politically at the time?
- Yiddish Language and Song: A Collision with Zionism and the Birth of Israel
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2008 Interview with Yiddish culture archivist, Frank Krasnowsky.
2007
- The Abolition of the State
Anarchist & Marxist Perspectives Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Both Anarchists and Marxists believe that it will be possible to do away with the state. But what do they mean by that? What is the state, after all? What institutions, if any, would be necessary to replace its functions? Would a transitional “dictatorship of the proletariat” be needed or will it be possible to immediately abolish the state? Does modern technology require a centralized institution such as the state? Throughout the history of revolutions, the people have created workplace councils and neighborhood assemblies--how could these replace the state?
- Addressing the Violence: My Roadmap to Peace
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 In order for peace to set sail there should be some guiding principles. The most important is equality. This is not to say that the conflict is between two equals. Overwhelming Israeli power and unconditional United States support has no comparison on the Palestinian side, other than the tragic balance of terror that has been reached with Israel through suicide bombing. But neither side should be treated differently from the other.
- Affirmative Action or Class Solidarity?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Affirmative action continues the game of pitting people against each other. It distorts what people mean by racial justice, which would require decent jobs for all. Instead the government promotes unemployment while it encourages competition among racial groups. There is only one "group" that the powerful do not want us to identify with-the working class. The ruling elite know that they can keep groups based on race or gender fighting each other forever. The elite cannot control a united working class.
- Against Capitalism
The European Left on the March Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- Agreement on terms
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 I have come to accept that western journalists cannot accurately, let alone objectively, represent the Middle East and the Arab world. The problem is not that journalists do not always adhere to their own professional codes and methods, though that does happen. It is that even if correspondents strictly obey all the rules, they still present a fundamentally biased and skewed picture of the Middle East.
- Alternatives to the Death Penalty
The Problem with Life Imprisonment Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- Anarchy and Art
From the Paris Commune to the Fall of the Berlin Wall Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- Another view: The South takes the pictures
New Internationalist August 2007 - #403 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2007 A look at the states of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran, and South Africa and their experience of change presented in pictures.
- The Art of the Possible
A Handbook for Political Activism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- Azmi Bishara and Muslims Worldwide Say No to Attacks on Non-Combatants
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 We need the public to know that the choice is between supporting equality or supporting racism, not between opposing or supporting the killing of non-combatants, as the Zionists try to make the public believe. We should tell the public that, yes, we do disagree with the actions of some Palestinians, but that doesn't at all take away from the fact that Zionist ethnic cleansing is the root of the conflict and must be abolished.
- The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 The story of how C.P. Ellis, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and Ann Atwater, an African American civil rights activist, overcame racial divisions to forge a strong friendship.
- Between the Lines
Readings on Israel, the Palestinians and the U.S. "War on Terror" Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 A collection of essays that addresses the situation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the need for changes. It provides the background of the conflict and an analysis of the resistance and repression that have intensified due to post 9/11.
- The Bolsheviks in Power
The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- Bottling peace in a jar
Buying Palestinian olive oil is a tasty way to protest the tree uprootings of the occupation Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Robert Massoud, born in Jerusalem of Christian Palestinian parents and now living just north of Toronto, developed the Zatoun project as "a people-sized initiative for those who want to make a difference" but who "throw up their hands and walk away" in despair from seemingly hopeless cycles of retaliation in the Middle East.
- The Brain That Changes Itself
Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Doidge explains neuroplasticity and shows that the brain is not a collection of specialized parts but a dynamic organ and can rewire and rearrange itself as the need arises.
- Broken Promises, Broken Dreams
Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma & Resistance Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Rothschild recounts her experiences in grappling with the reality of life in Israel, the complexity of Jewish Israeli attitudes and the hardhips of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
- Buda's Wagon
A Brief History of the Car Bomb Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Mike Davis traces the car bomb's worldwide use and development. In his analysis, he also exposes the role of state intelligence agencies - particularly those of the United States, Israel, India, and Pakistan - in globalizing urban terrorist techniques
- Calling All Radicals
How Grassroots Organizers Can Help Save Our Democracy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Thompson argues that we can reclaim our democracy through grassroots organizing.
- Can We Live and Eat Too?
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 In 1579, the fleet of British explorer Sir Francis Drake met the coast of what we now call California. Drake, who would dub his discovery “New Albion” (Albion being the Latin name for Britain), thought he had happened upon an island. Though the source of California’s present-day name is obscure, at least one etymological theory suggests that Drake was not alone in imagining the place as a world apart; the first literary reference to “California,” in a 1510 novel by Spanish writer García Ordóñez de Montalvo, Las Sergas de Esplandián, depicts an island in the Pacific inhabited by Amazonian women.
- Canada's Deadly Secret
Saskatchewan uranium and the global nuclear system Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 The struggle over Saskatchewan's uranium mining, and the negative impacts on Aboriginal rights and environmental health, and the effect of free trade. Nuclear energy cannot address global warming and there is no such thing as a "peaceful atom."
- Canada's Young Activists
A Generation Stands Up for Change Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Twenty five personal accounts of the important work of some of Canada's most prominent young activists championing causes from child labour to environmentalism.
- Carol L. McAllister (1947-2007)
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 I remember meeting Carol on a public transit bus, I believe in 1980 –- when, almost out of the blue, she approached me and started talking to me about Central America. She recognized me from some earlier meeting on repression and revolution in Central America and wanted to know if, by any chance, I had been in the audience viewing a documentary on women in El Salvador that she had just seen (I hadn’t) and if I would mind if she shared some thoughts about it.
- Carter's Inconvenient Truths
An Honest Man Refutes Propaganda Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The reason that Israel has been able to appropriate Palestine unto itself with American aid and support is that Israel controls the explanation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At least 90% of Americans, if they know anything at all of the issue, know only the Israeli propaganda line. Israel has been able to control the explanation, because the powerful Israel Lobby brands every critic of Israeli policy as an anti-semite who favors a second holocaust of the Jews.
- Celebrate Jewish Glasnot
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Although you wouldn't know it if you followed Jewish life simply through the activities of such major Jewish communal bodies as the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League, the extent to which the eight million Jews of the Diaspora identify with Israel is increasingly open to question (much to the horror of the Zionist-oriented Jewish establishment).
- Challenging Kim Moody
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Two reports challenge Kim Moody’s assertion (“Immigrant Workers in the United States,”Part 1, ATC 127) that “[t]he claim is raised by some that the rapid growth of immigrant Latinos in the workforce has had a negative impact on wages. In any overall sense, the answer has to be no...”
- Changing Venezuela By Taking Power
The History and Policies of the Chavez Government Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Explores the historical and socioeconomic roots of the Venezuelan initiatives of recent years, the conflicts they have engendered, the achievements and pitfalls, the animating ideals of a genuinely participatory society, and the prospects for realizing them.
- ChestDoc in Palestine
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- The CIA and Questions of Torture
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Alfred W. McCoy's A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror is a chilling, eerily fascinating account of how the CIA used physical and psychological torture as a method of interrogation.
- Cliffites Deal in Religious Opiate
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 All religions and all religious organizations serve to mystify and obscure the class basis of oppression in capitalist society.
- Cold War II
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Chomsky depicts the growing US-Israeli conflict with the Middle East as a potential precursor to the escalation of tensions to Cold War standards - except with nuclear technologies now threatening a very "hot" outcome.
- Constituent Imagination
Militant investigation, collective theorization Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- Cotton: The peril and the promise
New Internationalist April 2007 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2007 A look at the cotton industry in India and how it is affecting the workers. Discusses alternatives to cotton and sustainability.
- Crisis en Gaza: el sistema de salud y los niños en peligro
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- Criticizing Israel is Not an Act of Bigotry
Jewish Opposition to Israeli Human Rights Crimes is Growing Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 A grassroots revolt is underway in Jewish communities throughout the world, a revolt that has panicked the elite organizations that have long functioned as official mouthpieces for the community.
- Debunking Columbus
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 “I knew it couldn’t be true!” exclaimed my then eleven-year-old daughter when I explained the premise of Restall’s book. “The Ancients knew that the earth was round,” she continued, “so Columbus could not have been the only one.”
- Democracy in the Unites States? Fugetaboutit!
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 We who want a more equal and democratic society are the vast majority. There is no reason for us to feel hesitant about speaking our minds and talking revolution to our friends and neighbors, our co-workers, and even people we meet in the course of shopping and so forth. When millions of Americans feel that they are not alone in wanting a revolution, that's when things will start to change. That's when people will start to think creatively and concretely about how to make it happen. Until then, we'll remain on a treadmill to nowhere, with everybody feeling that they are just one lonely person who "can't fight city hall."
- Depleted Uranium
New Internationalist November 2007 - #406 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2007 This is a special edition with 7 different articles devoted to the subject." Toxic souvenirs"-DU ammunition; Dont' look dont find-Iraqi doctors; We were expendable-US army veterans; The Facts; Who's the real criminal-largest DU manufacturer in the U.S.; Action-building the ban with Belgian activists
- Don't Incite Censorship
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Free speech for everyone but bigots is no free speech at all.
- Dr. Makdisi on a One State Solution
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2007 A video clip featuring Dr. Saree Makdisi presenting the case for a one-state solution in Israel-Palestine - a democratic secular state.
- The Economics of Happiness
Building Genuine Wealth Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Anielski's premise is quite simple: how can we go beyond mere material wealth to achieve veritable wealth-good health, meaningful relationships, spirituality, a clean environment, peace, justice and happiness. He believes that economic systems should orient us to what we really want.
- The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Engelhardt explores how, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the administration of younger George Bush brought "victory culture" roaring back as part of its Global War on Terror and its rush to invade Saddam Husseins's Iraq. Further, he analyzes how, from its "Mission Accomplished" moment on, its various stories of triumph crashed and burned in that land.
- Envisioning Economic Justice
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The organizers of the U.S. Social Forum must be commended for making possible this political happening with its 900 workshops. The USSF has succeeded in bringing together activists from many diverse sectors working for global justice — thereby contributing to the strengthening of the entire movement.
- The Essential Chomsky
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Published: 2008 For the past forty years Noam Chomsky's writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time.The Essential Chomsky assembles the core of his most important writings, including excerpts from his most influential texts over the past forty years.
- The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Israeli historian Ilan Pappe recounts the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel during the war of 1948.
- Evaluating the virtual picket line
Italian union's Second Life information picket tests worth of a potentially valuable tool Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The organizers of the Second Life online action see it as a tool, a tactic as part of a larger campaign -- not necessarily a campaign-wining strategy.
- Everything Must Change
Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 McLaren poses the question "How do the life and teachings of Jesus address the most critical global problems in our world today?" McLaren believes that we live in a world based on a wrong assumption of what is important in our lives, what is worth fighting for and what is the purpose of humanity's existence. He believes it is important to look at the teachings of Jesus to move to a positive view of humanity to overcome the dysfuntionality-economic, political and social of the world.
- Facing the Toyota "Pattern"
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Highly praised as a “breakthrough” in the mainstream and business press, the new United Auto Workers contract at General Motors is a stunning retreat for the union, threatening the existence of most high-paying production jobs throughout the U.S. auto industry. (Skilled trades face drastic downsizing through outsourcing and combining of the trades.)
- Fare-Free Public Transit Could Be Headed to a City Near You
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 It's time to give people a free ride on public transit. And here's proof it works.
- A Festival of Radical Energy
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The culmination of years of discussion and thousands of hours of planning, the 1st United States Social Forum brought together over 12,000 activists to sweltering Atlanta June 27-31 for a week of conferencing, networking and marching. With lead organizing initiated by nonprofits, especially Project South, with ties to the Grassroots Global Justice network, the USSF resulted from two years’ work by a National Planning Committee (NPC) composed of several dozen nonprofits, left “thinktanks” and social movement organizations.
- Fictitious Capital for Beginners
Imperialism, 'Anti-Imperialism', and the Continuing Relevance of Rosa Luxemburg Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2007 Rosa Luxemburg's framework enabled her to see how capitalism could ultimately destroy society - barbarism, in her words, or the 'mutual destruction of the contending classes' as the Communist Manifesto put it in 1847 - by being required to turn more and more to primitive accumulation and non-reproduction, a prophecy we see materializing before our eyes today.
- Finding Workers Power
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Socialists identify the working class as a potentially powerful agent of change. Working people have that potential because we keep the economy running. We therefore have the power to stop production through a general strike, create bottlenecks through which a relatively small number of strikers can significantly disrupt the economy, or we can stay on the job and work to rule, slowing down production.
- Five Challenges for Ecosocialists in 2008
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Ecosocialism is not separate from the existing left and green movements, and it is not a structured movement on its own. Rather, it is a current of thought within existing socialist and green-left movements, seeking to win ecology activists to socialism and to convince socialists of the vital importance of ecological issues and struggles.
- Flight from the land and food riots
Excellent article by Wildcat Germany analysing the food crisis and the global agricultural industry under capitalism. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Article discuss about reasons behind the exploding food prices.
- Fooled Again
The Real Case fo Electoral Reform Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 For Republicans, the 2004 presidential election was little short of miraculous: Behind in the Electoral College tally in the days leading up to the election, behind even on the very afternoon of the vote, the Bush ticket staged a stunning comeback. The exit polls, usually so reliable, turned out to be wrong by an unprecedented 5 percent in the swing states. Conservatives argued-and the media agreed-that "moral values" had made the difference. Critic and political commentator Mark Crispin Miller argues that it wasn't moral values that swung the election - it was theft.
- Footage from the field
B'Tselem Camera distribution project Resource Type: Organization First Published: 2007 In January 2007, B'Tselem launched its camera distribution project, a video advocacy project focusing on the Occupied Territories. We provide Palestinians living in high-conflict areas with video cameras, with the goal of bringing the reality of their lives under occupation to the attention of the Israeli and international public, exposing and seeking redress for violations of human rights.
- For Political Equality
All citizens vote on all policies: 20th Century Power Politics and their 21st Century electronic alternative Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 This book aims to motivate people to set up post-parliamentary direct democracy (DD) enabling all citizens to propose-debate-vote on all issues of society. Every citizen - one vote - on every issue of society. This political equality abolishes Power - the role of deciding on behalf of others - the main cause of violence and corruption in society. "To be" is not merely "to exist" but to decide all issues of one's life. Denying citizens' right to decide all issues of society reduces them to mere political pawns. All citizens have the right to decide all policies.
- Fragments of a Reformist Anarchism
A review of David Graeber (2004), Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 A collection of scattered thoughts about anarchism, anthropology, and academic studies. David Graeber argues against the need for a revolutionary confrontation with the state or its eventual overthrow. Instead, he favors a gradualist approach which leaves the state alone.
- Free Speech in Fearful Times
After 9/11 in Canada, the U.S, Australia & Europe Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 How post-9/11 anti-terror laws have limited free speech in Canada and abroad.
- Gaza: cuidados de saúde e crianças em risco
As crianças de Gaza estão em risco Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- The Gentle Subversive
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Explores the evolution of Carson's ideas about nature, her love for the sea, her career as a biologist, and above all her emergence as a writer of extraordinary moral and ecological vision.
- Grace Paley (1922-2007)
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Grace Paley described herself as a “somewhat combative pacifist and a cooperative anarchist,” and saw the role of the artist as that of “listener” who would relay stories of those made invisible by society. And she told it plain.
- GreenTOpia
Towards A Sustainable Toronto, uTOpia Volume Three Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 The third volume of the uTOpia series features a collection of essays that look at innovative and imaginative ways to promote sustainability in Toronto. Also included is a directory of resources, organizations, incentives and programs in and around the GTA.
- Guillotining Gaza
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Noam Chomsky briefly depicts the many factors which prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and promote ongoing conflict in the region.
- Hatred of Democracy
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Published: 2009 Rancière defends the principle of democracy against neoconservative repression. He argues that the West can no longer simply extol the virtues of democracy by contrasting it with the horrors of totalitarianism.
- Health care and children in crisis in Gaza
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 These days one hears a lot about Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, adults who have been specifically trained for warfare, who are nevertheless traumatized by the experience of seeing comrades injured or killed, or suffering injuries or danger themselves. The trauma goes on, long after the experience has ended and they are back in a place of safety. How much worse then for children in Gaza who witness and experience these events day after day, week after week with no end and with no place of safety.
- Health care and children in crisis in Gaza - Arabic text
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- The Hollow Land
Israel's Architecture of Occupation Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Groundbreaking exposé of Israel's terrifying reconceptualization of geopolitics in the Occupied Territories and beyond.
- Homes in illegal Israeli settlements for sale at London expo
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- Hope in Troubled Times
A New Vision for Confronting Global Crisis Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- How Can We End the U.S. Government's Pro-Israel Foreign Policy?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 We need to start thinking about building a revolutionary movement and not a reform movement focused just on one issue.
- How green are your ethics?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The assumption that underlies much of the discussion on carbon neutrality is that any activity that emits CO2 - and that means virtually every human activity - is something to apologise for. All human activities must be judged by their carbon content, and the morality of an action gauged principally by its carbon count. Carbon calculators have become the moral barometers of our age.
- How Nonviolence Protects the State
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 How Nonviolence Protects the State challenges the belief that nonviolence is the only way to fight for a better world. Peter Gelderloos invites activists to consider diverse tactics, passionately arguing that exclusive nonviolence often acts to reinforce the same structures of oppression that activists seek to overthrow.
- How the Left Should Frame Issues
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The art and science of strategic frame analysis -- issue framing -- is relatively new in Canada, though the concept of framing is not. The right has been framing its issues carefully for years while the left has been oddly complacent about re-framing issues from their perspective.
- How to Re-Imagine the World
A Pocket Guide for Practical Visionaries Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 A conceptual toolbox for imagining and initiating radical social change.
- How Truth Slips Down The Memory Hole
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 John Pilger, applies to current events Orwell's description in '1984' of how the Ministry of Truth consigned embarrassing truth to a memory hole. He highlights the killing of a Palestinian cameraman by the Israelis as an example of how "we" are trained to look on the rest of the world as quite unlike ourselves: useful or expendable.
- How we learned to stop having fun
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 We used to know how to get together and really let our hair down. Then, in the early 1600s, a mass epidemic of depression broke out - and we've been living with it ever since. Something went wrong, but what?
- Immigrant Workers in the United States (Part 1)
Against The Current vol. 127 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The rise of mass immigration in much of the developed world began its acceleration with the global economic crisis of the 1970s. A deepening crisis of profitability; the collapse of the Bretton Woods currency system; and the recession of 1974-75 encouraged an acceleration of foreign direct investment, the rise of multinational corporations, and the subsequent increase in trade.
- Impeach the President
The Case Against Bush and Cheney Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- In Defense of Atheism
The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- In Defense of Leninism: Anarchist Organization and Vanguardism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The question of what, if any, type of revolutionary organization is necessary has always been a thorny one for anarchists.
- Infidel
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali woman who escaped a forced marriage and moved to the Netherlands, where she became a spokeswoman for Muslim women's rights. She tells the story of how her experiences led her to question her faith.
- Inside Iran
New Internationalist March 2007 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2007 A look at Iran from history to present. Discussion of women's rights and the youth of Iran.
- Inside Israel-Palestine The Conflict Explained
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 An ideal guide, in question and answer format, to this most complex of conflicts.
- Inside Lebanon
Journey to a Shattered Land with Noam and Carol Chomsky Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Documents Noam and Carol Chomsky's journey and situates it within the tragically altered context of Lebanon and Palestine before and after the war of 2006.
- Interventions
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Noam Chomsky says that the freedom to challenge power is not just an opportunity, it's a responsibility. Concise and fiercely argued, Interventions covers the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Bush presidency, Israel and Palestine, national security, the escalating threat of nuclear warfare, and more.
- Introduction to When the UAW Was Young
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- Invisible Force: Women Workers in Pakistan
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2007 Millions of women workers in Pakistan remain unaccounted for in official figures. Even those who are in the formal workforce face problems like lower wages for the same work as men and sexual harrasment.
- Irene Morgan, Max Roach: Two Soldiers of Liberation
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Two pioneers of the freedom struggle died in August, leaving legacies for the ages.
- The Iron Cage
The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Rashid examines the history of the Nakba and the circumstances and context that surrounded it.
- The Israel Lobby and the "National Interest"
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Israel's ethnic cleansing does, in fact, serve the elite's interest. It is a classic example of divide-and-rule applied to the population of the Middle East: foment an ethnic war of Arab versus Jew. Israel plays the same role in the Middle East that the Klu Klux Klan played in the American South for the benefit of the South's upper class: keep the working class population fighting each other along racial lines.
- The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Mearsheimer and Walt describe the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel and argue that this support cannot be fully explained in either strategic or moral grounds. This exceptional relationship is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. Mearsheimer and Walt contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America's posture throughout the Middle East and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America's national interest nor Israel's long-term interest.
- Israel/Palestine: "It's Complicated" ... Or Is It?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 We often hear it said that the Israel/Palestine conflict is complicated. But is it really?
- 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private.
- I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 A study and history of the legacy of community organizing in Mississippi.
- The John A. Livingston Reader
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- Justice denied: Latimer case exposes flaws in legal system
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Robert Latimer believes it was his moral duty to save his daughter from a life of unbearable pain. Many Canadians agree with him.
- Karen J. Kassirer: Artist, Friend and Comrade
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Karen was my oldest and dearest friend. We were young women together in Detroit, working for the newspaper of the International Socialists beginning in the early ‘70s. She had moved to Detroit along with IS members from other cities, mostly on the West or East coasts, to help establish our political center and an infrastructure to support our factory and trade union activism.
- Latin America after Neoliberalism
Turning the Tide in the 21st Century? Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 A primer on the social and economic changes sweeping across contemporary Latin America. The region is an epicentre of dissent from neoliberal ideas and resistance to U.S. economic and political dominance.
- Left Communism and Trotskyism: A Roundtable
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- A Left Voice in Pakistan
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Following the October 18 attack on the massive procession into Karachi welcoming Benazir Bhutto back from an eight-year exile, Farooq Tariq, General Secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan, expressed his solidarity with the families of the more than 135 killed and 540 injured.
- Das Leiden der Kinder im Gazastreifen
Katastrophale Lage im Gazastreifen - Unzureichende Gesundheitsversorgung Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- Less Than 2 Dollars a Day
A Christian View of World Poverty and Free Markets Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- Let's Knock Off the Fare Box
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Olsen supports the argument in favour of fare-free transit by investigating the costs surrounding fare collection that are left largely unexamined by officials and unannounced to the public in various North American cities.
- Lies The Media Tell us
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Outlines the extent to which the mainstream media is subject to its corporate publishers and advertisers.
- The Makhno Myth
Anarchists in the Russian Revolution Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Starting in the 1970s, a new consensus emerged among serious scholars of the Russian Revolution. Instead of seeing the rise of Stalinism as the predetermined outcome of Leninism or workers' power, "revisionist" historians looked instead to the devastating effects of civil war and international isolation. They discovered that the early years of the workers' state were far more complicated and rich than the standard right-wing inevitable-march-to-totalitarianism version. In its broad outlines, their work confirmed that material conditions, rather than Bolshevik original sin, transformed a mass, popular revolution into its opposite, Stalinism.
- Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto, 1960-1970
PhD Thesis, Queen's University, 2007 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- Many Minds, One Heart
SNCC's dream for a new America Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Published: 2009 Wesley Hogan explores what SNCC accomplished and, more important, how it fostered significant social change in such a short time.
- Married to Another Man
Israel's Dilemma in Palestine Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Karmi argues that Israel has never been able to solve the original and unresolved Zionist quandary of how to create and maintain a Jewish state in a land inhabited by another people. She maintains that the problem is unsoluble and that the only solution is a single secular state in which Jews and Palestinians are equal.
- Maze of Injustice: The failutre to protect indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 More than one in three Native American or Alaska Native women will be raped at some point in their lives. Most do not seek justice because they know they will be met with inaction or indifference. Index Number: AMR 51/035/2007.
- The Media and the Rwanda Genocide
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 The news media played a crucial role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Local media fueled the killings, while international media either ignored or seriously misunderstood what was happening. This is the first book to explore both sides of the media equation. Examining how local radio was used as a tool of hate, encouraging neighbors to turn against each other, the book also presents a critique of international media coverage.
- Media Censorship in the Middle East
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Examines Middle-Eastern media censorship and shows how the censorial culture grew as the media developed in this region. It also illustrates the illusionary and deceptive arguments presented by the authorities citing articles and stipulations from the constitution that speaks for the freedom of the press and free speech.
- Militant as Hell on the Waterfront
The Political Thought of Stan Weir Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 New Beginnings looks at the life of workplace militant and writer, Stan Weir.
- Military Inc
Inside Pakistan's Military Economy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Ayesha Siddiqa probes into the Pakistani military's long and troubling relationship with corporate giants, and its disastrous effects on the development of a healthy democracy and civil society.
- Miss Calculatsia: Danger of War That No One Wants
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Introducing Miss Calculatsia, that fashionable foreigner, the new star in Israeli discourse.
- More Unequal
Aspects of Class in the United States Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Yates looks at class from a global vantage point integrating discussions of race, gender, and class, and the emergence of an international capitalist class.
- Move into the light?
Postscript to a turbulent 2007 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Can the left movement move into the light and become visible?
- The Movement Comes to Jena
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The humid air felt electric as the sun ascended over the hundreds of buses idling a 20-mile stretch of Louisiana Route 49, the gateway to the rural hometown of the Jena 6. It was 6 AM, September 20, 2007 — the day Mychal Bell was initially scheduled to be sentenced for his role in the beating of a white classmate — and northeast central Louisiana, on the border of Mississippi, was looking anything but sleepy.
- Nakba One, Two, Three?
Against The Current vol. 128 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 In sheer magnitude, the Palestine partition of 1947 wasn’t even that year’s most disastrous division of a former British colonial possession. The partition of the Indian subcontinent — between India and the new Muslim state Pakistan — produced roughly as many deaths, in horrific communal violence between Muslims and Hindus, as the numbers of Palestinian Arabs expelled from their homeland and robbed of their lands in the 1947-49 Catastrophe — al-Nakba — accompanying the establishment of the state of Israel.
- The New Left at 40
Legacy and Continuity Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 A collection of memoirs and commentaries.
- New Red-Green Politics
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 In their preface to the 43rd volume of the Socialist Register, Coming to Terms with Nature, editors Leo Panitch and Colin Leys admit that this edition “has been one of the most challenging to put together.”
- News and Comment
Allan Nairn's blog Resource Type: Website First Published: 2007 News and comments in English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, and Danish.
- Next Door to BC, the Bus Is Free
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Olsen writes about his experience with fare-free transit on Whidbey Island, debunking myths about the inefficiency, impracticality, and unsustainability of such a system.
- No Fares!
Time for a free ride on public transit Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 This series of articles in The Tyee takes a hard look at fare hikes and spending priorities by B.C.'s transit planners, as well as rising greenhouse emissions and pollution by the private automobile, and asks: Why are we creating barriers for people who might take public transit?
- No Hassle Transit? Try Hasselt
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 A consideration of Belgium's transit infrastructure and fare-free system implementation as a model for BC to draw upon.
- Noise Pollution: A Modern Plague
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Environmental noise pollution, a form of air pollution, is a threat to health and well-being. It is more severe and widespread than ever before, and it will continue to increase in magnitude and severity because of population growth, urbanization, and the associated growth in the use of increasingly powerful, varied, and highly mobile sources of noise. It will also continue to grow because of sustained growth in highway, rail, and air traffic, which remain major sources of environmental noise. The potential health effects of noise pollution are numerous, pervasive, persistent, and medically and socially significant.
- Northland
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2007 A touching look back at the director's father, Albert Steiner, and his life as a miner. Detailing his death, caused by working in the mine and the reality of getting compensation from mining companies at that time.
- Nothing personal, just business
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 "A street entrepreneur or a life-destroying psychopath?" asks a review of the film American Gangster, which portrays the life of drug kingpin Frank Lucas.
How is that an either-or choice?
- Occupation 101
Voices of the Silenced Majority Resource Type: Film First Published: 2007 A thorough examination on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
- An October for Us, for Russia and for the Whole World
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 This appeal from Russian intellectuals and artists on the 90th anniversary of the Russian October Revolution comes to us from veteran leftists, social democrats, artists and even children of Left Oppositionists, most of them politically active at least since the Gorbachev years of glasnost and perestroika. It has been abridged here for space reasons.
- On Hal Draper's Zionism
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 I would like to add some more information on the book by Hal Draper, Zionism, Israel and the Arabs, which is the source of the excerpt from his 1948 essay “How to Defend Israel” printed in the May/June 2007 issue of ATC.
- On Immigration and Wages
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Capitalism has always been a shock doctrine of selfish predation, as one can discover from Hobbes and Locke, Marx and Weber, none of them saluted by Klein. However there are huge third world economies that have been ravaged by neoliberalism that haven't endured "the shock doctrine" as defined by Klein. Ultimately Klen's analysis is limited and she is too gloomy and pessimistic about the power of capitalism.
- One Country
A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 One Country proposes a radical alternative to the impasse in Israel/Palestine: to revive the neglected idea of one state shared by two peoples. Ali Abunimah shows how the two are by now so intertwined -- geographically and economically -- that separation cannot lead to the security Israelis need or the rights Palestinians must have. Taking on the objections and taboos that stand in the way of a binational solution, he demonstrates that sharing the territory will bring benefits for all.
- One State is Not Snake Oil: A Reply to Michael Neumann
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The income of the 18 wealthiest families in Israel is equivalent to 77 percent of Israel's national budget, which is NIS 256 billion a year. This means that in less than 4.4 years the 18 wealthiest families in Israel could pay the entire debt owed by Israeli Jews living in homes and land stolen from Palestinians. It means that in 4.5 years a fund set up by these 18 wealthiest families could offer every Jewish Israeli who lives on stolen land a million U.S. dollars which they would use either to buy their home from the rightful Palestinian owner or buy another home (probably it would have to be newly constructed) so they could return the stolen one but not end up homeless.
- Opieka zdrowotna i dzieci Gazy w kryzysie
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- Our Life, Work, Struggles
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 At the time I joined Solidarity about a year and a half ago, I had been involved with activist and organizing work for about five years, which comprised most of my post-college life. Specifically, I was active in an organization called Jews Against The Occupation (a Palestine solidarity organization) and working as staff organizer for a housing group. I wanted a way to understand what I was doing in a bigger context, and to be around people who were thinking about how their current work fit in to a much longer term struggle.
- Outside the Box
Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- Overcoming Zionism
Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Kovel argues that the inner contradictions of Zionism have led Israel to a 'state-sponsored racism' fully as incorrigible as that of apartheid South Africa and deserving of the same resolution. Only a path toward a single-state secular democracy can provide the justice essential to healing the wounds of the Middle East. Kovel draws on his detailed knowledge of the Middle East to show that Zionism and democracy are essentially incompatible. Ultimately, Kovel argues, a two-state solution is essentially hopeless as it concedes too much to the regressive forces of nationalism, in which lie the roots of continued conflict.
- Paying for 'Free' Transit
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Olsen discusses the politics surrounding funding options for transit systems outside of passenger fare to support a fare-free system and proposes shifting spending costs towards avenues that favour riders and transit needs rather than corporate needs, in order to improve service.
- Peace Parks
Conservation and Conflict Resolution Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- A Persistent Peace
One Man's Struggle for a Nonviolent World Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Published: 2008 Jesuit priest John Dear ministers to the needy at the margins of society. He is a pacifist and anti-war activist who has spoken out against the Pentagon and the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. His views about Christ's teachings on nonviolence have also made him a rebel in the Catholic Church.
- Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2007
- The Politics of Immigration
Questions and Answers Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Tackles questions and concerns about immigration with compelling arguments and hard facts, laid out in straightforward language and an accessible question-and-answer format.
- The Politics of Servility
Congress and the Israel Lobby Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Our legislators, fearing their own potential loss of their House or Senate seat, continue to support the desires of the Neo-cons and AIPAC and its fellows despite the condemnation of the world's communities that see nothing but hypocrisy in their behaviour.
- Poverty and Policy in Canada
Implications for Health and Qualityof Life Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Raphael writes with authority on the problem of inequality and poverty in Canada. Income variability has increased while social assistance and minimum wages have not kept people up.
- The Power of Persuasion
The Politics of the New Right in Ontario Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Kozolanka looks at how the Mike Harris's new right conservative government came to power in Ontario Premier Mike Harris by using successful strategies from other countries to gain public accquiescence for its neo-conservative policies. Relying on evidence drawn from literature, interviews and content analysis, she argues that this trajectory was "neither haphazard nor narrowly constructed."
- The Power of the Israel Lobby
Two knights and a dragon Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The Israel Lobby has shifted more and more to the Right. The billionaires who finance the Lobby are the same people who finance the extreme Israeli Right, and most of all the settlers.
- The Press and the Class Struggle
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Early on the morning of August 19, 1997, the U.S. labor movement experienced something it had rarely known in recent years: a victory on a national scale. After two weeks out on strike, over 185,000 members of the Teamsters Union had reached a contract settlement with shipping giant United Parcel Service. It was hard to paint it as anything other than a win for the union. On almost every major issue, the Teamsters were able to force UPS to agree to their demands.
- Press for Conversion #60
March 2007 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2007 This issue of the magazine exposes ten ways in which Canada's Liberal government was complicit in aiding and abetting the 2004 coup d'état that ousted President Aristide's democratically-elected government and supporting the illegal, coup-installed regime that was responsible for two-year human rights catastrophe that followed.
- Press for Conversion #61
September 2007 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2007 The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) helped overthrow the democratically-elected government of Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004. In the years prior to this US-led regime change, although Aristide and his Lavalas government were extremely popular among the country's poor citizens, CIDA drastically cut bilateral aid. CIDA then poured millions into extremely partisan Haitian groups that represented the interests of Haiti's corporate elite.
- The Professor of Torture
Dershowitz for the Defense -- of Waterboarding Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Whitney exposes the hypocrisy of Alan Dershowitz, who claims to support civil liberties while advocating the use of torture. Dershowitz seems to believe that he should be considered a liberal because he says that prisoners should only be tortured by "nonlethal means, such as sterile needles, being inserted beneath the nails to cause excruciating pain wthout endangering life." Whitney characterizes this as "barbarism".
- Pure Propaganda - The Great Global Warming Swindle
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The Scientists Are The Bad Guys.
- Race and Class: What the Jena 6 Case Shows
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Some 50,000 people converged on the small Louisiana town of Jena on September 20. The protest shook up not only the two-stoplight town but sent a loud siren across the country. The 85% white population had never seen anything like this — a Black-led protest against modern-day racism.
- Rebuilding the Left
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Beginning with an overview of the Left in Latin America, from the Cuban Revolution to the present, Harnecker goes on to analyze developments now taking place and stresses the necessity of developing an alternative to present forms of globalization.
- Remembering Tomorrow
from SDS to Life After Capitalism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Veteran anti-capitalist activist Michael Albert offers an ardent defense of the project to transform global inequality.
- Report from Dubai
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Dubai — This gulf emirate is shaping up into a key tourist destination. For golf, luxury hotels and high-end shopping, it is firmly established as a key player in the Middle East region. Dubai’s geographical location means it can position itself as a meeting point between east and west, a global business hub for the 21st century.
- Resistance Stirring Again
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 In 1968 the worldwide explosion of struggle, from the battlefields of Vietnam to the streets and factories of France and Czechoslovakia, opened a new opportunity to challenge the capitalist system. In the United States, the Civil Rights struggle against racism sparked a wave of radicalization and struggle to challenge a whole host of American capitalism’s inequities — from its war in Vietnam to its sexism, homophobia, and class exploitation.
- Review: Political War Over Palestine
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 It has become impossible to review titles like these, or discuss the issues they raise, without reference to the rise of an exceptionally vicious campaign against critical activist voices and academic scholarship on Palestine and Israel.
- Revisiting the partition of Palestine
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Henry Lowi calls on honest, realistic and pragmatic peace activists the world over to expose partition, protest against it and propose an alternative solution to the question of Palestine.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- Road from ar Ramadi
The private rebellion of staff sergeant Camilo Mejía - An Iraq war memoir Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 After serving in the Army for nearly nine years, Mejía was the first known Iraq veteran to refuse to fight, citing moral concerns about the war and occupation. Now released after serving almost his sentence of nine months for desertion, the celebrated soldier-turned-pacifist tells his own story.
- Roots of Empathy
Changing the World Child by Child Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Roots of Empathy looks at eliminating crime and changing the world by starting with a compassionate environment for children.
- The roots of gay oppression
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Marxists, since Marx and Engels themselves, have always believed that only a socialist revolution could open the way to sexual freedom and equality. The history of same-sex relations suggests that the most basic human activities, including sexuality, are collectively constructed in human society.
- The Russian Revolution Ninety Years After
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia was the most influential political event of the 20th century. But since history is written by the victors, it is not well known that October was the opening shot of a vast and powerful challenge to capitalism that swept the industrial world and had strong echoes in colonial countries. Between 1918 and 1921 union membership and days lost in strikes everywhere reached new heights, while the ranks of the revolutionary wing of the socialist movement swelled.
- Safe streets
Not pedaling can kill you Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Not pedaling can kill you.
- The St. Petersburg Declaration
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.
- Salute e bambini in crisi a Gaza
I bambini di Gaza sono in crisi Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- Seeds of Destruction
The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Focuses on how a small American elite seeks to establish its control over the very basis of human survival, the provision of our daily bread. The author reveals a world where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production.
- 17 Reasons (or More) to Stop Charging People to Ride the Bus
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Olsen outlines a proposal for how to implement a fare-free transit system using already existing examples from around the world that are supported by their level of success and positive effects on their societies, environment, and customer satisfaction.
- 17 Reasons (or More) to Stop Charging People to Ride the Bus
The case for Fare-Free Transit Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The time has come to stop making people pay to take public transit. Why do we have any barriers to using buses, trolleys, SkyTrain? The threat of global warming is no longer in doubt. The hue and cry of the traffic jammed driver grows louder every commute.
- The Shock Doctrine
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Klein chronicles free-market disasters of recent years and advances a theory that we are living in the age of 'disaster capitalism'.
- "SiCKO," Are We Sick, Or What?
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Years ago, when I worked the sports unit of a commercial TV station, I spent many hours in a van traveling to various games with a lot of folks who were all smarter than I (pilots in their spare time, people who repaired and operated sophisticated video equipment), which didn’t keep me from getting into political arguments because I was younger, dumber, angrier and relatively new to the finer points of Marxism.
- Sisterhood, Interrupted
From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 A study of controversies in the feminist movement from the 1960s to the 2000s. Siegel wants readers to know about the multifaceted and contentious history of what is called feminism's "second wave" so that they can avoid both the trap of rebelling against its supposed stodgy "political correctness" and that of idealizing its supposedly harmonious "sisterhood".
- The Situation of Left Communism Today
Interview with the Korean Socialist Workers Newspaper Group (SaNoShin), November-December 2007 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- The Slave Ship
A human history Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Rediker draws on thirty years of research in maritime archives to create an unprecedented history of the slave ships which carted millions of people from the coasts of Africa across the Atlantic to the Americas.
- Slums, 21st Century Wars
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 How have homo sapiens managed to achieve a highly technological, seemingly advanced “civilization,” while producing the horrors described by Mike Davis in Planet of Slums?
- Social Activist Grace Lee Boggs on Shaking Up the Status Quo in America
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2007 Grace Lee Boggs has been a part of almost every major movement in the United States in the last 75 years, including: Labor, Civil Rights, Black Power, Women’s Rights and Environmental Justice.
- Socialist Register 2007
Volume 43: Coming to Terms with Nature Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2007
- Les soins de santé et les enfants en perturbation à Gaza
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- Sources Calendar Simple HTML version
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2007 Published: 2010 Event calendar in non-java-script format.
- South America: Toward an Alternative Future
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 With the death of Chilean dictator, Pinochet, and talks about a continent-wide union resembling the EU, Chomsky discusses the potential of South America to move in a new direction.
- SPP Agent Provocateur Cops Caught Red Handed Attempting To Incite Violence
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Peaceful protestors at the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit in Montebello have captured sensational video of hired agent provocateurs attempting to incite rioting and turn the protest violent, only to encounter brave resistance from real protest leaders.
- Starving the Poor
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Chomsky demonstrates how deficits in the international order and its policy-making can lead to negative effects, especially for the poor. One such example is the promotion of biofuels.
- State of the World's Oceans
New Internationalist January/February 2007 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2007 A look at the how the world's ocean is being destroyed and its effects on the earth.
- Stephen Harper opens door to prison privatization
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Whatever Harper has in mind for the prison system, one thing is for sure: There's little chance he'll unveil any plans for privatizing prisons before the next federal election. Unless Harper wins a majority, it seems suicidal for him to take a chance on such a controversial idea.
- The Story of Stuff
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2007 The Story of Stuff, originally released in December 2007, is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the Stuff in your life forever.
- The story of the GI coffeehouses
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Examining the rise of the GI coffeehouse movement--during the Vietnam War and again today in protest of the war on Iraq.
- Strip-Searching Children
Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Israeli officials have been regularly strip-searching children for decades.
- The Study of a Russian Factory
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 This book is a study of the Moscow Hammer and Sickle metallurgical factory between 1905 to 1932, based largely on four factory-specific archives that became available to Western historians after the fall of the Soviet Union. Its main focus, covering two-thirds of the book, is the post-revolutionary, post-civil war period.
- Stuffed and Starved
Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Published: 2010 This investigation into the global food market postulates that the current state of population health, where one billion people are overweight and one billion people are starving exemplifies the disequilibrium resulting from the liberalization of agriculture in the developing world by the forces of globalization and the policies of the IMF and World Bank.
- Stupid to the Last Drop
How Alberta is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (and Doesn't Seem to Care) Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Published: 2008 As the world teeters on the edge of catastrophic climate change, Alberta plunges ahead with uncontrolled development of its fossil fuels, levelling its northern Boreal forest to get at the oil sands, and carpet bombing its southern half with tens of thousands of gas wells.
- Sub-merge: Living Deep in a Shallow World
Service, Justice and Contemplation Among the World's Poor Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- The Sub-Prime Market Crisis
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 It wasn't until I flew to the United Kingdom on Saturday, September 15th, that the globalized nature of the sub-prime contagion really hit home, as it were, for me. On my flight over, I grabbed a copy of the UK Telegraph newspaper, the front page of which looked like something shot at a Great Depression bread line.
- Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Jennifer Gordon discusses her years spent working with the organization she founded, the Long Island-based Workplace Project.
- Surviving America's Depression Epidemic
How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 The rate of depression in the United States has increased more than tenfold in the last fifty years, and American mental health institutions have become part of the problem rather than the solution. The good news is that age-old wisdom and legitimate science -- uncorrupted by the profit-margin pressures of pharmaceutical and insurance companies -- have much to inform us about revitalizing depressed people and a depressing culture.
- The Tactic of Calling People Anti-Semitic
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Instead of calling people who criticize Israel and US policy towards it anti-Semitic, a morally committed response would be to face up to the reality of the situation in Israel/Palestine and do our best to remedy it.
- Targeted
Homeland Security and the Business of Immigration Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007
- Targeting Iran
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 A critical analysis of the Bush administration's policies towards Iran.
- Tearing Down the Seven Pillars of Neoliberalism
Manifesto 2007 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 With the beginning of the 1980s, we entered a new era of capitalism, the era of neoliberalism. This project systematically destroys all political, social and ecological restrictions for the activity of capital. Its methods are universally known: transformation of all relations into commodity relations, freedom of action for businesses and investors and expansion of the hunting area for transnational corporations over the whole planet.
- "The Backdrop Against Which Everything Happened"
English-Canadian Student Movements and Off-Campus Movements for Change Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Examines the relationship between the 1960s' student movements at English-Canadian universities and provincial, national, and international movements for change.
- Their Multiculturalism and Ours
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Reactionary interpretations of multiculturalism ignore, tolerate or excuse prejudice and abuse in the name of pluralism and diversity. They foster social division, moral confusion and double-standards - often to the detriment of the most vulnerable: minorities within minority communities. Progressive multiculturalism is about respecting and celebrating difference, but within a framework of universal equality and human rights. It is premised on welcoming and embracing cultural diversity, providing it does not involve the oppression of other people.
- Thinking Outside the Box
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Ignoring racism on the grounds that all citizens are equal and hence that racial or cultural differences are immaterial is clearly unacceptable. But so is labelling individuals by race, culture or faith and creating conflicts by institutionalising such differences in public policy.
- Tide Turning in Latin America?
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 NACLA’s first volume in its new series, Dispatches from Latin America: On the Frontlines Against Neoliberalism, reported on an array of popular initiatives and left-leaning regimes across the continent. The second volume, Latin America After Neoliberalism, is also a collection of essays; but this one is organized by themes and more academic, though still accessible. The book is a useful guide for activists wanting a better understanding of the profound transformations underway in the region.
- Tim Flannery: "It's Over to You"
Against The Current vol. 130 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The twenty-first century will be either the century of a “sustainability revolution” — extending the industrial and scientific revolutions of the 18th through 20th centuries, bringing their benefits to all humanity while eliminating massive global poverty and inequality, and in the process beginning to repair the massive damage wreaked on the environment by blind industrial expansion and capital accumulation — or else the century in which the progress of human civilization goes into reverse and faces the real possibility of collapse.
- Tony Karon on Growing Dissent among American Jews
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007
- Trafficked: For sexual exploitation
New Internationalist September 2007 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2007 A look at slavery and sexual exploitation of women. Discussion of anti-trafficking measures.
- 24 Days in Brooks
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2007 Centred on the 24-day Lakeside Packers strike, this film is a nuanced portrait of people working together for change. They are people like Peter Jany Khwai, who escaped war in Sudan and Edil Hassan, a devout Muslim born in Somalia.
- The University in Chains
Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Details how two decades of shifts in university funding brought increased intrusions by corporate and military forces onto university. After 9/11, the intelligence agencies pushed campuses to see the CIA and campus secrecy in a new light, and, as traditional funding sources for social science research declined, the intelligence community gained footholds on campuses.
- Uri Avnery Is Dead Wrong
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 In order to move forward and overcome the arguments people like him will hurl against us, we will need to get outside the reformist box and adopt a frankly revolutionary outlook, one that clearly sees the class conflict that rages all around us, that speaks to people about it directly, that asks people to evaluate ideas and events in light of their own insights into the world based on their personal experience of the class war, and that aims not merely to act as a cheerleader for this or that "lesser evil" scheme of our capitalist rulers but to win the class war so that ordinary people can shape society by their positive values.
- U.S. Labor's Subterranean Fire
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The broad outlines of the crisis of the U.S. labor movement -— sharply declining union density, concession bargaining, failures to organize the growing non-union manufacturing and service sectors, the labor officialdom’s reliance on institutionalized labor-management cooperation schemes — are familiar to readers of Against the Current. The roots of this crisis — the dominance of bureaucratic business unionism and the weakness of rank-and file-led reform movements from below — are also well-known.
- The Veil and Violence against Women in Islamist Societies
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The ongoing battle between the Islamic authorities and women over the veil clearly reveals why it has become a symbol like no other of the violence women face under Islam and why 'improper' or 'bad' veiling and unveiling have become a symbol of resistance to Islam in power and its violence against women. It is for this very reason that the slogan 'neither veil nor submission' has become a rallying cry ever since the regime imposed compulsory veiling on women after expropriating and crushing the revolution to consolidate its rule.
- The Wall, Apartheid and Mandela
Will the Wall Bring Down Israel? Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 During his years of struggle in South Africa, Nelson Mandela offered ideas worth examining closely, especially when considering that he and his followers defeated the very condition that Palestinians face today, Apartheid.
- The War on Democracy
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2007 This film by John Pilger explores the current and past relationship of Washington with Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile.
- The Water Front
Resource Type: Film First Published: 2007 Follows the heated struggle between residents, water workers and corporate managers in Highland Park, Michigan to spotlight what many of us take for granted - the right to affordable water.
- We Own the World
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Published: 2008 The whole debate about the Iranian 'interference' in Iraq makes sense only on one assumption, namely, that we own the world. If we own the world, then the only question that can arise is that someone else is interfering in a country we have invaded and occupied.
- Were Marx's principles only skin deep?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 A British dermatologist has managed to get himself worldwide publicity with an article suggesting that Karl Marx’s painful skin condition may have caused him to say all those mean things about capitalism.
- What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Noam Chomsky reverses roles and questions how America would respond if a threatening invader took over Canada or Mexico in a "liberation" attempt. Would America stand by quietly?
- What We Say Goes
Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World: Interviews with David Barsamian Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 In this new collection of conversations with David Barsamian, conducted in 2006 and 2007, Chomsky explores the most immediate and urgent concerns: Iran's challenge to the United States, the deterioration of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of China, and the growing power of the left in Latin America.
- What's all the fuss about the veil?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 It is impossible to address the status of women under Islamic laws and defend women’s rights without addressing and denouncing the veil. And this is why the veil is the first thing that Islamists impose when they have any access to power.
- When the UAW Was Young
Against The Current vol. 131 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 An interview with Erwin and Estar Baur.
- Whither Diversity?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 We love race - we love identity - because we don't love class. That is, the upper income groups in society, including many liberals, prefer to believe that a fair and just society can be realized primarily by celebrating and embracing diversity -- but excluding class considerations.
- Who owns knowledge?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The resurgence of a Romantic view of culture poses a real menace to the free flow of knowledge and threatens to corral it into intellectual Bantustans. The ideas of free speech and open debate become meaningless if we fail to defend a universalist concept of knowledge or if we accept the notion of science as but a local view whose factual claims must defer to cultural and political needs. If scientific debate is constrained to express only sentiments with which people feel comfortable, culturally and politically, then science dies as the line between knowledge and myth becomes eroded.
- Who Should Bomb Iran First?
The Myth Of Left-Leaning Media Bias Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Mainstream media discussions of media balance are limited to a single question: Is the media too critical of powerful interests?
- Why do we still believe in race?
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2007 Races are difficult to define and there are no objective rules for deciding what constitutes a race or to what race a person belongs. People can belong to many races at the same time.
- Why has the left gone soft on human rights?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 A perverse interpretation of multiculturalism has resulted in race and religion ruling the roost in a tainted hierarchy of oppression. In the name of "unity" against Islamophobia and racism, much of the left tolerates misogyny and homophobia in minority communities. It rejects common standards of rights and responsibilities; demanding that we "make allowances" and show "sensitivity" with regard to the prejudices of ethnic and faith communities. This attitude is patronising, even racist. It judges minority peoples by different standards.
- Why Israel?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 A routine strategy of Israel's defenders is to continually redirect attention to the human rights failings of countries hostile to Israel, or to catastrophes like Darfur that are used to argue the ongoing need for the sort of 'humanitarian interventions' that provide cover for the advancement of U.S. interests. Yet the question of why Israel is being targeted and not some other country assumes, erroneously, that other countries are not being targeted. The reverse, in fact, is usually the case. Often, countries deemed acceptable for criticism by supporters of Israel are already subject to political and diplomatic sanctions by the U.S. and its tool, the UN Security Council -- sometimes for acting in ways identical to Israel.
- Why Israeli Anti-Zionists do NOT 'recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish state'
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 States that define themselves with reference to the domination of one ethnic group cannot claim legitimacy.
- Why Our Government Supports Israel's Government, and Why We Shouldn't
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 Israel's Leaders Harm Both Jews & Palestinians.
- Wobblies on the Waterfront
Interracial unionism in progressive-era Philadelphia Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Peter Cole outlines the factors that were instrumental in Local 8's success, both ideological (the IWW's commitment to working-class solidarity) and pragmatic (racial divisions helped solidify employer dominance). He also shows how race was central not only to the rise but also to the decline of Local 8, as increasing racial tensions were manipulated by employers and federal agents bent on the union's destruction.
- The workers' government
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 The biggest far left organisations in Italy to emerge from the great wave of struggle from 1968 to 1975 changed their strategy to one of focussing on the formation of a ‘left’ government within the existing parliamentary set-up.
- Workers Solidarity Issue 3
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2007
- World Social Forum
Challenging Empires Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 This comprehensive volume provides a glimpse into the wide-ranging discussions, debates and arguments which have gone into making the World Social Forum (WSF) one of the more prominent platforms of alternative ideas and practices in the present world.
- The World Without Us
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 A thought experiment to see what would happen to the planet if human beings simply disappeared.
- Worldchanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century
A User's Guide for the 21st Century Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 A User's Guide to the 21st Century is a compendium of everything a generation of environmental activists has to offer.
- Writing in an Age of Silence
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 Published: 2009 Sara Paretsky explores the traditions of political and literary dissent that have informed her life and work, against the unparallelled repression of free speech and thought in the USA today.
- The Writing on the Wall
China and the West in the 21st Century Resource Type: Book First Published: 2007 The increasing global fear of the rise of China's economic power is misplaced and reflects the parallel rise of protectionist sentiment in a western world that has lost its moral authority to act as a legitimate international trade advocate.
- Zimbabwean feminist speaks
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2007 If one looks at the experience of women in Zimbabwe and one looks at the role of the state in relation to women's lives, the state has never had the interests of women at heart. Women are only considered citizens when the state has something to gain.
2006
- Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 An argument against what Collini calls the 'declinist thesis', the belief that contemporary intellectual life is getting increasingly dumbed down and stagnant. Declinists, Collini suggests, are in denial of reality and ignorant of history. Collini also skewers those who, like Edward Said, represent themselves as 'outsiders' while basking in the glamour of in-group recognition.
- The Academic Boycott Debate
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 An excellent summary and commentary on a debate at Ryerson University about whether Israel should be subjected to an academic boycott because of its human rights violations.
- An activist's guide to basic first aid
A short guide to health care and first aid Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A short guide to health care and first aid to be used on demonstrations or during direct action when injuries are possible, such as large pickets, blockades or demonstrations.
- Advertising overload
New Internationalist September 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A look at big brand mass advertising and the effects on how people think and feel.
- An African Village Two decades of change in an African Village
New Internationalist May 2006 - #389 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A look at the lives of people living in African villages and how things have improved.
- After Katrina: A View from the Ground
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 interview with Isaac Steiner. Against The Current interviewed Isaac Steiner, a member of Solidarity in Atlanta, about his experiences in a grassroots reconstruction project in New Orleans.
- After the Revolution, What?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A revolution to politically defeat a social class can take place relatively quickly compared to the task of re-shaping an entire society and economy by very different values. A fundamentally new kind of economy must therefore be able to arise somewhat gradually from the old, or it probably can never arise at all.
- Age Shock
How Finance is Failing Us Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Blackburn examines the realities of an aging demographic in the midst of the disintegration, from both a monetary and social obligation perspective, of sound financial conditions for the elderly.
- America: From Freedom to Fascism
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2006 An attack on the erosion of civil liberties in the United States.
- American Cartoonists Rap on the Danish Flap
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 "It's really surreal," cartoonist Matt Wuerker observed. "It's like something out of a Kurt Vonnegut novel."
- American Fascists
The Christian Right and the War on America Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Hedges examines the Christian Right's origins, its driving motivation and its dark ideological underpinnings, with interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques. Hedges argues that the movement resembles the young fascist movements in Italiy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. He challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.
- American Methods
Torture and the Logic of Domination Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 A damning audit of the US record in underwriting human rights violations around the globe and at home, and about the centrality of rape, racism, and conquest to both the state and US national culture.
- The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary
Movements, Histories and Motivations Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 This dictionary is an alternative and a counter-balance to the many political dictionaries that ignore or marginalize the history and influence of anti-capitalist movements.
- Anti-War Movement's Strange Allies: Hard Line Islamists
Canada's progressive Muslims wonder why left would embrace theocrats Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Canada's anti-war movement has become not only the primary vehicle for an obscure, formerly left-wing group that attacks anyone who opposes Shariah courts in Canada, it's also now the main source of public respectability for a Toronto think-tank that advocates for the establishment of theocracies that hang gay people.
- Arroyo on the Brink
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Phillipines president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has so far survived two attempts to oust her from office. The first constituted the so-called “opposition salvo” in July 2005. This was followed by the aborted “military uprising” in February.
- Avenge But One of My Two Eyes
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2006 Israeli director Avi Mograbi documents what he calls the "culture of death" in the psychology of Israel the occupier.
- Banks exposed: Would you trust this pig?
New Internationalist August 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A look at capital movements and people robbing governments of tax. Advice on how to make banking fair and relevant.
- Beating the bailiffs guide
Overloaded with debt? Bailiffs threatening you? Here some useful advice Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Getting overloaded with debt and don't know what to do? This articles contains useful advice, tips and contacts for dealing with debt and bailiffs.
- Beyond the Ballot
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Rather than focusing upon the establishment of elections in Iraq, Chomsky points out that popular will is the essential element of democracy. The vast majority of Iraqis were, however, opposed to coalition forces.
- Beyond Iraq: The Spreading Crisis
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The disaster and carnage of the Iraq occupation is the center of a crisis now spreading through the region—to Iran, to Afghanistan and the India-Pakistan subcontinent, and especially to Israel-Palestine—with implications far beyond.
- Binge and Hangover
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The lords of empire set out to show that the United States, not Iran or any other potential rival, will rule the "new" Middle East. Unable to attack Iran directly, however, they instead employed the willing regional branch office of the U.S. military-industrial complex, the Israeli Defense Force, to destroy Lebanon. A war that began as a triumphal imperial binge has ended, at least as of August 14 if the fragile ceasefire holds, with uncertainty and a hangover. (The ceasefire's fate, following the failed Israeli commando raid in the Bekaa Valley, is uncertain as we go to press.)
- Bird, Diz and Max at Town Hall, 1945: Birth of a Revolution
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Hip-hop had a musical parallel in the 1940s. It was the music now called be-bop, although it wasn't called be-bop then. It was "the new thing" or "the revolution in music."
- Black History and the Class Struggle
#19 Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2006 Articles include: New Orleans: Racist Atrocity; Black Women's Narratives of Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction; The Lyncihing of Emmett Till and the Fight for Black Liberation.
- Bolivia: Evo Morales' First 100 Days
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On December 18, 2005 the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Toward Socialism, MAS) party won an historic 54% of the popular vote in the Bolivian general elections. MAS leader Evo Morales, an indigenous man of mixed Aymara-Quechua descent who came of age politically as a peasant union leader in the anti-imperialist cocalero (coca grower) movement of the Chapare region, became president. MAS assumed the governance of Bolivia on January 22, 2006.
- Book review writing guide
Tips and advice on how to write a review of a book or pamphlet Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Book reviews. If you write or publish anything reviews can be a gain or a pain. Even the pain of negative feedback can sometimes help. To readers they can be a warning, a source of information, or the leaping-off point for research and discussion. Just like there never seems to be enough books in the world, there's never enough reviewers, and it's a good way to develop critical writing skills.
- Books of Interest - Sources 58
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Reviews of books about journalism, media, and research.
- Breaking the Spell of Stupid Opinions
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 When someone is outside the hold of a stupid opinion, its inanity is so apparent that one wonders how it could ever be held by anyone. But when people are caught believing something that isn't reality-based, most believe it far more rigidly than they believe facts.
- Build It Now
Socialism for the Twenty-First Century Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Influenced by the dramatic proeesses unfolding in Venezuela, Lebowitz re-imagines a socialism for the twenty-first century that places workers and popular communities at the centre of the project.
- Building blocks for peace in the Middle East
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The minimal demands of both sides are compatible and legitimate; the maximum demands lead to endless war.
- California Greens Advance: The Camejo and Chretien Campaigns
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 In California the Green Party is changing both in its social composition and in its political diversity. The party's support for immigrants' rights, especially around the issue of state driver's licenses, has won the party growing support among Latinos. Leading activists such as Nativo Lopez, Chair of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), and Miguel Araujo, from Centro Azteca, have come into the Green Party.
- Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A call for sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.
- Canadian Activism Archives
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2006 Site which is attempting to build a historical archives of, and useful guides for, social justice and environmental activism in Canada.
- Caroline Lund-Sheppard, Sept. 24, 1944-Oct. 14, 2006: A Life Fully Lived
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 It's my favorite photograph of Caroline: She’s just a girl, standing straight up, hands neatly folded in front of her, wearing a long, white tunic, and an exuberantly silly grin.
- The Case for Staying in Iraq
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 I don't support an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, because I think it would probably make an already bad situation much worse. Of course, there's no guarantee that continuing the occupation will succeed in allowing some form of stability to take hold—particularly if our military forces simply "stay the course" of brutality evidenced in Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, and the training of Iraqi death squads. However, I believe it offers the best chance for the chaotic forces now at work in Iraq to settle, over time, into some type of a coherent nation.
- The Case of Northwest Airlines: Workers' Rights & Wrongs
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Four years ago, when asked by an academic journal to write about whether the strike was still a viable weapon in labor’s “arsenal,” my title was blunt: “Is the Strike Dead?”(1) As is my style, I introduced some historical material and offered an analysis of the anti-labor bias of the past 25 years, during which the number of “large” strikes (involving 1,000 or more workers) had declined from more than 400 per year to less than 30.
- China's Worker Protests: A Second Wave of Labor Unrest?
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 There has been a 30% rise in collective riots in China in recent years. Whereas in 1993, there were 10,000 reported cases with 700,000 participants, in 2003 it jumped to 60,000 with 3 million participants. Among these examples, labor unrest has been quite outstanding, though it is difficult to get official statistics.
- The Chomsky-Foucault Debate
On human nature Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 In 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War and at a time of great political and social instability, two of the world's leading intellectuals, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, were invited by Dutch philosopher Fons Elders to debate an age-old question: is there such a thing as 'innate' human nature independent of our experiences and external influences? What begins as a philosophical argumentsoon evolves into a broader discussion encompassing a wide range of topics including the struggle for justice in the realm of politics.
- Clausewitz on the Pampas: An Argentine Snapshot as Latin America Moves Leftward
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- The Cold War and the New Imperialism
A Global History, 1945-2005 Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 The Cold War is an account of global history since 1945, which ties together the narrative of the Cold War to that of neoliberalism and the new imperialism.Written for the general reader, it draws together scholarly research on a huge range of events, countries, and topics into an intelligible whole.
- Collective Action - and Victory! France: CPE Goes Down
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Millions of young people in France have lived through the experience of collective action and of an important victory, young people who just a few weeks earlier had paid no attention to political organization. In the end the movement won: the "First Employment Contract" (CPE) has been annulled.
- Color of Violence
The INCITE! Anthology Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 An anthology of critical writings demanding that we address violence against women of color in all its forms, including interpersonal violence, such as sexual and domestic violence, and state violence, such as police brutality, militarism, attacks on immigrants and Indian treaty rights, the proliferation of prisons, economic neo-colonialism, and violence from the medical industry.
- Commemorating France's Worst Mining Tragedy: 1099 Workers Perished to Profit the Bosses
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A mining catastrophe in northern France on March 10, 1906, is remembered with a number of commemorative ceremonies.
- The Communist Club
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 History of the Communist Club in 19th century London, in particular detailing the involvement of Karl Marx.
- Community organising
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Information, guides and tips on organising around issues which affect you and other people living in your local area.
- Conned, Carbon offsets stripped bare
New Internationalist July 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 Discussion of the myths about carbon offsets, and details of more positive climate change steps to take. Carbon offsetting is exposed as a scam, one that's been sold to the guilt-ridden general public as an easy answer to a complex problem.
- Consuming Cultures Globalization and Local Lives
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 A wide-ranging and sensitive exploration of local versus global, underlining the economic roots of cultural identity.
- Contradictions of the Iraqi Resistance: Guerilla War vs. Terrorism
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 One of the most complicated aspects of the war in Iraq is that the Iraqi resistance is divided into a multitude of different groups with a multitude of different goals.
- Corruption: Can the rot be stopped?
New Internationalist December 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A look at the people standing up to challenge corruption and make a difference.
- Counter-Rhetoric
Challenging "conventional wisdom" & reframing the conflict Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2006 This useful little book does two things. It challenges the rhetoric, the perceptions and assumptions regarding the conflict in Israel/Palestine, and it exposes the underlying imbalance of power around which this rhetoric swirls. It is both useful as a historical guide and as a tool for countering the prevailing divisive rhetoric. Whether challenging the concepts embedded in Zionism, the wars of the mid 20th century and the later occupation, or the Wall as security argument, this book gives a systematic alternative to the prevailing mantras and begins the process of changing the viewing of the conflict.
- Countering Zionist propaganda about Hizbullah and Lebanon
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Nothing will change until the people of Palestine, Arabs and Jews, rise up to change the rules of the game, and rebuild the country on a new basis that respects democracy and human rights and good-neighbourly relations.
- Creating A Giant Ghetto in Gaza
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 I is possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it? That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer.
- Crisis of the Regime
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 "A government headed by right-wing extremists has been returned to power, to preside over a divided country and a potential for real catastrophe in Iraq!" That's what we wrote a year ago, in the immediate wake of the 2004 election (editorial statement, ATC 113). In other words, the Republicans were firmly installed as the country's ruling party, albeit with a razor-thin majority, unless and until they were to screw something up really, really badly—and have they ever, from Baghdad to New Orleans and back!
- Damu Smith: A Life of Giving
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 I was attending an event to honor the scholar and Detroit activist Charles Simmons, who is recovering from cancer, when Maureen Taylor, another activist, told Simmons he should begin to pay as much attention to his own well being as he did that of others. She said when the plane in flight loses cabin pressure, you're instructed to first put the oxygen mask over your own face before you help anyone else.
- Dancing in the Streets
A History of Collective Joy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Published: 2007 An account of the toll that depression has taken on European and North American health since the 18th century.
- The Danger in Lebanon
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The assasination [of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri] resulted in the intensification of the campaign by the USA and France against the Syrian presence and influence in Lebanon. This pressure was able to base itself on the mass mobilization inside Lebanon, which forced the withdrawal of Syrian troops.
- David Roediger's Working Toward Whiteness
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A disturbing aftermath of the pro-immigrant demonstrations recently held in dozens of cities across the United States, besides the obvious anti-immigrant backlash, has been the increase in Black/Brown tensions. Particularly alarming has been the way in which Latinos are being accused, not only by conservatives but by Progressives as well, of being the latest permutation of a long history of immigrant groups arriving to this country and making it, to quote Toni Morrison, “on the backs of Blacks.”
- Dealing with accusations of benefit fraud guide
Some tips and advice for any claimants who are facing accusations of benefit fraud Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The Government spends hundreds of thousands of pounds talking about this but actually has little success prosecuting alleged fraudsters. It is important to remember that receiving benefits you are not entitled to does not automatically make you guilty.
- Dealing with bullying at work guide
Advice and tips on how to survive bullying and intimidation in the workplace, and ways of dealing with individually, legally, or collectivel Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Cuts in staffing and resources, increasing workloads, performance related pay: all have made work more pressurised. The University of Manchester says bullying accounts for up to half of all employment stress. The few studies done show the majority of incidents are by bosses, but it's still important to support people being bullied by work 'mates'. Call it what you will: harassment, aggression, coercive management, intimidation, or things seen as 'just a joke' - all are common labels for what is really bullying. Racial or sexual harassment, or that based on sexuality or disability, may also take the form of bullying.
- Dealing with credit card debt guide
A short guide to help you deal with credit card debt, as consumer debt in the UK continues to spiral Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 You don’t need to work for the Financial Times to realise that credit card debt is getting well out of hand. Ten years ago hardly anyone had one. Now there are 91 million credit and debit cards in the UK. Two fifths of our shopping is now put on the plastic. The net result is a large portion of the population with massive credit card debt. Given the extortionate interest rates charged this is seriously bad news for us and the source of gleeful hand rubbing for the high street bankers (what’s that rhyming slang for I wonder?) who are pocketing it.
- Dealing with street harassment guide
A guide for women with advice on how to effectively deal with sexual harrassment in public. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Harassment is: Any number of acts or comments which make you feel physically or sexually unsafe or uncomfortable. They can be made by people you have known for years or by perfect strangers.
- Dean's Digital World - Sources 58
The Invisible Web Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Article about the "invisible Web" or "Deep Web".
- Death in the Haymarket
A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 The story of the anarchosyndicalist militants accused of perpetrating the throwing of a bomb that killed police at a workers' rally at the Haymarket in Chicago on May 4, 1886.
- Deaths in Custody and Detention
Volume 33, No. 4 (2006) of Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict, and World Order Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A special issue on the investigation of, and inquiry into, deaths in custody and detention (including state hospitals and mental health, police and prison custody, and young offenders' institutions). The volume sets out to consider how advanced democratic states inquire into and investigate deaths in controversial circumstances. Also considered are the deadly force and exceptional incarceration policies associated with the "war on terror" waged by the U.S. and U.K. Articles and essays cover the U.K., Ireland, the U.S. (including, Guantanamo), and Australia and mix academic pieces with accounts from prisoners and campaigners.
- The Dershowitz Treatment
Slime Throwing as Debate Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 An expose of Alan Dershowitz's record, showing that he has repeatedly resorted to lies, slander, fabrications, falsifications and plagiarism in public debate and in his published works.
- Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits
Six-part article Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Inside the Financial World, Government Agencies and their Private Contractors Lies a Hidden System of Money Laundering, Drug Trafficking and Rigged Stock Market Riches.
- Documents from the Anti-CPE Uprising in France (February-April 2006)
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- Door knocking guide
Tips for effectively carrying out door-knocking visits and talking to people in your local area. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 In community politics, door knocking plays an essential role. From just getting to know your neighbours better, to carrying out a local survey or trying to sign people up to a local campaign or petition talking to people at home is a valuable exercise, due to its face-to-face nature. However, it can be a daunting task, so we put together a set of tips to help you on your way, with pre-planning and then how to act on people’s doorsteps.
- Dual power at work
When the workers make changes to their work environment without seeking management approval Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Rather than wait for the boss to give in to our demands and institute long-sought change, workers often have the power to institute those changes on our own, without the boss's say-so.
- Dual Power or Populist Theater? Mexico's Two Governments
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The Mexican Electoral Tribunal recognized Felipe Calderón as president-elect, while a massive National Democratic Convention has proclaimed Andrés Manuel López Obrador to be the “legitimate president of Mexico.”He is now creating an alternative government, and says he will call a constituent assembly that will write a new constitution. What is happening here? Is this a radical fight for reforms? A potentially revolutionary movement? Or a spectacular piece of populist theater?
- Effective Media Relations
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Media relations is human relations. Journalism is about telling compelling stories about people and their lives.
- Elections and Regime Crisis
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Will the Democrats "regain control of Congress"? Will Joseph Lieberman change parties? Will Hillary Clinton be the Democratic frontrunner for 2008? How much does any of this matter?
- Eliizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Floods in normally drought-stricken eastern India have killed hundreds and left 1.5 million homeless this summer. Closer to home, a record-setting heat wave this June killed 225 in the United States, breaking thousands of local temperature records and sending the mercury above 104 degrees as far north as North Dakota.
- Empire's Workshop
Latin America, the United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Looks at U.S. foreign policy post 9/11 and its antecedents.
- The End of the Line
How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Decades and even centuries of habitat destruction, pollution, and overfishing have transformed and degraded the oceans.
- The End of the Regime?
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The Permanent Detention and Torture Enabling Act of 2006 was the final obscene gesture of a dying Congressional session. (Actually, make that next-to-last: They topped it off with the billion-dollar appropriation to double-fence the Mexican border, even though this means humiliating Bush’s own pals in Mexico, the right-wing politicians whom he helped steal the Mexican election. That’s another crisis we cover elsewhere in this issue.)
- Engendered Surgery: Women Surgeons Reveal their Experiences
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 In her talk at Harvard in April 2005, the feminist scientist Evelyn Fox Keller pointed to a distinction she was and is careful to make between garden variety discrimination and what she sees as the larger underlying issue: the way society constructs ideas of masculinity, femininity and science, and how these ideas overlap—or don't.
- Ethical Shopping: A Magic Bullet to Save the World?
New Internationalist November 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A look at shopping ethically and its limitations. Discussion of why consumerism is contributing to a negative impact on the planet.
- Ethnic Nationalism Versus Common Sense
Response to a Zionist Book Review Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Picture this. On the one hand, you have a bunch of people living in Palestine. Their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers most likely lived there too. They make their living there; they make their lives there. From far away appear some Europeans -- European Jews. They declare their intention to establish a state controlled by those who are, on some definition or other, ethnically Jewish. This will be a sovereign state, holding the power of life and death over all non-Jews within its borders, and those borders are intended eventually to comprise all of Palestine.
- Europa! Resisting corporate design
New Internationalist October 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A look at the European Union ranging from migration to concerns over corporate takeover.
- The Everyday Activist
365 Ways to Change the World Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 A positive, practical guide to healing the world - one day at a time. Packed with ideas and facts from leading campaign organizations, this handbook shows how the smallest actions can make a difference to your community and in the wider world.
- Evidence and Evolution: A Controversial Theory
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The importance of evolutionary theory for biology can hardly be overstated. An oft-quoted remark by the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky captures this: "Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." The applications of genetics—the foundation of evolutionary theory—are widespread and profound in technology as well as basic biology.
- Faces of Latin America (Third Edition)
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Examines some of the key forces - from conquest and the growth of the commodity trade, military rule, land distribution, industrialization and migration to civil wars, the debt crisis, neoliberalism and NAFTA - shaping the region's political and social history.
- Failed States
The abuse of power and the assault on democracy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Published: 2007 Failed States offers a comprehensive analysis of a global superpower that has long claimed the right to reshape other nations while its own democratic institutions are in severe crisis. Chomsky systematically dismantles the United States' pretense of being the world's arbiter of democracy.
- Favela Rising
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2006 The story of Anderson Sa, and his quest to create a non-violent cultural movement known as Afro-reggae.
- Feminism in Canada
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Last year, on International Women’s Day in Toronto, several hundred people — many veteran feminist activists — packed an auditorium in the city’s Ryerson University for the launch of Judy Rebick’s oral history of the women’s movement in Canada, Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution. The fact that the book had just been reviewed in the conservative Globe and Mail, Canada’s most influential newspaper, also widened the audience.
- Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 A readable account of the development of the science of global warming, alongside shocking vignettes that demonstrate the rapidly altering effects climate change is having on our world.
- Fighting for Union Autonomy: Mexican Miners On Strike
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On April 20 eight hundred state and federal police launched an assault on 500 striking workers who had been occupying a steel mill in Lázaro Cárdenas. Two were killed, five seriously injured and 40 wounded. A video released to the press shows Michoacán police taking aim at the strikers.
- Flyposting guide
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Guide with tips and advice on flyposting, or "wheatpasting", for advertising and getting your message out to a wide audience on a low budget.
- Follies of the War
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Three years later, it is hard to believe that a gloating and triumphant Christopher Hitchens could write this (April 18, 2003):
- Food Fanatics
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Ill-informed dogmatism has no place in a healthy lifestyle.
- For Lust of Knowing
The Orientalists and their enemies Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 A rebuttal of Edward Said which examines who the Orientalists were, how historically they advanced their disciplines, and what their achievements have been. Irwin calls Said's book "a work of malignant charlatanry."
- For the Love of Country?
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Visited once again by the vultures of patriotism and gnawing anxieties about the nature of our republic, we are falling into a renewed debate about our peculiar brand of patriotism. Investing symbols and rituals with meaning others find puzzling, we adorn our automobiles with yellow decals, sport flag lapel pins, and require school children to daily swear allegiance to the state.
- Four Books on Hegemony and Resistance
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 There are times when a key analysis has a wakeup effect. The last year saw the publication of four books that together have a potential of such an event, at least for those U.S. citizens who are motivated to try and understand and change the world. The four were not written with the idea that they would be read together, yet taken together they are, I believe, more thought-provoking than if considered separately.
- Free Speech in a Plural Society
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The argument against free speech is really an argument in defence of particular sectional interests. And that is the best reason for rejecting restraints on speech. We can build a plural society in which free speech provides the means of engagement and dialogue between different parts of society.
- Freedom Riders
1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- The French Riots: Dancing with the Wolves
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 In French suburban slang, to "dance with the wolves" means to provoke the cops, make them run and, obviously, to escape without being arrested. The unfortunate reality is much less romantic. The three weeks of recent riots may be seen as a long overdue political response to the profound racism of French society; but in this writer's view this uprising is more an index of desperation of French youth, of all national origins, than the beginning of a new political movement.
- French Students Speak for Themselves What We Won - and Need
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The following collective interview was conducted for ATC by Patrick Silberstein of Editions Syllepse.
- From Gaza, with Love
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2006 A blog by Dr. Mona El-Farra, about women, health, children and human rights in Occupied Palestine.
- Gatekeepers
Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- George Bush's Unending War and Israel
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The present U.S. strategy, defined by the neo-cons at the end of the 1980s, is no longer a strategy of stabilizing world order and building a “new Middle East” through multilateral negotiations, but imposing the “American age,” i.e. U.S. total hegemony, by a global non-ending preemptive war. The Israeli war against the Palestinian people and against Lebanon is part of this global war; indeed, it is the United States’ most advanced and important front.
- The German Revolution, 1917-1923
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- Giants and Immortal Legacies
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Lou Rawls and Wilson Pickett were two of the most distinctive Black voices in pop music. From the 1960s right up to the present, both were major players in that extraordinary scene of the 1960s and 1970s, an artistic and soulful creative renaissance that stretched the boundaries of what could be done with popular culture well beyond the expected. It is a renaissance still remembered, still very much cherished as much outside the borders of the United States as within, even as today’s virulently rampaging lowest-common-denominator commercial pandering tries to overwhelm us.
- Give your Sources media profile an extra boost
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Creating a link from your Web site to your Sources listing boosts your visibility.
- Go-slow guide
Instead of striking, workers with demands that the bosses are unwilling to meet can collectively decide to start a go-slow Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 By deliberately slowing the rate of work, all together, the bosses' profits are hit, without workers losing wages. If everyone sticks together in solidarity victimisation of individuals can also be prevented.
- The God Delusion
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Dawkins' basic argument is that the collective irrational belief in "The God Hypothesis" is not only wrong ("intellectual high treason"), but pernicious.
- Good work strike
Advice and tips on taking good work strikes Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Instead of a conventional strike, workers with demands that the bosses are unwilling to meet can collectively decide to have a good work strike. One of the biggest problems for service industry workers is that many forms of direct action, such as go-slows, end up hurting the consumer (mostly fellow workers) more than the boss. One way around this is to provide better or cheaper service - at the boss's expense, of course.
- Graffiti from the Anti-CPE Uprising in France (February-April 2006)
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- Graffiti guide
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A beginners' guide to doing graffiti, covering paints, spraypaints, stencils, surfaces and general advice.
- A Gran Marcha and Beyond
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 March, 2006 marked an eruption that hit the streets, showed its strength, and took everyone including its participants by surprise. Millions marched all over the country: 300,000 in Chicago, 50,000 in Denver, 10,000 in Detroit and Milwaukee, 10,000-20,000 in New York, 20,000 in Phoenix—and somewhere between 500,000 and a million in the Gran Marcha in Los Angeles on March 25. As the U.S. Congress and Senate hold their wretched deliberations on "immigration reform," the communities affected have shown they will not be passive objects, but active subjects, in this debate. As this issue goes to press, mass marches have continued and Congress has recessed in deadlock on the issue.
- The Great Turning
From Empire to Earth Community Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- The Great Turning as Compass and Lens
Yes! Magazine Summer 2006 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The Great Turning is a name for the transition from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining society. It identifies the shift from a self-destroying political economy to one in harmony with Earth and enduring for the future. It unites and includes all the actions being taken to honor and preserve life on Earth. It is the essential adventure of our time.
- Guide to dealing with the corporate media
A guide to using the mainstream corporate or state media to get your message across. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A guide to using the mainstream corporate or state media to get your message across.
- Guide to giving speeches and presentations
Tips and advice of public speaking, making speeches and giving presentations effectively. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Giving speeches and presentations is one of the most basic ways that an activist can communicate their ideas. Every activist should have at least a little experience with public speaking.
- Guide to public order situations
A brief survival guide for when a demonstration turns into a riot Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Bear in mind that the police are probably much better equipped and trained for close combat than you or I. They have been psyching themselves up for hours, are likely to have plenty of reserves standing by and usually feel confident with the law behind them. Beating the police is about outwitting them, not necessarily hitting them over the head.
- Guide to setting up a local newsletter
A guide with tips and advice on how to set up a newsletter in your local area to cover issues that affect local residents. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- Guide to sick-outs
Rather than call a conventional strike, the sick-in is a good way to strike without striking. Sick-ins involve organising workers to call in Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The idea is to cripple your workplace by having all or most of the workers call in sick on the same day or days. Unlike the formal walkout, it can be used effectively by single departments and work areas, and can often be successfully used even without a formal union organisation. It is the traditional method of direct action for public employee unions in the United States, which are legally prevented from striking.
- Guide to starting your own zine
Tips and advice on starting a zine-style publication, from format and content to distribution and finance. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Are you ready to do a zine? This is probably the most important question you should ask yourself when you're considering doing a zine -- are you really ready to do one? Doing a zine can take up a lot of your time and become a big responsibility. There's no reason that you should have to do a whole zine -- if you aren't sure you can handle a zine on your own, consider maybe contributing to zines that you like or getting a couple friends to do one with you.
- Guide to taking strike action
Tips and advice on how to effectively organise and carry out strike action at your workplace. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Our labour is the ultimate weapon that workers possess. Without workers bosses cannot make a profit. Strike action can be very powerful, but at the same time it, at the very least, reduces take home pay. More worryingly it may also lead to dismissal. Hardly, surprising therefore, that strike action is usually last resort taken of workers.
- Heat
How to Stop the Planet From Burning Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Concerns about the effects of global warming on the Human species - especially those unfortunate enough to live in poorer countries - require drastic action, far outstripping the recommendations of the Kyoto protocol.
- Tim Hector
A Caribbean Radical's Story Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 An account of the life of Antiguan activist Tim Hector.
- Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 We are supposed to think that the current crisis in the Middle East has no historical roots.
- Hizballah Through the Fog of War
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 An interview with Middle East specialist Augustus Richard Norton on the nature of the Lebanese-based Hezbollah group, in which he attempts to dispel some of the shibboleths that hamper Western understanding of its aims and design.
- How does your Web site rank? Alexa tells you
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Find out your Web site's reach and what other sites are popular with the people who come to your site.
- How Sources magnifies your Internet visibility
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Published: 2009 How the high Internet ranking of the Sources Web site helps magnify the public profile of organizations and companies who are listed in Sources.
- How the Unions Killed the Working Class Movement
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 An analysis of how the vertical integration of unions disempowers workers and forces them to use captilist systems such as courts instead of relying on friendship and solidarity.
- How to Deal with The Lobby: The De-Zionization of the American Mind
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Countering the influence of the Zionist lobby.
- How to fight reactionaries
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Fundamentalists of all kinds only thrive when their communities feel besieged. Understanding why is not an indulgence.
- Humanitarian Imperialism
Using Human Rights to Sell War Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Since the end of the Cold War, the idea of human rights has been made into a justification for intervention by the world's leading economic and military powers, above all, the United States, in countries that are vulnerable to their attacks.
- If Israel Has the Right to Use Force in Self Defense, So Do Its Neighbours
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 There is no reason why Israel should be able to enter Arab sovereign soil to occupy, destroy, kidnap and eliminate its perceived foes - repeatedly, with impunity and without restraint - while the Arab side cannot do the same.
- Immigrant Students and Workers Take to the Streets: Outpouring in Chicago
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 In late February, word began to spread around Chicago about a protest against HR 4437, a bill passed by the House of Representatives to criminalize undocumented immigration, as well as aid given to undocumented immigrants (for more information on HR 4437, see http://www.ilrc.org/HR4437.html). A humble-looking activist website announced, in English and Spanish, "Unite!.March against HR 4437 General Strike!"
- In Hebron, a South African Compares Israeli Occupation to Apartheid
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Israelis have generally blinded themselves to the apartheid in the back yard because if they did acknowledge it they would have to do something. This complacent blindering recalls the American south during the civil rights movement, or the founding fathers during slavery.
- Indeed there is Apartheid in Israel
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The state of Israel practises its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population.
- Interracial Antiracism
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The wide range of topics covered in Romance and Rights: the Politics of Interracial Intimacy, 1945-1954 by Alex Lubin and Stacy I. Morgan’s Rethinking Social Realism: African American Art and Literature, 1930-1953 converge around the central importance of the Second World War and anticommunism.
- Interview conducting guide
Tips and advice on carrying out interviews with people for articles, publications, books, etc. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Interviews can be a useful tool to aid publishing and media efforts. Think of them as an opportunity to get information you don't already know. It is a particularly useful way of relieving the pressure on people intensely involved in a particular struggle who don't have the time to report on their activities and perspectives.
- Interview with Gilbert Achcar
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Susan Weissman interviewed Gilbert Achcar for her program, "Beneath the Surface," on KPFK, Pacifica radio in Los Angeles. In the following excerpt, Achcar discusses the questions of immediate withdrawal and civil war in Iraq.
- An Interview with Patricia Campbell
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Patricia Campbell is President of the Irish Independent Workers Union (IWU), an independent trade union and social movement in both the north and south of Ireland. She is a deputy editor of the journal Fourthwrite, founded by a group of Irish Republicans most of whom are former political prisoners from the Republican movement.
- An Interview with Tanya Reinhart
The Roadmap to Nowhere Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Persistent struggle can have an effect, and can lead governments to act. Such struggle begins with the Palestinian people, who have withstood years of brutal oppression, and who, through their spirit of zumud--sticking to their land - and daily endurance, organizing and resistance, have managed to keep the Palestinian cause alive
- Intractable: Hell Has a Name
Life Inside Australia's First Super-Max Prison Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 A firsthand account spanning two generations of high-security confinement in the 1970s NSW Australian prison system.
- Iraq for Sale
The War Profiteers Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2006 A film about what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war which uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.
- The Irresistible Revolution
Living as an Ordinary Radical Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- Israel boycott may be the way to peace
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The non-violent international response to apartheid was a campaign of boycott, divestment and UN-imposed sanctions which enabled the regime to change without bloodshed. We should try to follow the same route to a just peace.
- Israel, Lebanon and Torture
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 An interview with Marty Rosenbluth. Marty Rosenbluth is Amnesty International’s country specialist for Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Authority.
- Israel/Lebanon: Deliberate destruction or "collateral damage"?
Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Amnesty International calls for the immediate establishment of a comprehensive, independent and impartial inquiry into violations of international humanitarian law by both Hizbullah and Israel in the conflict. The inquiry should examine in particular the impact of this conflict on the civilian population. It should propose effective measures to hold accountable those responsible for crimes under international law, and to ensure that the victims receive full reparation.
- The Israel Lobby?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Noam Chomsky comments on an article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in which they assert that "the Lobby" dominates over strategic-economic interests in Israel's policy-making. Although Chomsky praises this courageous stand, he explains why he does not agree with this thesis.
- Israel/Palestine: Resources for peace, justice, and human rights
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2006 Published: 2014 A selection of resources for those looking for a solution to the situation in Israel/Palestine based on peace, justice, and human rights.
- Israeli Left Archive
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2006 An database of the Israeli Radical Left. The long range vision of this project is to continue to digitalize thousands of items (leaflets, internal documents, newspaper articles and press clippings, movement periodicals, photographs, protocols and other materials). The origins of the current developing data base are in the private archive of Dafna and Reuven Kaminer. In general, the data base is devoted mainly to the radical left and the women's peace movement during the sixties, seventies and the eighties.
- Israel's appalling bombing of Gaza
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Destroying the only power source for a trapped and defenseless civilian population is an unprecedented step toward barbarity. It reeks, ironically, of the Warsaw Ghetto.
- Israel's attack on the UN post in Lebanon
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Israel's leaders could care less about world outrage. Israel's superpower patron, the United States, supports everything Israel does and keeps supplying money and arms, while the U.S. and Canadian media provide uncritical support.
- Israel's "Withdrawal" Toward Apartheid
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 David Finkel interviews Jeff Halper. “From Sharon's point of view it’s a done deal. Israel has won its century-old conflict with the Palestinians,” writes Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
- James Green's Death in the Haymarket
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 James Green's Death in the Haymarket tells the story of the anarcosyndicalist militants accused of perpetrating the throwing of a bomb that killed police at a workers’ rally at the Haymarket in Chicago on May 4, 1886. They were subsequently framed, convicted, and four martyrs hanged by the judicial system of Cook County on “Black Friday,” November 11, 1887.
- Jeff Halper's Obstacles to Peace
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 “The occupation challenges us all… Can a system of control, displacement, denial of fundamental rights and repression actually prevail? What does it mean if we are unable to end an occupation that is growing continually stronger by the day, before our very eyes, in defiance of international law and more than 200 UN resolutions? If occupation and repression actually defeat a people’s aspirations for freedom and fundamental human rights, then what are the implications for oppressed peoples in other parts of the world far from public attention?”
- Journalism as a Weapon of War
John Pilger address to Columbia University Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On 14 April 2006, the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University in New York brought together John Pilger, Seymour Hersh, Robert Fisk and Charles Glass for a discussion entitled 'Breaking the Silence: War, lies and empire'. The following is a transcript of John Pilger's address - 'War by Media'
- Un journaliste du National Post traumatisé d'avoir à attendre son tour
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Jonathan Kay retourne à l'hôpital pour un traitement de suivi, et - horreur - il doit s'asseoir et attendre avant d'être vu. En fait, il nous dit « tous les cas sauf les plus graves » doivent s'asseoir et attendre leur tour. Il n'y a pas - c'est dur à croire mais c'est vrai - de file spéciale pour les nantis et les privilégiés, même s'ils sont journalistes au National Post.
- A Just War? Hardly
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Chomsky identifies the premises of "just war theory". He claims that in both the case of Kosovo and Afghanistan these were not adhered to, thus the foundation for "just war" was absent.
- Keeping Current
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 With a blog, a piece in the Globe or an appearance on a cable show that only two percent of the population watches, you can get a bounce or multiplier effect. Mainstream networks and cable news shows are reading blogs on the air to viewers, thus giving them legs.
- Key ideas for community organising
Some very broad basic ideas for getting started at organising in your local area Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Look around your local area and determine what issues it faces. Talk to your neighbours, what issues do they think are important regarding the area. Determine what kinds of projects you can develop or direct action you can take that meet the area's needs or address the community's issues. Find out if others are already working on the problems in their area and if they've been effective and what you can learn from them. Determine what kinds of resources you have available and who in your area might be useful allies in accomplishing your goals.
- The "Labor Aristocracy" and Working-Class Struggles: Consciousness in Flux, Part 2
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Whatever the theoretical and empirical problems with the economics of the labor aristocracy thesis, its defenders still claim that well paid workers have generally been more reformist and conservative in their politics than lower paid workers. They point to the example of mostly white New York City construction workers ("hardhats") attacking antiwar demonstrators in the Spring of 1970; and contrast them with the militancy and progressive politics of some of the recent "Justice for Janitors" campaigns.
- Labour Left Out
Canada's Failure to Protect and Promote Collective Bargaining as a Human Right Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- Latin America and Asia Are at Last Breaking Free of Washington's Grip
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Chomsky discusses the growing independence of these regions from US domination.
- Latin America Declares Independence
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 After centuries of foreign domination, South America is rising to shed the dependencies of North America on the continent's resources, markets, and investment opportunities.
- Latin America to Iraq: Greg Grandin's Empire's Workshop
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The decade of the '70s was not good for U.S. imperialism. The American defeat in Southeast Asia led to the development of the “Vietnam syndrome” and with it the reluctance to use U.S. troops in wars abroad.
- The Left and the Jihad
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The left was once the principal enemy of radical Islamism. So how did old enemies become new friends?
- Legalize Free Movement of Labor: Viewing A National Debate
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The immigration debate is exposing deep social, racial and class divisions within American society. The arguments are sharp, furious and divide many families - immigrant as well as native born.
- The Lessons of Lebanon
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 So what has happened to the Israeli army? This question is now being raised not only around the world, but also in Israel itself. Clearly, there is a huge gap between the army's boastful arrogance, on which generations of Israelis have grown up, and the picture presented by this war.
- Letter to Palestinian and Lebanese filmmakers from Israeli filmmakers
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 We unequivocally oppose the brutality and cruelty of Israeli policy.
- Liberation, Then What?
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 In a lucid contribution to our understanding of contemporary Africa, David Seddon and Leo Zeilig recently charted that continent's two waves of popular protest and class struggle over the last 40 years, as well as pointing to signs of a nascent third wave.
- The Library at Night
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 The Library at Night tells the story of the important role of libraries in human civilization and how books are an essential link between the individual and the world.
- The Lies of Alan Dershowitz
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Violence is never the answer. Nor is racism. Nor is hate. Alan Dershowitz is a proponent of all three. Israelis and sympathetic Jews must finally realize that Dershowitz and other uncritical apologists of Israel are neither doing them nor the world any favors. Quite the opposite is true.
- Life, Money & Illusion
Living on Earth as if We Want to Stay Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 The failure to reduce green house gas emissions, the success of efforts to curb ozone depletion, causes related to prosperity and social justice are just some the topics covered. By using the example of Kerela, India, Nickerson shows how a society by working together can become car-free, religious and bigotry free, have a high level of health care and literacy and be able to sustain itself on a fraction of the money on which we depend.
- A Living Wage in London
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 At a time when the United States is associated with the export of neoconservatism in the form of George Bush, readers will be heartened to read this tale of a more positive export as the living wage movement has leapt across the Atlantic over to the United Kingdom.
- Looking at Israel from the other side
Book Review Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A review of two books: Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries, by Suad Amiry, and The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide.
- Making the most of spontaneous rebellions at work
Advice on how to react when a big issue immediately angers a large number of people at your workplace Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 It would be nice if we always had tested and trusted structures in place able to respond to unexpected situations at work. Unfortunately this doesn’t describe many workplaces where structures tend to be weak and disorganised or slow and bureaucratic. The situations that upset us the most are likely to be unanticipated. Sudden rebellion is most likely to develop as a response to unexpected decisions or circumstances i.e. unfair sackings, shift changes etc, and our actions need often be rapid and ad hoc.
- Manifesto of the Third Camp against US Militarism and Islamic Terrorism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The human and genuine solution to the problem of nuclear weapons, to Islamic terrorism and its horrific crimes against the people of the world, and to the militaristic bullying of the US and Western governments lies in the hands of us people.
- Manifesto: Together Facing the New Totalitarianism
Writers' statement on cartoons Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
- Manufactured Landscapes
Resource Type: Film First Published: 2006 Photographer Edward Burtynsky travels the world observing changes in landscapes due to industrial work and manufacturing.
- Marxism and Ecological Economics
Towards a Red and Green Political Economy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 A general assessment of ecological economics from Marxist point of view, demonstrating the potential contributions of Marxist political economy to ecological economical theory.
- Marxism's 'Communicative Crisis'?
Mapping Debates over Leninist Print-Media Practices in the 20th Century Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Marxism’s ‘communicative crisis’, it was a topic of concern that was addressed, debated and negotiated over by party leaders, intellectuals and activists on a continuous basis throughout the 20th century. These concerns revolved around three areas: first, the primary means of print communication, the party paper; second, the specialization of production, particularly around the role of writers and journalists; and third, the search for a popular rhetoric and writing style, which would appeal to the general public.
- The Massachusetts Plan: "Universal Coverage"?
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On April 12, 2006 Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney signed legislation that is being touted nationally as the model for providing health care for all people. The goal of the legislation is to provide health insurance for the State's 780,000 people who have no health insurance, by July 1, 2007.
- A Massive Crisis in Auto: Delphi, GM, the UAW, and Soldiers of Solidarity
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On December 19, facing a strike threat and pressure from GM, Delphi Corporation backed away from its "final offer" to the United Auto Workers, pushing the deadline back to the end of February. With the demand for a 63% wage cut off the table, complicated horse trading will ensue—but what's clear is that rank-and-file anger and mobilization makes a big difference.
- Max Eastman: One American Radical's View of the 'Bolshevization' of the American Revolutionary Movement and a Forgotten, and Unforgettable, Portrait of Trotsky
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- Mayhem, Murder and Manipulation - Mexico in Turmoil
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Mexican police attacked activists and residents in the town of San Salvador Atenco in the State of Mexico in early May, killing one, injuring scores, and jailing over 200. The police attack on Atenco followed a violent police assault on striking steelworkers in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán that left two dead and several severely injured. Local residents believe that the Fox government was taking revenge on Atenco activists for their success four years ago in blocking the construction of a new airport.
- Media and publicity guide
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 How to get the word out about your group or campaign? There are two main approaches, which should both be used: using the mainstream and corporate media, and building your own independent media.
- Melville and A Lot More
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 More than a decade ago, an unpublished manuscript began filtering its contents into the minds of a fairly wide circle of erstwhile New Left intellectuals. It was fascinating, like no other theorizing on the text of Moby Dick and its significance; or rather, resembling many others in some of its evidence but ranging far beyond them in its implications.
- Merry Christmas from an Atheist
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2006 I probably represent one of Archbishop John Sentanu's worst nightmares - I am not just an 'aggressive secularist' but a militant atheist to boot. But I have a Christmas tree in the house, I've sent out my Christmas cards, bought my Christmas presents and I will cook goose on Christmas Day. And I will probably listen to Bach's Christmas Oratorio or to Mahalia Jackson's wonderful gospel singing while I am doing so. Yet I don't have a religious bone in my body.
- Mexico: The Zapatistas' New Fight
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 "We are fighters, but not with guns," said the man in the ski mask, one of a group of masked peasants addressing us and a dozen other visitors. "We invite all of the common people, who are of the left, who are not with the government, to join us in struggle," he continued, speaking in the Mayan Tzotzil language. "Because we know the government will never hear our word, and will never help us."
- Michael Berg for U.S. Congress in Delaware: A Voice Against War
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On June 8 Americans awoke to the news that the U.S. military in Iraq had killed Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, alleged leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. In the midst of press coverage that cravenly accepted government claims that this was, once again, a turning point in the war, one voice in the mass media dramatically countered government claims - that of Michael Berg, Green Party candidate for Delaware's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
- The Middle East in Flames
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Andrew Kennedy and Suzi Weismann Interview Gilbert Achcar. Gilbert Achcar is the author of Eastern Cauldron and The Clash of Barbarisms, both published by Monthly Review Press.
- Misrepresented? Hugo Chavez and the Western Media
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 An interview with Julia Buxton about Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, and target of concerted criticism in the western media.
- Mixing Metaphors and Diluting Memory: Lynching - The Reality
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On October 9, 2005, U.S. Senator Arlen Specter appeared on ABC's "This Week" to defend Harriet Miers, President Bush's confidante whose nomination to the Supreme Court had evoked howls of protest, particularly from the Christian Right. Specter told George Stephanopoulos that Miers' verbal critics made up "one of the toughest lynch mobs ever assembled in Washington, DC, and we assemble some tough lynch mobs." In claiming Washington's penchant for "tough lynch mobs," Senator Specter was not speaking literally—though he could have been. It is unlikely that Specter meant to evoke the actual lynch mobs roaming the streets of Washington D.C. for four days during the "Red Summer" of 1919, attacking African-Americans in a frenzy whipped up by racism, anti-communism, fears of joblessness, and post-war jingoism.
- Morris Slavin: 1913-2006
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Morris Slavin, a historian of the French Revolution and one of the last remaining veterans of the American Trotskyist movement of the early 1930s, died on February 6 in Denver, Colorado, at the age of 92. The vast majority of Slavin's years were spent in Youngstown, Ohio, but his childhood took place in Russia.
- A Movement's Loss
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Puerto Rico is neither a state of the union, nor an independent nation-state. Its residents are U.S. citizens, go to war, have one representative in Congress who cannot vote or even present a motion, pay no taxes and do not vote for president, have no influence or say in federal law, yet are held to all federal standards. Thanks to this legal limbo, for years the island and its people have been used as testing ground for chemicals (e.g. the pill), war agents (e.g. Agent Orange), and even Monsanto is reaping profits now from transgenic crops (Puerto Rico has the highest proportion of Genetic Modification experiments per land area in the world).
- Museums, Art and the Rackets
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 In the late 1990s when it appeared that the laws of capitalism had been suspended temporarily and wealth could be accrued purely on speculation, the New York Times began an annual full-section report on museums, those once fusty and staid zones of quiet suddenly become hot public draws. Its 21 April, 1999, issue extols the role museums play in rebuilding urban economies worldwide. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, and new wings of the Metropolitan in New York have been instrumental in fostering urban pride and capital flows.
- My Father Was an Anonymous Sperm Donor
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Those of us in the first documented generation of donor babies -- conceived in the late 1980s and early '90s, when sperm banks became more common and donor insemination began to flourish -- are coming of age, and we have something to say. I'm here to tell you that emotionally, many of us are not keeping up. We didn't ask to be born into this situation, with its limitations and confusion. It's hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that biological roots won't matter to the "products" of the cryobanks' service, when the longing for a biological relationship is what brings customers to the banks in the first place. We offspring are recognizing the right that was stripped from us at birth -- the right to know who both our parents are.
- The Myth of the Labor Aristocracy, Part 1
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The persistence of reformism and outright conservatism among workers, especially in the imperialist centers of North America, Western Europe and Japan, has long confounded revolutionary socialists. The broadest outlines of Marxist theory tell us that capitalism creates it own "gravediggers" - a class of collective producers with no interest in the maintenance of private ownership of the means of production. The capitalist system's drive to maximize profits should force workers to struggle against their employers, progressively broaden their struggle and eventually overthrow the system and replace it with their democratic self-rule.
- Naked Imperialism
The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Examines the important transformation in U.S. global policy and ideology, showing the political and economic roots of the new militarism and its consequences both in the global and local context.
- National Post columnist traumatized by having to wait his turn
Second-class health care for immigrants, seniors? Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Published: 2012 Columnist thinks people with money should get quicker treatment in emergency rooms than people who are poor.
- New book describes a century of Jewish opposition to Zionism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- New Challenges to Tenant Organizing in New York City
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On June 16, 2006, 305 West 150th Street, a rundown 84-unit apartment building in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, sold for $6.95 million. The City of New York has documented 274 housing maintenance code violations on this property, reflecting the presence of leaks, broken front door locks and exposed lead paint. The tenants are mostly poor and working class Latinos from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic; many depend on subsidies, such as Section 8, to pay rent.
- New Strategy and Tactics for Labor in the Airlines: Beyond Bankruptcy
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The airlines have been leading the way in the transformation of labor-management relations. The goal of the owners is the radical restructuring of labor costs and working conditions, to provide the maximum payout to executives and value to major shareholders.
- A New Way to Solve Problems: Do It Like Zidane
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2006 A short video illustrating how to deal with conflict using the Zidane method.
- New World Relationships
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Chomsky describes the relationships developing between China, Europe and Latin America while the US remains occupied in the Middle East, leaving the nation as the odd one out.
- New York Transit Activists' Account: The Strike and Beyond
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 ATC interviews Josh Fraidstern and Jaime Veve. The transit strike that shut down New York City for three days in December dramatically showed the power of labor, yet ended after three days by order of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 leadership. This was followed by a rank and file rejection of the proposed contract, to universal amazement—with the result that the critical issues of the strike remain unresolved.
- News & Letters: Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2006 - 2007
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 We aim to help fill the void on the question of "what happens after" by creatively rethinking and restating his concept of "revolution in permanence" for today.
- News report writing guide
A guide to writing news stories for the independent and alternative media. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The first thing to remember about reporting for a libertarian or anarchist newspaper or magazine is that it is not propaganda.
- 1973 Redux?: Continuity and Discontinuity in the Decline of Dollar-Centered World Accumulation
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The world today is poised between the U.S. and East Asian centered phases of capitalist expansion.
- No comment: the defendant's guide to arrest
A guide on your rights if you are arrested, with advice on what police are likely to do and say, and what you can do to protext yourself Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 If you think you might one day run the risk of being arrested, you must find out what to do in that situation. If prison, fines, community service etc. don’t appeal to you by following what’s written in this article you can massively reduce the risk of all three. In the police station, the cops rely on people’s naivety.
- No laughing matter: Cartoonists take issue
New Internationalist March 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A look at the strengths of comics and cartoons as an educational and development communication tool.
- Nonviolence
Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- Not for Sale
Decommodifying Public Life Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Not for Sale discusses the alternatives presented by local, national, and international struggles to decommodify and democratize as many spheres of life as possible.
- Now Is The Time
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The world must be offered the chance to see the good Palestinian, the good Arab and the good Muslim. We must be offered the chance to see the good Jew and the well-intentioned Christians and West. It is all in our grasp, but, we need to take that important leap by acting now with courage and wisdom. A unified vision and strategy on the Palestinian side must lead us toward peace.
- NYU: Nerds on Strike!
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On November 9, 2005, graduate student employees at New York University (NYU) put down their red pens and picked up their picket signs. After a 2004 ruling by a Bush- appointed majority of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the NYU administration seized the opportunity to refuse to recognize and renegotiate with the Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC)/ UAW Local 2110.
- Oaxaca protests 2006
Connexipedia Article Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The Mexican state of Oaxaca was embroiled in a conflict that lasted more than seven months and resulted in at least seventeen deaths and the occupation of the capital city of Oaxaca by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO).
- The Occupier Defines Justice
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- On the US-Israeli Invasion of Lebanon
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The supposed justifications for the invasion are a cynical fraud.
- Oracle Bones
A Journey Between China's Past and Present Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 A first-hand exploration of contemporary China through the accounts of its living citizens as well as through ancient artifacts uncovered in archeological digs -- a psycho-social examination of who the Chinese are today.
- Organising at work - some basic principles
A list of what successful organisers say are the most important principles to remember Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Organising begins when people question authority. Someone asks, "What are they doing to us? Why are they doing it? Is it right?" Encourage people to ask, "Who is making the decisions, who is being forced to live with the decisions, and why should that be so?" People should not accept a rule or an answer simply because it comes from the authorities, whether that authority be the government, the boss, the union - or you. An effective organiser encourages their fellow workers to think for themselves.
- Organising at work - the basics
A basic introduction on why we should organise at work, and a few tips on how to get started. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Almost everyone in this society is underpaid and over-worked. Many temps, contract and casual workers have very few rights, and permanent workers are still always under the threat of redundancy. Many people are massively exploited and ill-treated, and in Britain over 20,000 people are killed at or by their work each year*. Millions more suffer stress, depression, anxiety and are injured.
- Organising your workplace - getting started
You're working, or just started work somewhere where there is no active collective workers' organisation. What can you do to get organised? Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Nowadays many workplaces have no active workers' organisation. Depending on whereabouts you are in the world and what sector you work in there may or may not be much of a trade union presence. And even if there is it may just be a skeleton organisation which only represents workers with individual problems, and is unable to win demands of management. Or worse, it could be actively in cahoots with management against the workers.
- Palestine Peace Not Apartheid
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Former U.S. President Carter calls Israel's treatment of Palestinians 'apartheid' and identifies continuing Israeli control of the occupied territories as the primary obstacle to peace.
- Palestinian Democracy
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Few elections throughout the world have been perceived by the local population, as well as international observers, as democratic and transparent as the Palestinian ones. At first glance, Palestine seems to be the perfect example of the “democratization of the Middle East” that President George W. Bush and his administration are fighting for.
- Panoply of the Absurd
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Conspiracy theorists are filling bestsellers with their supposed evidence about September 11.
- Paul Buhle's Tim Hector
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Paul Buhle's account of Tim Hector, Caribbean radical of Antiguan origin who passed away in 2002, is provocative and welcome. Its span is broad and appropriate for a general rather than specialist readership.
- Peace Mom
A Mother's Journey Through Heartache to Activism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 An American mother loses her 24-year-old soldier son, killed in action in Iraq, and leads her to become a prominent US anti-war activist.
- A People's Science
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Historical narratives of science tend to be triumphant tales of magnificent men (and an occasional wily woman) who, through brilliant insight and/or dedicated persistence, changed the way we understand the world and, frequently, how we manufacture our space in that world. An opposite tendency is the cautionary tale of mad scientists aiming to invent ice-nine, the technology that will ultimately spell doom for us all.
- The Perils of Faith-Based Multiculturalism
The Case of Shari'a in Canada Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2006 Conservative religious leaders have become more vocal and demanding, and governments are giving in to their demands without much regard for the serious consequences for democracy and citizens’ rights.
- Pictures Bring Us Messages
Sinaakssiiksi aohtsimaahpihkookiyaawa. Photographs and Histories from the Kainai Nation Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 An example of museum professionals working with member of an aboriginal community to explore photographs taken of members of that community many decades earlier.
- Pioneers of Resistance
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Emancipation Betrayed attempts to fill in the historical gap between the end of Reconstruction and the post-World War I period through examining Black organizing in the state of Florida. The author, Paul Ortiz, worked on oral histories for the study "Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South" at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. His research peeled back a lineage of struggle several generations long, connecting the post-World War II civil rights movement to how African Americans dealt with the reimposition of anti-Black laws following the collapse of Reconstruction:
- Pirate radio guide
A technical primer and guide with advice about micropower broadcasting and other aspects of running a pirate radio station. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Many people still assume that an FM broadcast station consists of rooms full of equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars. The Micropower Broadcasting, Free Radio Movement has shown this to be untrue. Micropower broadcasting uses FM transmitters whose power output is in the range of 1/2 to 40 watts. Such transmitters have a physical size that is not greater than that of your average brick. These transmitters combined with other equipment including inexpensive audio mixers, consumer audio gear, a power supply, filter and antenna enable any community to put its own voice on the air at an average cost of $1000-$1500. This is far more affordable than the tens or hundreds of thousands required by the current FCC regulatory structure.
- Plight of Young Black Men: The Scars and the Crisis
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Recent studies have reaffirmed a long known reality: young poorly educated Black men are disproportionately disconnected from mainstream society. The numbers are significantly worse than for Latinos, Asians and whites.
- Post 9/11 Conspiracism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The tendency to explain all major world events as primarily the product of a secret conspiracy is called conspiracism. The antidote to conspiracism is Power Structure Research.
- The Post MFA Era and the Rise of China, Part 1
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing expired in 2005, ending 30 years of a quota system under the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA). Ending the Agreement signalled the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) promotion of free trade in this sector; but phasing in free trade here has proved to be far from frictionless.
- Press for Conversion #58
March 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 RADARSAT, is probably Canada’s single-most important technological contribution to the militarisation of space and U.S. warfighting.
- Press for Conversion #59
September 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A phony democracy – dominated by warlords, drug barons, oil industry representatives and World Bank administrators – has now been successfully imposed upon Afghanistan by the world's major military and economic powers, including Canada.
- Press release guide
Advice and tips on how to make an effective press release or media advisory. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 What is a media advisory? A media advisory is a means of notifying the press of an event or news story that will happen in the future. It is essentially an event reminder that is in a format that makes it easy for journalists to record the event in their calendars or day planners. It is a proactive way for activists to inform news outlets of events and actions that you want publicized in the future.
- Pretensions to Empire
Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Delves into the perversion of America's democratic legacy under George W. Bush, and makes the case for impeachment.
- Pretensions to Empire
Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Adminstration Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Latham's hypothesis's is that the Bush administration perverted the democratic legacy of America. He argues that Bush attempted to transform America into a Global empire -- the one superpower that would strike anywhere on the planet and catalogues the mistruths, evasions and deceptions of the administration.
- Prison survival guide
A guide to surviving prison or preparing yourself to go to prison Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- Prisoner support guide
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 If you’re active in a group or campaign why not choose one or two prisoners to consistently support. Pass cards round meetings, send useful stuff, knock up a flyposter and get their case some publicity if they could use it, get in touch with the prisoner’s support group if there is one. Of course you can take this on as an individual, too.
- Pro-Israel stance reeks of double standards and historical amnesia
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Israel bombs, terrorizes and kills as it pleases, on a daily basis, and the media praise it for its restraint.
- The Profits of War: Planning to Bomb Iran
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 It is no longer a secret that the Bush administration has been methodically paving the way toward a bombing strike against Iran. The administration’s plans of an aerial military attack against that country have recently been exposed by a number of reliable sources.
- A Question of Torture
CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Chronicles the US government's use of terror as a political instrument
- Rabble-Rouser for Peace
The Authorized Biography of Desmond Tutu Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- Race and Class: Paris to New Orleans
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 It turns out that the city of lights and city of jazz have a lot in common. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and militant explosions in the suburbs of Paris expose the underbelly of racism and class divisions.
- Racist Undercurrents in the "War on Terror"
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Although it is rarely mentioned in the so-called war on terrorism, racism is an undercurrent in every action and decision taken by the Bush-Cheney government. It is a dangerous element that has long-term implications.
- Radical Digressions
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2006 Published: 2017 Ulli Diemer's website/blog featuring comment from a radical left-libertarian Marxist perspective.
- Radical Digressions 4
Resource Type: Website First Published: 2006 Published: 2008
- Radio Frequency ID Removes Freedom
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Radio Frequency ID violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and is part of the stealthy forging of a police state.
- The Rage of the "Righteous"
On Muslim Outrage at a Danish Cartoon Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Over and over, in the wake of 9/11, Muslims (and many non-Muslims) have proclaimed that all Muslims must not be judged on the basis of the few that are terrorists. Yes, it was Muslims that flew the airplanes into the World Trade towers, but most Muslims are not like that. That's very true. Each individual should be judged only on the basis of his or her own behaviour. So then why are all Danes being judged on the basis of one Danish cartoon? Why has an embassy been burned? Why have Danish products been taken off shelves?
- Raging Against the Machine
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Influential articles from 30 years of hard-hitting, independent journalism from New Internationalist.
- Railroading Economics
The Creation of the Free Market Mythology Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Explores how even in the United States, the market has always been subject to constraints. Perelman examines the way in which these constraints have been defended by such figures as Henry Ford, J. P. Morgan, and Herbert Hoover, and were indeed essential to the expansion of U.S. capitalism.
- The Rank and File Strategy: Building A Socialist Movement in the U.S.
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 We are seeing more and more attempts by rank and file union members to make their unions more democratic and more effective in fighting today's highly aggressive employers and in organizing the unorganized.
- The real aim of Israel's attacks on Lebanon
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The real aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet government.
- The Real Costs of Empire
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Vietnam all over again? Yes, it is. The massacres by United States military forces of unarmed civilians in Haditha and, as is finally being revealed despite official lies and coverup, numerous other Iraqi towns, are showing tens of millions of Americans what this war is, and part of what it really costs. The highest costs obviously are borne by the ordinary people of Iraq; but American society will pay for decades as well for this dirty conflict -- and worse is yet to come.
- The real first casualty of war
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Censorship by journalism is virulent in Britain and the US - and it means the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries.
- A Record of Resistance
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Here is a stunning book, filled with photographs that record the suffering and strength of the indigenous population in the Guatemalan countryside over the past 15 years. In short essays and photos Our Culture Is Our Resistance records the harsh life of those who survived the army’s “scorched earth” of the early 1980s and fled to isolated areas of the country.
- Reflections on the Occasion of Dimitri Roussopoulos' 70th Birthday and Public Intellectuals
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- Refugee Sandwich
Stories of Exile and Asylum Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- Remembering Dorothy Healey: An Activist with Vision
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Dorothy Healey had a grand vision of a world in which there was no poverty, racism, or war, a world of genuine democracy. To me she represented what was most appealing about the Old Left — commitment, dedication, selflessness.
- A Reply to B'nai Brith's Manifesto Denouncing CUPE-Ontario's Boycott of Israel
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Why supporting the global campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid is the right thing to do.
- Resistance and Rebellion
Lessons from Eastern Europe Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Looks at how ordinary people become involved in resistance and rebellion against powerful regimes.
- Resistance on the Mexican 'Riviera': The Zapatistas Visit Manzanillo, Colima
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- Respect is a Two-Way Street
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 There is a whiff of hypocrisy among some Muslims who, in the name of being spared offence, want to censor other people's opinions.
- A Response to Critics
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 David Finkel's comments (ATC 122) about my book Is Iraq Another Vietnam?, and about my position against immediately withdrawing the US military from Iraq, were well-informed and fair. So were the judgments of Gilbert Achcar in his interview with Susan Weissman, though his focus was on the withdrawal issue in general and not on my essay specifically. Likewise, Michael Schwartz's current ATC response reflects an impressive familiarity with Iraq and the Middle East, and his critique of my analysis is well-taken.
- Review: Cyber-Marx - Aufheben
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Aufheben critically review Nick Dyer-Witheford's Cyber-Marx: cycles and circuits of struggle in high-technology capitalism and its basis in the flawed theories of Antonio Negri.
- Revolution in the Air
Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 An interpretation of the 19060s New Left in the United States.
- The Rise of the Global Left
World Social Forum and Beyond Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 The author makes an impassioned case for the politicisation of the World Social Forum, arguing that that the Forum can only realise its full potential as a force for social, economic and political change, by taking a directly political stand against the evils of neo-liberal globalization, war, famine and corruption.
- The Roadmap to Nowhere
Israel/Palestine Since 2003 Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 An urgent and searing exposé of the 'peace process' by a prominent Israeli thinker.
- Rocket Attacks on Israeli Civilians
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 I challenge anybody to show how attacks on Israeli non-combatants help defeat the Israeli ruling class. It is as clear as day that it only strengthens our enemy. If the Israeli rulers didn't have rockets landing in Haifa and other civilian targets, they wouldn't have nearly the support for their war on Gaza and Lebanon that they unfortunately enjoy today from the Israeli Jewish population and much of the North American and European population, gentile as well as Jewish.
- Rough Crossings
Britain, the slaves and the American Revolution Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- Rushdie rails against Islamic 'totalitarianism'
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
- Sabotage in the workplace
Sabotage is the generic term for a whole host of tricks, deviltry, and assorted nastiness that can remind the boss how much he needs his wor Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The term "sabotage" derives from French factory workers throwing their wooden shoes ("sabots") into machinery to jam them and stop production. Sabotage refers to all activities which workers can undertake to reduce production or rate of work. These can be minor activities such as making personal phone calls on work time to major destruction of property or information.
- Sanctions on Israel: If not now, when?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 How much longer are we prepared to watch Lebanon and Palestine burn, before we act?
- Second-class health care for immigrants, seniors?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A two-tier system means better care for the affluent, and worse or no care for the rest.
- Section 60 advice guide
Some information and tips on the law, your rights, and how to react when police have enforced a "Section 60" order on a demonstration Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 At some recent demonstrations, police have cordoned off the demonstration, corralling large numbers of people into an increasing confined area before taking their names, addresses and photographs, eventually releasing them one by one.
- Section 6 legal notice for squats
A legal warning notice on Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 which protects the rights of occupiers of properties Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 If you are squatting it is strongly advised you display this notice to inform people of your rights - and let them know that you are aware of your rights.
- Selective strikes
Rather than an all-out strike, rapid random stoppages can be highly effective Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Unpredictability is a great weapon in the hands of the workers. In the US, Pennsylvania teachers used the Selective Strike to great effect in 1991, when they walked a picket line on Monday and Tuesday, reported for work on Wednesday, struck again on Thursday, and reported for work on Friday and Monday.
- Seth Farber's Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 My grandparents came to America from Hungary in 1912. My family who stayed there and the Hungarian Jewish population were mostly killed by the fascists in the bitter winter of 1944, some 800,000. Twenty thousand alone died of the cold and disease, huddled in the great unheated synagogue, the largest in the world, on Dohany Street in Budapest.
- Setting up a newsletter - technical guide
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A guide covering technical, design and layout issues with producing your own newsletters and publications.
- Setting up housing co-operatives guide
Some tips on how to set up a housing co-operativ Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Many housing co-ops are state funded; the Housing Corporation puts up much of the funding, and therefore can, on the whole, call the tune. However; it is possible to set up a housing co-op which is totally independent.
- The Shadow of the Great Game
The Untold Story of India's Partition Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Singh analyzes Britain's true intentions in the partition of India in 1947: a plan to detach Pakistan from India, create a militarily strategic foothold aimed at the Soviet Union, and maintain control over the oil fields of the Middle East.
- Shame on you, Mr. Harper
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Open letter initiated by members of Shalom-Salaam, a Jewish-Arab Montreal dialogue group.
- Sharia "Socialists"
I.S. Upholds Anti-Woman Religious Courts Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 It is mind-boggling that self-styled leftists would champion a campaign by the most reactionary, anti-woman forces in the Muslim community to have their religious law backed by the authority of the capitalist state.
- The Sharia socialists
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006
- Sitdown strike or occupation guide
A guide to taking sit-down strike action or occupations, in which by suddenly refusing to work gains can be won rapidly Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A strike doesn't have to be long to be effective. Timed and executed right, a strike can be won in minutes. Such strikes are "sitdowns" or "occupations" when everyone just stops work and sits tight, or "mass grievances" when everybody leaves work to go to the boss's office to discuss some matter of importance. This can have many advantages over a conventional strike.
- Six Questions for Augustus Richard Norton on Lebanon
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Questions concerning the 2006 abduction of Israelis to trade for Lebanese prisoners being held in Israeli prisons.
- Six Tips to Protect Your Search Privacy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Google, MSN Search, Yahoo!, AOL, and most other search engines collect and store records of your search queries. If these records are revealed to others, they can be embarrassing or even cause great harm.
- The Sleeping Giant Awakes
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Los Angeles—Pressure is building. Times are getting nastier. The stakes are incredibly high. And on the streets, during this time of unseasonable cold for this city, the "sleeping giant" of Latino and immigrant communities has begun to awake.
- A Slice of Socialist History
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The following correspondence sheds light on a lesser-known period in U.S. socialist history during the 1950s. Frank Fried was a member of the Socialist Union, led by Bert Cochran, following the “Cochran Faction” expulsion from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1953. He wrote this letter in response to a query from Hal Smith, a student engaged in research in the history of the Trotskyist movement. The subsequent comment by Lester Rodney, the longtime journalist who waged a long campaign in the 1930s and ’40s to break the “color line” in Major League Baseball, offers further perspective on the politics of the Communist Party in the period. Both are retired and living in California.
- "Solidarity, Not Charity" - Revolution in the Ninth Ward
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 In New Orleans, the people have stopped being patient with false choices. They have stopped trusting in politicians who represent only themselves and their contributors. They have chosen the common good, and they have bypassed the system that failed them in order to reclaim their lives through direct and positive action.
- Solution in Sight
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Chomsky presents the steps that must be taken in order to obliterate the threat of a potential nuclear apocalypse. Naturally, they do not include military solutions.
- South African trade union congress supports CUPE boycott of apartheid Israel
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 South African workers will never forget the support given by the Israeli state to the apartheid South African regime. In the same way we will never forget the thousands of acts of solidarity of ordinary citizens around the world who sustained our struggle through the boycott weapon.
- Squatter Town: The South's urban explosion
New Internationalist January/February 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A look at squatter communities and the social injustices they face.
- Squatting guide
This is a brief guide to the completely legal activity of squatting - occupying an empty property and making it your home. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 It helps avoid homelessness, since renting or buying a house can be prohibitively expensive for many people.
- State-Sponsored Violence Against Women
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The words of Latin American women continue to have no value to those who legislate, govern and administer justice. The permissiveness and omissions of state laws, institutions and functionaries in response to the violation of women’s rights are part of gender violence. The advances have been minimal and the need to dismantle this theater of illusions is urgent.
- Stop and search guide to your rights
A page of information about police stop and search powers in the UK and your rights when you are stopped and searched. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 What is a ‘Stop and Search’? Police officers can stop and talk to you at any time. But they should only search you if they suspect you are carrying: Drugs, Weapons, Stolen property, Tools which could be used to commit a crime.
- Stop That Shit
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Whoever longs for a solution must know: there is no solution without settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
- Strike Lessons from the Last Twenty-Five Years: Walking Out and Winning
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Labor's strike effectiveness and organizational strength have long been connected. Throughout history, work stoppages have been used for economic and political purposes, to alter the balance of power between labor and capital within single workplaces, entire industries, or nationwide. Strikes have won shorter hours and safer conditions, through legislation or contract negotiation.(1) They've fostered new forms of worker organization -- such as industrial unions -- that were badly needed because of corporate restructuring and the reorganization of production. Strikes have acted as incubators for class consciousness, rank-and-file leadership development, and political activism.(2) In other countries, strikers have challenged -- and changed -- governments that were dictatorial and oppressive (plus union leadership no longer accountable to the membership).
- Stupid Opinion #1: All Opinions are Equal
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 People say, "Don't be judgmental" - as if we shouldn't evaluate behaviour, from amazingly loving to atrocious. Many intone, "No one has the right to judge opinions" - as if racist opinions, say, had the same validity as anti-racist opinions.
- Subterranean Fire
A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Smith explores how the connection between the U.S. labor movement and the Democratic Party has repeatedly held back working-class struggles. She also examines the role of the labor movement in the 2004 presidential election following the shrinking electoral influences of labor.
- Superpower and Failed States
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Noam Chomsky explores the characteristics of "failed states" and recognizes several within the US system. He suggests several options to improve democratic quality in America, citing that the failure to act would result in ominous repercussions.
- Take a STAND Canada. An Interview on the Darfur advocacy group's path to success with director Ben Fine
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 An interview on the Darfur advocacy groups's path to success with director Ben Fine.
- The Targeting of Walter Rodney
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 On October 15, 1968 the government of Jamaica barred Walter Rodney from returning to the island. A lecturer at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Rodney had been out of the country attending a Black Power conference in Canada. The Guyanese-born Rodney was no stranger to Jamaica, having graduated from UWI in 1963. He returned to his alma mater as a faculty member at the beginning of 1968, after doing graduate studies in England and working briefly in Tanzania.
- Terrorism Act 2000 guide
A quick guide and brief summary of the parts of the British Terrorism Act 2000 of relevance to radical workers Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 "Terrorism" is defined very widely and could include what people would normally think of as direct action. It gives the Police very wide powers to stop search and arrest, and limits people's rights - including on arrest. The Act has been (mis-)used extensively against workers.
- A Test of Our Courage
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Mike Davis was interviewed by Jon Wiener on KPFK, Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, on March 29, 2006. The interview has been slightly abridged for publication.
- Textbook Tempest in California: Who Speaks for Hinduism?
Against The Current vol. 122 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Decades after their arrival in the United States in significant numbers following the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, Indian Americans are entering the political fray. Like other ethnic communities, Indian Americans are not a monolithic group. Yet the most conservative Hindu elements have had some success in claiming to represent the whole community in recent debates regarding the certification of sixth grade history textbooks in California.
- The Theology of Respect
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 What the new theology demands is, in fact, not respect but obedience. 'You will only say or do what we think is acceptable' has become the credo of the multiculturalist censor. It is an attitude that turns the notion of respect on its head.
- Theories of History
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Conventional history tends to make ordinary people invisible. The motive forces of history are treated as some combination of "great men" (very occasionally women, almost always hetero and white regardless of gender) and impersonal forces like "economics" (treated in ways that reify them and give them agency outside of the local, everyday human activities that actually produce them).
- Theories of Patriarchy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The most persistent and widespread theory around the women’s movement today is that of patriarchy. This is justified by pointing to the existence of women’s oppression in societies other than those of western capitalism.
- A Threat from Within: Jewish Opposition to Zionism - Review
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Review of a book on Jewish Orthodox opposition to Zionism.
- Three Brothers In Blood
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2006
- Three Cups of Tea
One Man's Mission To Promote Peace ... One School At A Time Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- Through a Glass Darkly
American Views of the Chinese Revolution Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Draws on a lifetime of immersion in contemporary Chinese politics and society, beginning with the seven years he spent in China.
- Top Ten Questions to Ask When a Reporter Calls You
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 When you're respoding to a reporter's call, take time to think and ask yourself these questions.
- Top Ten Strategies for Appearing on a TV Talk Show
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Prepare yourself to appear on a TV talk show.
- Top Ten Things to do Before a Radio Talk Show
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Be prepared when you go on a talk show.
- Toronto Pride 1981 - setting the historical record queer
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The Pride event in 1981 would not have taken place without the new political and social context created by the massive resistance that took place against the bath raids that year. Thousands of queer men, lesbians and our supporters took to the streets on a number of occasions.
- Trade Justice! Yes, but what is it?
New Internationalist April 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 Discusses Trade justices and the effects its has had on different parts of the world. Voices the opinions of people from the around the world on the topic of trade justice.
- A Transformed Force
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The following essay is a translated and edited version of a recent op-ed piece by Félix Córdova Iturregui, a veteran socialist activist, member of the Taller de Formación Política and the Frente Socialista de Puerto Rico, and ex-President of the Association of University Professors of the University of Puerto Rico. In this essay, he argues that the massive popular demonstrations after the assassination of Machetero (Popular Puerto Rican Army) leader, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, occurred in a context where U.S. institutions, particularly the FBI and the U.S. military, are in a rapid period of deterioration, which is being particularly felt in its colony, Puerto Rico.
- Transit Union Shuts NYC Down: Standing Up for Our Rights
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 What do you get when you mix 35,000 angry workers, an arrogant management, a union leadership under pressure from its membership, a decades-long drive to shrink the public sector, a racial divide between bosses and workers, and miscalculations?
- The Trouble with Diversity
How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Published: 2007 Argues that a focus on cultural diversity at the expense of economic equality has stunted resistance to neoliberalism.
- The Truth About the "9/11 Truth Movement"
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A rebuttal of some of the claims made by 9/11 conspiracy theorists.
- 25 Years After the Gdansk Uprising
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Suzi Weissman interviews David Ost. The occupation of the Gdansk shipyard by Polish workers in 1980, demanding recognition of their independent trade union Solidarnosc, rocked the Eastern bloc and inspired the world. A quarter century later, Communist rule is only a bad memory but the present realities for the Polish working class are a grim choice between neoliberalism and reactionary psedo-populism. The following interview with David Ost, conducted by Suzi Weissman November 28, 2005 for her radio program “Beneath the Surface” on KPFK in Los Angeles (90.7 FM), explores what’s happened to post-Solidarity Poland. It has been edited for publication here.
- An Unfragmented Movement: The People are the City
Against The Current vol. 120 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Joanna Dubinsky Interviews Shana Griffin. "I'm not interested in developing an action plan to rebuild/organize a people's agenda in New Orleans without a gender analysis and a demand for community accountability."
- The Unruly Revolution
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Gary Nash's The Unknown American Revolution fully discloses its aims to propagate both historical and social lessons. Nash retells the story of the American Revolution, complicating and radicalizing its core narrative as "a people's revolution, an upheaval among the most heterogeneous people to be found anywhere along the Atlantic littoral in the eighteenth century."
- Unspeakable Love
Gay amd Lesbian Life in the Middle East Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006
- Unveiled
Art and Censorship in Iran Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 This report seeks to illustrate the manner in which artistic censorship in Iran is both shaped and shapes; to demonstrate where the focus of the conflict lies between the Islamic Republic of Iran and individual expression.
- The Ursula Franklin Reader
Pacifism as a Map Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 A prominent Canadian peace activist discusses peace, technology, justice and women's issues in a collection of essays, speeches and unpublished musings.
- The U.S. Embargo against Venezuela
The State Department's Mock Indignation Gives a Bad Name to U.S. Diplomacy Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A discussion of the 2006 U.S. arms embargo against Venezuela.
- A Veiled Debate
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2006 We certainly need to challenge the iniquities of Islam and refuse to bow to Muslim blackmail that certain debates are off-limits. But equally we need to keep the problem of Islam in perspective and not pretend that it is the root cause of every social ill.
- The Venezuelan Revolution
New Internationalist June 2006 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2006 A look inside the Venezuelan Revolution and facts and history of the country.
- The Vogeler Senate Campaign
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 With just four months until the general election, Green Party candidate Rae Vogeler has established herself as the main opposition to millionaire incumbent Senator Herb Kohl. Vogeler's campaign took off last September when the mother of two decided that Wisconsin needed a Senator to stand up for working people, end the war, and fund good jobs, quality education and affordable health care.
- Wal-Mart's Real Cost
Against The Current vol. 121 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The long-brewing struggle between retail giant Wal-Mart and those concerned with reforming its corporate practices burst onto the mainstream consciousness of the American public this past November. An unprecedented convergence of labor, small business owners, environmentalists, activists and communities of faith blossomed into a full-scale movement to change the world’s largest retail company.
- War and the Culture of Violence
Against The Current vol. 125 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Last year I had the opportunity to see “Winter Soldier,” a rarely shown 1971 documentary based on the testimony of over 100 soldiers recently back from Vietnam. It was filmed during a three-day hearing on war crimes that Vietnam Vets against the War organized in Detroit. Young soldiers spoke about atrocities they had committed in the name of freedom and democracy: throwing suspects out of planes, torching villages, raping women, killing civilians. Of course the Nixon administration attempted to discredit the soldiers and their stories.
- The Way We Eat
Why Our Food Choices Matter Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 The authors make a case for how people's everyday food choices affect others' lives.
- We are All Complicit
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Chomsky responds to Oliver Kamm's critique of his "crude and dishonest arguments". He illustrates that many people remain committed to complicity despite the crimes of the state for which we are all responsible.
- We must speak out
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Supporting a world-wide appeal to teachers, intellectuals and artists to join the cultural boycott of the state of Israel.
- We Stand with the Teachers of Oaxaca
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The values and aspirations of teachers and families everywhere are the same: to see the healthy, secure, peaceful development of their students and children to the fullest of their abilities in an environment of mutual support and respect. Everywhere these values and aspirations are under attack: in Mexico, throughout Central and South America, in the United States and Canada, and across the globe.
- What Happened - and Didn't: Behind New York's Transit Strike
Against The Current vol. 124 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Early on December 20, 2005, Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, representing some 33,000 of New York City's subway and bus workers, called a strike. When dawn broke, there was no public transportation in NYC and millions of people walked, hitched rides, rode their bikes, or stayed home.
- What is anarcho-syndicalism?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Libertarian syndicalism interprets liberty as self-management or control over one's life, and believes that freedom for the working class requires the elimination of working class subordination to capitalist or state bosses.
- What Went Wrong in Ohio
The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Documents fraud in the 2004 U.S. election.
- Whistle-blowing guide
Sometimes simply telling people the truth about what goes on at work can put a lot of pressure on the boss Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Consumer industries like restaurants and packing plants are the most vulnerable. And again, as in the case of the good work strike, you'll be gaining the support of the public, whose patronage can make or break a business. Whistle blowing can be as simple as a face-to-face conversation with a customer, or it can be as dramatic as the P.G.&E. engineer who revealed that the blueprints to the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor had been reversed. Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle blew the lid off the scandalous health standards and working conditions of the meatpacking industry when it was published earlier this century.
- Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 If singling out South Africa for an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem equally defensible to single out Israel's occupation, which uniquely resembles the apartheid regime.
- Why 'Pick On' Israel? Here's Why
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 There are a lot of excellent reasons for singling Israel out, and none of them have anything to do with anti-Semitism. Israel is the only nation that self-righteously accuses any critic of its ethnic cleansing of being a bigot (anti-Semite.) It is the only nation that insists that its racist policies are 'a light unto the nations.' If we let Israel get away with this we are contributing not only to its actual ethnic cleansing, but to its glorification of the principle of ethnic cleansing, which aids and abets this crime everywhere in the world.
- Wildcat or official strike action?
A discussion of the relative merits of official strike action or unsanctioned wildcat action Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The best-known form of direct action is the strike, in which workers simply walk off their jobs and refuse to produce profits for the boss until they get what they want. This is the preferred tactic of bureaucratic unions but is one of the least effective ways of confronting the boss.
- With A Little Help From Outside
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 The world sees a great and ongoing injustice. They want a just Israel. They see an Israel that occupies and is clearly unjust, and they believe they should do something. We should thank them for this from the bottom of our hearts.
- Work-to-rule: a guide
Taking industrial action without losing pay by following your work's rules so strictly that nothing gets done Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Instead of striking, workers with demands that the bosses are unwilling to meet can collectively decide to start a "work-to-rule". Almost every job is covered by a maze of rules, regulations, standing orders, and so on, many of them completely unworkable and generally ignored. Workers often violate orders, resort to their own techniques of doing things, and disregard lines of authority simply to meet the goals of the company. There is often a tacit understanding, even by the managers whose job it is to enforce the rules, that these shortcuts must be taken in order to meet targets on time.
- Workers' Liberation and Institutions of Self-management
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 Power can't be "abolished" any more than gravity can be. Rather, building a self-managing society means a shift from hierarchical structures that concentrate power at the top to new structures through which the mass of the people collectively exercise the power to control their work and the society as a whole.
- The Workers' Party and Political Crisis in Brazil: Lula at a Crossroads?
Against The Current vol. 123 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 In June 2005, the first allegations of a rogue politician in a rightwing party in coalition with Brazil's governing Workers' Party (PT) seemed spurious enough. The politician himself, Roberto Jefferson, had a long history of allegations of corruption, and of narrowly escaping indictment in Brazil's last corruption crisis in 1993. According to celebrity magazines, he had had a makeover, including plastic surgery, before coming forward with the allegations of a "payment for votes" scheme in congress in which the ruling PT doled out a monthly allowance for sympathetic politicians in congress.
- Workplace organising
A set of tips and advice guides for organising in your workplace Resource Type: Article First Published: 2006 A set of tips and advice guides for organising in your workplace. From basic principles and getting started, to making demands, taking action such as strikes, and winning them.
- You Can't Read This
Forbidden Books, Lost Writing, Mistranslations, and Codes Resource Type: Book First Published: 2006 Written for children ages ten and up, You Can't Read This explores the development of alphabets, the decoding of ancient languages, and censorship in Ancient Rome and modern America.
2005
- After 9/11: Whose Security?
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Since 9/11 the United States has been obsessed with "security" in a very particular sense—protection from intentional threats to our safety and well being, as in "Office of Homeland Security," "our national security," "the conflict between civil liberties and security considerations," "security was tightened," or, more mundanely, "security guards."
- After Shock & Gawk
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 November 3 began with a shock — the early morning newscast reporting the front page of The London Daily Mirror: “How Can 59,054,087 People be So Dumb?” Culminating what had seemed the longest and unceasingly miserable campaign in U.S. history — and in its wake, the most inconceivable of outcomes: The brazen robber was presented the reward!!
- Already in Hell: Labor After Communism
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Factory workers in the former Soviet Union have a saying: “Things can’t get any worse, we are already in hell.” David Mandel’s book Labour After Communism documents the realities of working-class life in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus: factories with no central heating, where workers to maintain body heat build fires in metal drums or large metal toolboxes, the smoke of these fires rising up through holes in the roof.
- Anarchist Archive
Resource Type: Organization First Published: 2005 Published: Devoted to the study of anarchism, with a special focus on the history of the movement in Canada. Issues relevant to the collection include Indigenous struggles, anti-war activism, ecological militancy, prison abolition, decolonization, feminism, queer politics, and radicalism in the arts. Founded in 2005, the archive has a special mandate to collect and preserve anarchist-related materials, including posters, photographs, art work, videos, audio recordings, journals, pamphlets and zines, oral histories, correspondence (written and digital), organizational records, and other items. The archive also houses a digitization centre devoted to scanning materials for preservation purposes and to facilitate online accessibility for researchers across Canada and internationally. The Anarchist Archive is a public institution and research inquires are welcome.
- An Anti-Imperialist War Resister
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 ATC Interviews Carl Webb. Military resister Carl Webb, 39, is Absent Without Leave from the Texas National Guard, after his service was involuntarily extended in July, 2004 through the military Stop-Loss program. He tells his story on his website www.carlwebb.net and blogspot carlwebb.blogspot.com and has been speaking out at antiwar meetings. His explicit anti-imperialist views have made him a somewhat controversial figure within the peace movement.
- The Archipelago of Horror
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Laupahoehoe in Hawaiian means “foot of lava.” Thousands of years ago, lava cascaded down a steep canyon on the side of mighty Mauna Kea and created a flat shelf between the towering cliffs of the Hamakua Coast on the eastern shore of the island of Hawaii. Laupahoehoe Point became a ceremonial center of great importance to native Hawaiians as well as the only canoe landing along fifty miles of rugged coast.
- Art, Religion and Hatred
Religious Intolerance in Russia and its Effects on Art Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Report on religious intolerance in Russia and its effects on artists and their freedom of expression.
- Assaulting pro-Palestinian Activism: Smear Tactics at U-M
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 In March, 2005 the student assembly at the University of Michigan held a campus- wide meeting to vote on a resolution calling for the university to form an advisory committee to review university investments in companies supporting the Israeli occupation. This was not a divestment resolution, but a small-scale resolution calling for an investigative committee to investigate university investments.
- Autonomous Media
Activating Resistance & Dissent Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Essays written by media activists examining the efforts of communities and social movements to appropriate media technologies.
- Background to Bush's Debacle: Iraq and the Empire
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The stated objective of the neoconservatives in control of United States foreign policy today is to carry out a war on terror by spreading freedom and democracy throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world, if necessary by American power alone, and if necessary by guided missiles, Humvees, and fighter jets.
- Bait and Switch
The (Futile) pursuit of the American Dream Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- The Battle for Democracy in Mexico
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The Mexican people won a battle for democracy this past spring when massive demonstrations — the largest in Mexico’s tumultuous history — prevented President Vicente Fox from making Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador ineligible to run for president in 2006. The defeat of Fox on this issue was a victory for the Mayor, but above all for the Mexican people, who defended their right to vote for a candidate of their choice in the coming national elections.
- The beauty of wind farms
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Windmills are beautiful. They harness the power of the wind to supply us with heat and light. They provide local jobs. They help clean our air and reduce climate change.
- 'Beijing's bitch'
Beijing & Microsoft Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Putting profits ahead of human rights.
- Beyond Chutzpah
On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 A meticulously researched expose of the corruption of scholarship on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Bringing to bear the latest findings on the conflict and recasting the scholarly debate, Finkelstein points to a consensus among historians and human rights organizations on the factual record. Why, then, does so much controversy swirl around the conflict? Finkelstein's answer, copiously documented, is that apologists for Israel contrive controversy. Whenever Israel comes under international pressure, another media campaign alleging a global outbreak of anti-Semitism is mounted.
- Bingo The big charity bonanza
New Internationalist October 2005 - #383 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 A look at issues surrounding big international non-governmental organizations.
- Black History and the Class Struggle
#18 Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2005 Articles include: "A Life in the Black Panther Party — We Want Freedom — A Review of a Book by Mumia Abu-Jamal," "How the Liberals and Reformists Derailed the Struggle for Integration — For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!", "The 'N' Word in Racist America."
- Black Women's Narratives of Slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Anyone who has ever wondered how black people managed to struggle and survive the hideous tortures meted out during slavery and afterward would gain from reading these books. They offer inspiration to a new generation of fighters.
- Books for Burning
Between Civil War and Democracy in 1970s Italy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- Born in Bradford
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Multiculturalism transformed the character of antiracism. By the mid-1980s the focus of antiracist protest in Bradford had shifted from political issues, such as policing and immigration, to religious and cultural issues: a demand for Muslim schools and for separate education for girls, a campaign for halal meat to be served at school, and, most explosively, the confrontation over the publication of The Satanic Verses. Political struggles unite across ethnic or cultural divisions; cultural struggles inevitably fragment.
- "Born into Brothels" Controversy
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 "Born into Brothels" won this year’s Academy Award for best documentary. Directed by British photojournalist Zana Briski and U.S. film editor Ross Kauffman, the film follows Briski’s project of teaching photography to a group of children who live in Sonagachi — Calcutta, India’s red-light district — as well as Briski’s efforts to get these children of sex workers admitted into boarding schools.
- Breaking the Silence
Israeli Soldiers talk about Hebron Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2005
- Bush, the Democrats & the Greens After 2004
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 One peculiar event around the 2004 elections received almost no analysis or discussion: The overwhelming majority of the supporters of John Kerry disagreed with their candidate on most major issues. This simple fact tells how deep the corruption of the American political system has become.
- Bush to New Orleans Survivors: "You're On Your Own"
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Like everyone who "got out" before Katrina hit, my exit was a private one. My partner and I took heed of the voluntary evacuation because we had the means to do so. We packed three changes of clothes and our passports, got in our trusty 1998 Ford Escort station wagon with some friends, and left our green-shuttered 100-year-old Victorian shotgun house in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
- The Buzz Hargrove election controversy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 We aren't obligated to vote NDP no matter what the circumstances.
- Can We Talk?: Censorship, Pedophilia, and Panic
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Pederasty and pedophilia have been topics of debate in works about gay and straight history, given long-standing traditions of intergenerational sex between and among men and women. The right uses that fact to condemn all queers, particularly gay men, as predators of children.
- The Case Against Israel
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Neumann argues that Israel's policies are the cause of the conflict, and that the conflict can be ended by Israel changing its behaviour.
- The Case for Palestine
An International Law Perspective Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective - Book Review
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Book review.
- The Case for Socialism
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Published: 2010 An argument for socialism: a society built from the bottom up through the struggles of ordinary people against exploitation, oppression, and injustice -- one in which people come before profit. A society based on the principles of equality, democracy, and freedom.
- The Challenge to Violence
New Internationalist August 2005 - #381 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 Stories which explain the power of nonviolent actions and how they have made a difference in the world.
- Changing Modes of Canadian Complicity
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 It is important for those of us who see and criticize Canadian hypocrisy to point out that Hillier's comments and other similar things are perfectly consistent with Canada's actual history. But we also do ourselves a disservice if we fail to recognize the ways in which strategic deployment of such rhetoric is part of a project that aims to undo the paltry progressive victories that are still standing.
- Chatter: Dispatches From the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- China in the Contemporary World Dynamic of Accumulation and Class Struggle
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The Chinese ruling elite is riding the whirlwind precisely because its own necessary reforms are quite visibly setting in motion social processes that could completely overwhelm it, namely a working-class and peasant insurrection which would necessarily assume a truly socialist content.
- China and Socialism
Market Reforms and Class Struggle Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Argues that market reforms in China are leading toward a capitalist and foreign-dominated development path, with enormous social and political costs, both domestically and internationally.
- Chomsky on Anarchism
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 This collection of essays and interviews paint a fresh picture of Chomsky, showing his life-long involvement with anarchist and libertarian socialist currents, his commitment to nonhierarchical models of political organization, and his hopes for a future world without rulers.
- Civil Liberties on Trial
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Lynne F. Stewart, 65, a lawyer noted for representing political defendants, was convicted on February 10th of five charges: two counts of conspiracy, a count of providing and concealing material support to terrorist activity and two counts of making false statements. Convicted of felony charges, Stewart was immediately disbarred. She is out on bail until her July sentencing date; her lawyers will file an appeal in early March.
- Combatting Caste
New Internationalist July 2005 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 A look at the caste system in South Asia and Africa. Discussion of the Dalit system in India.
- Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005
- A Commentary from Israel: Peace Camp - Dead or Alive?
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 A few weeks ago my friend Ilan Pappé published an article under the title "There is no peace camp in Israel." These words were originally spoken in a lecture delivered by the intellectual activist—or the activist intellectual—at a conference that took place in Fribourg, in the framework of the Swiss Social Forum.
- Commonwealth of Thieves
The Improbable Birth of Australia Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Published: 2006 A history of the first four years of the convict settlement in Australia, examining the interplay of soldiers, convicts, and Aborigines.
- The cost of software piracy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The enormous dollar amounts the software industry throws around in its PR campaigns about software 'piracy' are purely imaginary.
- A Dangerous Neighbourhood
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Noam Chomsky explores the relationship between the USA and South America. He reveals that due to numerous anti-social policies, America is becoming increasingly isolated - even from Canada.
- The Defeat of Post-USSR Labor
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The nascent Soviet labor movement played an important, perhaps crucial, role in shaking the foundations of the Soviet system, which proved remarkably fragile beneath its impressive totalitarian superstructure. But this movement failed to develop the organizational and ideological independence that would have allowed it to influence the subsequent course of events.
- The Democrats' New Scapegoat
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 In 2000, the Democratic Party establishment and much of the left blamed Ralph Nader for the election of George Bush. The “spoiler” label conveniently ignored the fact that Al Gore ran a weak campaign with no compelling message; that more registered Democrats voted for Bush than for Nader; and that the Democratic Party refused to challenge the removal of African Americans from the voter rolls in Florida.
- Demonizing the Victims of Katrina
Coverage painted hurricane survivors as looters, snipers and rapists Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Hurricane Katrina led many media reporters and commentators to reveal themselves and their deep-seated prejudices.
- Dignity of the Nobodies
La dignidad de los nadies Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2005 The degraded socio-economic condition of Argentina leading to the December 2001 rebellions, and its consequent social chaos analyzed by focusing on real people from Buenos Aires' poorest shantytowns, crumbling hospitals, and women middle class farmers fighting multi-national banks that are shamelessly appropriating their farmlands.
- Dilemmas of Domination
The Unmaking of the American Empire Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Argues that in a not-too-distant future the American empire's hidden weaknesses will pose fatal challenges to American supremacy.
- Disability in the Majority World I've got a right!
New Internationalist November 2005 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 Discussion of people with dissability and their fight for equal rights.
- Disaster and Mental Health
The Palestinian Experience Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The continuing Israeli military occupation of Gaza is the cause of deep and widespread trauma for Palestinian children and adults.
- Doctors with Borders
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2005 The story of four foreign trained doctors who are struggling to become licensed to practise medicine in Ontario.
- Don't be a Time Bandit
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Don't waste journalists' time.
- Economic Crisis & Fundamentalism
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Susan Weissman interviews John Daly.
- Einstein's 1905 Revolution: New Physics, New Century
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Albert Einstein hardly needs an introduction. A popular culture icon, his name, his disheveled appearance in late life, his theory of relativity are synonymous with genius. It may be hard to imagine a physicist as a popular culture icon, Time's Person of the Century (for heaven's sake); yet no other figure of the 20th Century comes to my mind, with the possible exception of Picasso, whose legacy is so indisputable as to qualify for the position of something so improbable as Person of the Century.
- False Freedom
Online Censorship in the Middle East and North Africa Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 This report examines internet censorship policy and how theIinternet has transformed the accessibility of information mainly in the countries of Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Tunisia. When examining each country the following is considered: government policies on Internet access, theIinternet's role in affecting freedom of expression, restrictive laws and cases in which individuals have been detained for their online activities.
- Fast Food Nation
The Dark Side of the All-American Meal Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 According to Schlosser, fast food has hastened the malling of the American landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad.
- Female Well-Being
Toward a global theory of social change Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- Fictitious Capital and the Transition Out of Capitalism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 To understand the weight of fictitious capital in the current context, it is necessary to look beyond the merely economic to the class struggle. Despite the colossal efforts of ideology to deny or trivialize social antagonism, everything today is shaped by class struggle, both the one-sided class struggle waged for 30 years by the capitalist class, and even more so the potential threat of a two-sided struggle to re-emerge into the open.
- Fifth World Social Forum
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The fifth World Social Forum convened this year from January 26th through 31st in Porto Alegre, Brazil in the wake of the Bush inauguration and intensifying violence in Iraq, but also some victories for progressive movements in the global south and particularly Latin America.
- Fighting the Wal-Mart Plague
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Liza Featherstone offers a devastating portrait of rampant sex discrimination at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Women working for the company at all levels — from cashier positions to the highest levels of corporate marketing — have been paid less than their male coworkers and offered far fewer raises and promotions.
- Flatly Outrageous
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The flat earth society is not the equivalent of the Fraser Institute.
- Forced Passages
Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 The dramatic rise and consolidation of America's prison system has devastated lives and communities, but it has also transformed prisons into sites of political discourse and resistance, as they have become home to a growing number of writers, activists, poets, educators, and others who offer radical critiques of American society both within and beyond the prison walls.
- 1491
New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 A portrait of human life in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus.
- Framing: Primer for a Progressive Revolution -- Part I Philosophy and Rational for Framing
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The introduction of framing into the progressive community could well prove to be the beginning of a revolution. But such a revolution can evolve and sustain only with a concerted, impassioned effort by progressive opinion leaders -- executed in such a way that will compel the average voter to IDENTIFY with progressive values.
- Free Higher Education
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Interview with Adolph Reed, Jr. Dr. Adolph Reed, political scientist, author and activist, is the national spokesperson for the Free Higher Education Campaign, which calls for free tuition and fees for all students who meet admissions requirements at all two and four-year public colleges.
- From 1905 to Our Time
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The 1905 revolution consisted of a series of mass strikes which pushed the Tsarist regime into at least the promise of major constitutional change. The focus here, however, is not on the “results” of the 1905 revolution, but on its “prospects”; on what its process promised and still can promise, even in so much less revolutionary times. 1905 was a crucial year not only for its revolutionary content but for its expression of the dynamic, and form, of working-class struggle.
- From the Front Lines of Native Women's Struggles
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 As a longtime Black lesbian feminist progressive who came up through the women’s, anti-racism, labor and environmental justice movements in the United States and Canada, I like to think of myself as fairly well read, and up on my analysis of the historical and current material conditions of women of color and our movements for liberation.
- Gifts of the IWW
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 In June of this year, the Industrial Workers of the World celebrates 100 years of existence—a glorious and terrible 100 years. The IWW experienced the state-sponsored murder of its bravest members, most famously when "Wobbly Bard" Joe Hill was executed in 1915, having been framed for murder. It lived through years of slander and repression; limped along, still proud and singing, through decades when its membership dropped ever closer toward zero; and remains, not only as a piece of history, but as a force in the present and an inspiration for the future.
- Girlhood
Redefining the Limits Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 A collection of essays on girls. It examines girl culture, and the multi-faceted nature of girls' lived experiences. It also looks at "girl" power and the highly commercially lucrative and sexualized culture. The authors examine racism, girlhood gangs, sexuality, chatrooms, the politics of girlhood style and identity formation.The essays cover the many changing and complex aspects of girls in the 21st century.
- Globalization's Damages
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The main argument in favor of neoliberalism is simple enough: individuals will freely exchange whenever mutual gains result. It follows that restricting trade and investment across borders both infringes liberty and prevents people from enjoying benefits. At this point an appeal is made to historical evidence: previously poor regions have lifted more people out of poverty at a faster rate than ever before in human history by opening up to trade and investment.
- Government in the Future
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 In this classic talk delivered at the Poetry Center, New York, on February 16, 1970, Noam Chomsky articulates a clear, uncompromising vision of social change. Chomsky contrasts the classical liberal, libertarian socialist, state socialist, and state capitalist world views and then defends a libertarian socialist vision as "the proper and natural extension . . . of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society."
- Grad Student Organizing "19th-Century Style"
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005
- A Gramscian Historical-Materialist Analysis of the Informal Learning and development of Black Working- Class Organic Intellectuals in Toronto,1969-1975
MA, University of Toronto, 2005 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005
- The Great War for Civilisation
The Conquest of the Middle East Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Fisk explores a number of key themes in the history of the modern Middle East: the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf War as well as the 2003 Iraq War as well as other regional conflicts such as the Armenian Genocide and the Algerian Civil War.
- Guatemala: The Violence of "Free Trade"
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 On January 11, Guatemalan President Oscar Berger spoke to a group of reporters in Guatemala City about ongoing protests against a World Bank mining project in the northern part of the country. He said that his government had to establish law and order. “We have to protect investors,” said Berger.
- Haiti in Crisis
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 In 2004, shortly after the coup in Haiti in which President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was removed from office, in the year of the bicentenary of the Haitian revolution, a group of concerned Caribbean Faculty at the University of Toronto organized an emergency public meeting that was exceptionally widely attended.
- Haiti: Racially Profiled!
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 I thank the organizers for this event that places Haiti squarely in our consciousness where it belongs. I am grateful that Honor Ford-Smith, Jacqui Alexander and Alissa Trotz were so insistent that I attend despite my best efforts to excuse myself. A large number of campus units and off-campus organizations came together, and one knows that this is the proper way to approach our subject tonight. Men anpil, chay pa lou (many hands make the load light).
- Hate speech in a plural society
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2005 One of the ironies of living in a more inclusive, more diverse society appears to be that the preservation of diversity requires us to leave increasingly to leave less room for a diversity of views. So, it is becoming increasingly common these days for liberals to proclaim that free speech is necessary in principle – but also to argue that in practice we should give up that right.
- Health Disparities By Race And Class: Why Both Matter
Health Affairs, 24, no. 2 (2005): 343-352 Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2005 This essay examines three competing causal interpretations of racial disparities in health. The first approach views race as a biologically meaningful category and racial disparities in health as reflecting inherited susceptibility to disease. The second approach treats race as a proxy for class and views socioeconomic stratification as the real culprit behind racial disparities. The third approach treats race as neither a biological category nor a proxy for class, but as a distinct construct, akin to caste. The essay points to historical, political, and ideological obstacles that have hindered the analysis of race and class as codeterminants of disparities in health.
- Heidegger: L'introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Faye argues that all of Heidegger's thinking was permeated by National Socialism.
- Helicoptering to the cottage
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Using the company helicopter to fly to and from the cottage.
- A Hidden Story of the 1905 Russian Revolution: The Unemployed Soviet
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The movement of the unemployed in St. Petersburg is a little-known episode of the First Russian Revolution of 1905-7. The movement came as a complete surprise to everyone at the time, since it is did not fit any pre-conceived schema (although, strictly speaking, it had a precedent in the February Revolution of 1848 in France, when the revolutionary government established the "Ateliers nationaux" public-works program).
- Hoffa Jr.: The Real Record
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Many savvy Labor movement activists and observers are understandably puzzled by Teamster President James Hoffa’s sudden and enthusiastic endorsement of the Change to Win Coalition. Within the Teamsters, it’s been the reform movement and Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) who have championed the need for structural reform to free up resources to organize the union's core industries-usually in the face of boos and catcalls from the Hoffa crowd.
- Homefront Confidential, 6th Edition
How the War on Terrorism Affects Access to Information and the Public's Right to Know Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 In the days immediately following September 11, the U.S. government embarked on a disturbing path of secrecy. The atmosphere of terror induced public officials to abandon this country's culture of openness and opt for secrecy as a way of ensuring safety and security.
- The Illusion of Gaza Withdrawal
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 We gather here in difficult times, when it seems that the Palestinian cause has been almost eliminated from the international agenda. The Western world is hailing the new “peace vision” of Sharon’s disengagement plan.
- The Impact of Inequality
How to Make Sick Societies Better Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- Imperial Presidency
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Chomsky explores the conception of presidential authority and sovereignty, depicting the dangers of the Bush administration's understanding of these concepts.
- In Defence of Sex and Science: Review of Kinsey
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 A review of the film "Kinsey".
- In Defense of Divestment
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 As an Israeli citizen and former tank gunner in the Israeli army, I feel the need to explain why I, along with many other Jews, support divestment from Israel. We are asking the city of Somerville, as well as other cities and civic institutions, to divest from companies involved in selling arms, bulldozers and military technologies that are used by the Israeli army to commit war crimes against Palestinians.
- Indigenous Resistance to Gold Mine Gains Momentum
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Last June 13 indigenous communities in Sipacapa, in the western highlands of Guatemala, voted overwhelmingly to reject gold mining on their lands. Oxfam’s press release announced the results: 2,486 people cast their vote against the mine, 35 voted in favor, 32 abstained and one cast a blank vote.
- Insurgency Online
Web Activism and Global Conflict Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Published: 2006 Explores the nature of the web and its potential for facilitating participation in political debate.
- Intelligent Design?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Chomsky discusses the Bush Administration's understanding of science, touching upon issues such as Evolution, Creationism, and environmental policy.
- Introducing the Year 1905: Centennial of Struggle
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The year 1905 stands out as the onset of an era of explosive anticapitalist struggle—all the more so 100 years later, when we feel stranded in a neoliberal ice age. Looking back at the events of that year helps give some perspective on how rapidly consciousness and levels of struggle can change.
- Invaders from Marx
On the Uses of Marxian Theory, and the Difficulties of a Contemporary Reading Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Heinrich stresses the difference between Marxian theory and traditional understandings of Marxism, emphasizing the "new reading of Marx", which has developed through the last decades.
- Iraq: Guerrilla War in Sadr City
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 In attacking first Najaf, then Tal Afar and Samarra, and finally tackling the center of Sunni resistance in Fallujah, the United States was seeking to reverse this process. But these attacks were not designed to restore order; they were, instead, intended to prevent the consolidation of a very orderly anti-American status quo in a constantly expanding set of "liberated" areas. Ironically, the American attacks in the Fall of 2004 underscore the larger contradictions in American policy in Iraq: that the chaos American leaders keep saying there are preventing will, in fact, occur only if U.S. military forces succeed in destroying these nascent city-states.
- The Islamophobia Myth
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Pretending that Muslims have never had it so bad might bolster community leaders and gain votes for politicians, but it does the rest of us, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, no favours at all. The more that the threat of Islamophobia is exaggerated, the more that ordinary Muslims come to accept that theirs is a community under constant attack. It helps create a siege mentality, stoking up anger and resentment, and making Muslim communities more inward looking and more open to religious extremism.
- Israel and Palestine After Disengagement
Noam Chomsky debates with Alan Dershowitz Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005
- An Israeli Anti-Zionist Memoir: On the Border
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Michael Warschawski has written a richly deserved prize winning book On the Border. Warschawski, director of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem and a well known anti-Zionist activist, first came to Israel from France before the1967 war, to study at a religious-Zionist Talmudic academy. He is a comrade and the husband of noted Israeli civil rights lawyer Lea Tsemel.
- An Issue Of Justice
Origins Of The Israel/Palestine Conflict Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Finkelstein lays out the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict with clarity and passion, arguing that any other similar conflict would be perfectly understood, yet this one exists beneath a blanket of ideological fog. Finkelstein cuts through the fog with indisputable historical facts, optimistic that the struggle is winnable, and that it is simply an issue of justice.
- Issues, Outcome and Prospects: The Ukranian Events
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Although the Ukrainian presidential elections were front-page news for the last two months of 2004, and no event in the history of Ukraine has ever attracted so much media coverage and analysis, what happened, why, and its significance are questions impossible to answer with certainty.
- It's Imperialism, Stupid
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Chomksy claims that when Bush proclaimed the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction as the premise for invading Iraq, imperialism was, in fact, the genuine motivation.
- Jared Diamond, Greenwasher
Shilling for Chevron Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Since Jared Diamond and the economists all believe in the inviolability of the capitalist system, there is a certain cognitive dissonance at work in their writings. They harp on the symptoms, but stop short at identifying the root cause. It is what psychologists call denial.
- John Brown, Abolitionist
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Why do some people take literally the admonitions of our faiths, both religious and secular? We are all advised to “do unto others.” We all hear, from early childhood, that “all men are created equal.” Yet, not all of us abide by these “faiths of our fathers.”
- The Jungle at 100
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 When it was first published as a book in 1906, The Jungle’s graphic revelations about the American meatpacking industry, combined with its compelling story of an immigrant worker’s brutal degradation, made it an immediate sensation.
- Just Around the Corner
The Paradox of the Jobless Recovery Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Aronowitz details how U.S. capitalism has achieved higher profits at the expense of the quality and quantity of jobs, and contradicts the ideological justifications that seek to justify deteriorating jobs, showing how they are neither a mark of efficiency nor a merely temporary problem.
- Justice after genocide
New Internationalist December 2005 - #385 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 A look at some countries around the world which have been affected by genocide and some of the characters involved.
- Karl Marx and Religion
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 For Marx, to positively assert that God does not exist is childish. “Man makes religion, religion does not make man. ... The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.”
- Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution
Volume 5: War & Revolution Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 The subject of this volume is Marx and Engels' views on the relation between war and revolution. Its thesis is that, over the course of decades, their views on this question changed -- evolved is a better word -- although, in this case as in others, they wrote no definitive statement of their views. Instead, we have a considerable corpus of ad hoc responses to the events of the hour, many of them politically explosive, from which we have to reconstruct, not a line, but an approach. To complicate things further, many of these crises, while they were the news of the day at the time, have since faded from memory.
- Kyrgyzstan After Akayev
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Kyrgyzstan’s March 2005 “Tulip Revolution,” if something less than really a revolution, resulted in its president, Askar Akayev, fleeing the country. Once hailed as the most democratic leader in the region, Akayev was overthrown by spontaneous demonstrations of a population angered by corruption, nepotism, economic despair and demoralization.
- Labor Studies Under Siege
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 More than a decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union, leftists are now more likely to be targeted by the right wing as "terrorists" than as "communists"—yet redbaiting is alive and well in the field of Labor Studies. In recent years, university labor programs have been attacked in the press for their teaching and research, and been targeted by university administrators for drastic budget reductions or elimination.
- The Language of Empire
Abu Ghraib and the American Media Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 A study of how and why the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was white-washed by the American media.
- Last Resorts
The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Examines the real impact of tourism on the people and landscape of the Caribbean. It explores the structure of ownership of the industry and shows that the benefits it brings to the region do not live up to its claims.
- The Left & Disability
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 I joined “the crips” 13 years ago, upon being forced to quit work due to toxic exposure at my workplace. “The crips” are not a group you really fight to get into, but they can have excruciating initiation rites, worse than to get into “Skull and Bones.” And you don’t have to come from a rich family; in fact, membership almost always insures that you become poor, and very quickly!
- The Left Worker-communist Party of Iraq
Organization profile published 2007 Resource Type: Organization First Published: 2005 Socialism Now. "The basis of socialism is the human being... Socialism is the movement to restore human beings' conscious will."
- Lessons from the 1905 Revolution
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 1905 was a decisive year in Socialist History in that the working class movement developed two crucial weapons in its armory: Soviets (workers’ councils), which were new, and the general strike, which was not. Since that time both political forms have been extensively used and theorized.
- Letters from Young Activists
Today's Rebels Speak Out Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- Living in One's OwnTime: A Memoir from the Left
Introduction by Kirk Niergarth Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2005
- The Long Shadow of Mass Incarceration: A Generation Imprisoned
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 This January, the U.S. Supreme Court started what may prove to be a fundamental overhaul of criminal sentencing in federal jurisdictions. In two interrelated cases, Booker and Fanfan, the court struck down key elements of the current federal sentencing system, put in place over twenty years ago when Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act.
- Loss of Faith
How the Air India Bombers Got Away with Murder Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 An account of the Air India Bombing trial and investigations.
- Making Trouble Today
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Activists who read the first A Troublemaker’s Handbook, published by Labor Notes in 1991, recognized themselves in the stories of courageous workers who fought to improve their workplaces and their lives. They were gratified that they were not alone, that there was a whole network of troublemakers out there, and even a handbook that took the lessons they’d learned and made them accessible to thousands of other workers.
- The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 A biography of John Brown.
- The Manipulation of Fear
Resort to Fear Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Chomsky discusses the effects of using fear as a control mechanism to manipulate the population.
- Manufactured Revolutions?
A look at the dynamics of US imperial manipulation, internal opposition and and popular revolt Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Published: 2014 When is a revolution not a revolution? That is the question commentators have been asking following a wave of regime changes that has zigzagged its way progressively eastwards over the last five years.
- Marx et Makhno a la rencontre de McDonald's
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 A Paris, les travailleurs précaires qui sont sortis vaniqueurs de plusieurs grèves en ont perud d'autres avec les honneurs à cause des méthodes à la fois légales et illégales des syndicats et des ultra-syndicalistes.
- Marx and Makhno Meet McDonald's
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Over the last several years, a revolving network of militants in Paris, France, have developed a strategy and tactics for winning strikes by marginal, low-paid, outsourced and immigrant workers against international chains, in situations where the strikers are often ignored by unions to which they nominally belong, or are actually obstructed by them.
- Media Manipulation
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Published: 2006 Media manipulation often involves government or corporate propaganda and spin. Sometimes organizations and governments can feed fake news or politically or ideologically slanted stories to broadcasters which depict them as quality news items and journalism.
- The Medicaid Kill-Off
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 President George W. Bush and Congress slashed $10 billion from the Medicaid budget for this coming year [2006]. Medicaid is the primary public health care program for impoverished persons that serves over 53 million people. The cut is clearly an attack on poor people, and it may wind up killing disabled and chronically ill persons before all is done. It is also a strike from those segments in our society who wish to dismantle the entire Medicaid system.
- The Message and Meaning of Groundings 2005: Walter Rodney Lives!
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Seeking to grasp at the core of Walter Rodney's legacies for Caribbean peoples today, speakers at the recent Groundings in Guyana used the words "decency," "boldness," and "humanity." It was in such spirit that the Groundings were organized to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Rodney's assassination at the hands of the ruling paramount party, PNC, in Guyana in 1980.
- Middle East Cauldron
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The past three decades of Middle East history present a process of what I sometimes call “permanent counterrevolution,” unfolding under the ever-present reality of imperial domination, rivalry and of course the politics of oil.
- A Military Resister and Conscientious Objector
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 ATC Interviews Camilo Mejia. Sgt. Camilo Mejia, the first active-duty U.S. military resister to be imprisoned for refusing re-deployment to Iraq, spoke at a Detroit antiwar rally Friday, March 18, the day before attending the founding convention of Iraq Veterans Against the War in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
- Misconceptions About King's Methods for Change
A Matter of Life and Death Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Nonviolent social change requires long, hard and sustained work, research, development of solutions, and, importantly, on-going commitment. It demands far more than bringing folks together to march and wave banners. Unfortunately, many activists throughout the world seem to be of the opinion that if you are concerned about an issue you should organize huge "feel good" rallies, which is hoped will almost magically result in changes.
- Mr. Bush's truthfulness
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The truthfulness-challenged President.
- Multiculturalism fans the flames of islamic extremism
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2005 Multiculturalism as lived experience enriches our lives. But multiculturalism as a political ideology has helped create a tribal Britain with no political or moral centre.
- Muslims in Britain: After the London Bombs
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Whitechapel Market is in the heart of George Galloway’s Bethnal Green (London) constituency, packed every Saturday wiith traders selling low priced fruit, unreliable electrical goods and cheap cigarettes.
- The Myth of Marx's Economic Determinism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Karl Marx is often represented as an "economic determinist" who credited economic structures with a basic determining role in just about every aspect of human life, and simple models such as "base"/"superstructure" are often invoked to support this. Whilst it may be true that Marx understood individuals to have the scope for meaningful thought and action determined by their social context, as Peter G. Stillman shows, it does not follow that there is a direct causal relationship between "economic" circumstances and spheres such as religion, politics or culture.
- The Myth of 'Simple Commodity Production'
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Many misunderstandings have arisen from and about the structure of Capital. One of these is that Capital has an historical structure beginning with "Simple Commodity Production." As Chris Arthur shows in this article, Marx knows of no such mode of production. Marx begins with the simplest relation of capital and exhibits the relations of capital by means of a LOGICAL, not a historical structure.
- The NAACP's Future
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The NAACP is one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the country. Founded in 1909, it played a leading role in opposing lynching laws and legal segregation until the demise of Jim Crow three decades ago .
- Naomi Klein's "Courage"
Ain't But One Way Out Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 In saying that we need to make Iraq safe for democracy, Klein is buying into the US agenda for Iraq.
- Neocon con game: First deprive public institutions of their ability to act, then blame them for not acting
Margaret Wente's Chutzpah Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The neocon con game: first deprive public institutions of their ability to act, then blame them for not acting
- The New Imperialism
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- News, Truth and Crime
The Westray Disaster and its Aftermath Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 McMullan examines the media coverage devoted to the ten year (1992-2002) aftermath of the May 9, 1992 explosion where 26 miners died at the Westray mine.
- Newsroom tips from The Canadian Press
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Newsroom tips from The Canadian Press.
- The Next Liberation Struggle
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy in Southern Africa Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 An indispensable guide to understanding how the resources of that era can be used to contribute to real liberation for the region and for the continent of Africa as a whole.
- 9/11: Debunking The Myths
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Popular Mechanics special report on September 11 conspiracy theories.
- The Northwest Airlines Strike: Where is Labor Going?
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) strike at Northwest Airlines offers a window into class relations and the state of the labor movement in the United States. What we can see through that window is very grim.
- The Northwest Strike: Acid Test for Labor
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The following speech was given by Malik Miah, a United Airlines Airline representative and editor of Way Points of Local 9 of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA), at a San Francisco Airport rally on Labor Day, September 5, organized for striking mechanics, custodians and cleaners at Northwest Airlines.
- Nuclear Power: Nuclear's second wind
New Internationalist September 2005 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 A look at the return of the use of nuclear power and why. Discussion of the history of the effects of nuclear power in the past.
- The Occupation and the Anti-War Movement After the Election
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Anyone watching the message on Iraq in George W. Bush's February 3 State of the Union address must be convinced that members of both Houses of Congress, starting with Dick Cheney himself, are definitely making the physical effort needed to sustain their cardiac health. The frenzied rhythm of their standing ovations indeed equaled the most intensive aerobics.
- On Handcuffed and Felonious Children
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Arresting young children for a crayon drawing, not unlike the games of hangman we once all played, is the ultimate meaning and logic of Zero Tolerance. Zero tolerance involves the application of law in an extreme and uncompromising manner to any activity, violent or not, that is deemed to be anti-social.
- On Oil and Quicksand
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The end of 2004 finds the Middle East sliding toward an even bloodier morass, thanks in large part to imperial and colonial arrogance which has rarely been on such open display.
- Only protect: A photographic celebration of our endangered earth
New Internationalist May 2005 - #378 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 A visual look at the world's Ecosystems and a discussion of the scale and urgency of the environmental crisis.
- The Other Side of Israel
My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Explores the unequal treatment of Palestinians living in Israel as "citizens", but as second-class citizens in a theocratic state that discriminates against Arabs in many ways.
- Our Daily Bread
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2005 Our Daily Bread (original German title: Unser taglich Brot) is a 2005 documentary film, depicted how modern food production companies employ technology to produce food on large scales. It consists mainly of actual working situations without voice-over narration or interviews as the director tries to let viewers form their own opinion on the subject. The names of the companies where the footage was filmed are purposely not shown. The director's goal is to provide a realistic view on the internal workings of multiple food production companies in our modern society.
- Our Daily Bread
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2005 Published: 2018 While this remarkable documentary will likely engender fascination, awe and even shock amongst viewers, OUR DAILY BREAD simply aims to show the industrial production of food as a reflection of our society's values: plenty of everything, made as quickly and as efficiently as modern technology permits.
by: Icarus Films
- Out of Africa: A Migrant's Story
New Internationalist June 2005 - #379 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 An issue on the story of a nurse's return back to Kenya and the reason why she has worked so far away from home. Also, a discussion on a widespread crisis in international healthcare and the human costs of our global free-market economy.
- Outlaws of America
The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Based on interviews with former Weather Underground members, as well as with civil rights activists, Black Panthers, Young Lords, and others.
- Palestine: Victims of Violence
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Nurit Peled delivered this speech to the European Parliament on International Women’s Day. Nurit Peled is an Israeli peace activist (her father Gen. Mati Peled was instrumental in founding the Israeli peace movement in the 1970s). She and her husband work with Bereaved Families (Palestinian and Israeli).
- Parecon and the nature of reformism
A review of Robin Hahnel (2005). Economic Justice and Democracy; From Competition to Cooperation. NY Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The concept of participatory economics, as developed by Hahnel and Albert, is worth exploring. They are inspired by the tradition of libertarian, councilist, socialism. They share the values of revolutionary class struggle anarchism. Even in disagreeing with them, there is much to be learned from reading their work, since they are t houghtful people who are dealing with important issues. Yet they demonstrate, in spite of themselves, that it is not enough to attempt to not be reformist. It is necessary to be revolutionary.
- The Party: Volume 1
The Sixties, A Political Memoir: The Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988 Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Barry Sheppard was a member of the US Socialist Workers Party for 28 years, and a central leader for most of that time. This is the first of two volumes recounting his life in the party.
- Patent Absurdity
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted.
- The PATRIOT Act: Darkness With No Sunset
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 A report by Amnesty International released May 13, 2005 concluded that the treatment of detainees being held around the world, including Guantanamo, in the United States' "war on terror," as glaring and systematic violations of human rights, describing the conditions at the Guantanamo Detention Center as "the gulag of our times, entrenching the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law." ("Guantanamo and Beyond: The Continuing Pursuit of Unchecked Executive Power," Amnesty International, 5/13/05)
- Peace, Love, Respect and the Blues
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Popa Chubby is a well-accomplished blues-rock guitarist, vocalist and songwriter in New York City, and on his CD “Peace, Love & Respect” (Blind Pig BPCD 5089), he’s angry. Angry at the war in Iraq, and its waste of young lives. Angry at Bush and his assault on all of us except the very rich. Angry at the frustration and rage he sees in the ordinary people all around him. Angry at the social pathology that’s his daily lot in New York City, and anymore, seemingly everywhere else (including Indianapolis).
- Pension Terminations
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Pensions have been an example of a major social wage that most Americans took for granted, both in private and public sector employment. That’s no longer the case. Ask the workers at United Air Lines.
- People of Color Talk is Cheap
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 A concept like ‘People of Color’, which obscures privilege and hierarchy within the racial system itself, can often make work harder for antiracists.
- Personal Reflections: Saving Social Security
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 My dad died when I was 15. I was going into my junior year of high school, my younger brother was still in grammar school. From then on my mother received a Social Security check for each of us until we graduated from high school, and — since I went to college — until I was 21. Unlike so many students today, I finished college debt free.
- The Philosophy of Antonio Negri
Resistance in Practice Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- Press for Conversion #56
June 2005 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 Canada's supposed “no” to "missile defense" was a completely meaningless, PR gesture with no real or practical significance. The fact is that Canada's government did not do anything at all to stop the many already existing forms of Canadian complicity in “missile defense.” Neither did if prevent further participation in this U.S.-led weapons development program.
- Press for Conversion #57
October 2005 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 This issue contains more, original COAT research on Canadian contributions to the creation, development and deployment of "missile defense" weaponry, with a particular focus on sea-based systems within the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) program.
- Privatizing Social Security: Who Wins?
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Over the years, there have been numerous attempts and proposals to privatize the social security system. It was a key Republican platform item in the 2000 election. The idea was subsequently thwarted by the small matter of the stock market bust that wiped out $8 trillion of market value, and caused a 60% drop in the NASDAQ over the first two years of Bush's first term.
- Problems of Autonomism
Strategies for the Latin American Left Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Since the mid-1990s, autonomist politics has gained influence in Latin America. Its theorists are attentively listened to and their practical proposals awaken great interest. But this scenario has begun to change with the appearance of new nationalist and center-left governments. The rise of Lula, Kirchner, and Tabaré, the increased strength of Chávez, the resurgence of Fidel, and the shift of López Obrador changes the playing field that favoured the expansion of libertarian theories.
- Progressive Frames for Taxes
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2005 As progressives, we do not believe that taxes are necessarily an affliction. Instead, we think of taxes as investments that give us dividends.
- Proletarian management: Informal workplace organization - Kämpa Tillsammans
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Published: 2007 Interesting article about informal workplace organising, management tactics and suggestions for workers to build power on the job.
- Punctuation Marks: A Story of Class Struggle
From 1905 to Our Time Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 An essay on the relevance of the 1905 revolution in Russia.
- Race Against Time
Searching for Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Published: 2006 This book is a compilation of the 2005 Massey Lectures on the topic of the Millennium Development Goals, with a special focus on AIDS in Africa. Lewis' lectures are personal and passionate in their denunciation of the international community's response to the AIDS pandemic and poverty in Africa.
- Racism & Conflict at Southern Illinois
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 I teach on a campus that prides itself on its racial diversity; Southern Illinois University is consistently ranked in the top ten among predominantly white campuses in graduation rates for African Americans. Yet the university has trouble confronting racial issues, and has no published policy on racial harassment.
- Racist Outrage at UMass-Amherst
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Over the past decade, students around the country have fought a conservative backlash on college campuses that has sought to reverse many gains won in the 1970s and 1980s. Along with attacks on labor studies, women's studies, and progressive student organizations, this has also included efforts to roll back affirmative action policies and programs for students of color.
- Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers
Conversations with Jewish Critics of Isreal Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 This is a collection of interviews, edited, introduced, and annotated by Farber, a member of Jews Against The Occupation. The contributors are among the leading American Jewish critics of Zionism and of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. The book articualtes the reason behind the dissent and a vocbulary and framework to express it.
- The Ramallah Concert
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2005 Published: 2006 This concert by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra took place in August of 2005 in the Palestinian Territory in the city of Ramallah and includes repertoire that Daniel Barenboim is famous for, such as Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin & Viola and the ""Nimrod"" variation from Elgar's ""Enigma Variations."" Also includes a feature-length documentary: ""Knowledge is the Beginning"", which was filmed over a six-year period and tells the story of Barenboim's development of the orchestra through interviews, rehearsal and concert excerpts.
- Reading Red: Art & Social Revolution
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Throughout much of the 20th century, distinguished painters and muralists were habitually adjoined to revolutionary movements, sometimes producing monumental works expressive of socialist dreams, as well as of the aims and struggles of working people and anti-fascist fighters. One thinks immediately of Spain’s Pablo Picasso (1881- 1973), Mexico’s Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), and the Russian avant-garde of the early Soviet Union.
- Reading the "unreadable" Marx
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Many who have not read Marx have heard that he is “unreadable,” but in this article Humphery McQueen celebrates the colour and humour of Marx’s writing, the use of metaphor, paradox, pun, irony, classical allusion and all the devices of the writer’s art. True, there are passages! the endless manipulation of prices and quantities of coats and cloth in Capital which often add little to the point already made, the obsessive, almost paranoiac bombast of works like Herr Vogt, but some of his prose ranks with the best of its kind, and should be enjoyed. It seems that Marx used these literary devices to achieve a depth of analysis which the normal “scientific” mode of exposition could never achieve.
- The Rebellion in Bolivia
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 From the inspiring rebellion of the indigenous and popular classes of the Bolivian altiplano (high plateau),(1) the eruption of the 690,000-strong shantytown of El Alto, and the popular neighborhoods in the hillsides of the capital La Paz in the “Gas War” of October 2003, emerged the “October Agenda,” a list of popular demands to remake the country in the name of the poor and the indigenous majority.
- Rebellions and Black Wealth
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 What is a working-class family’s most valuable asset? What does every family seek to own?
- Rebels, Reds, Radicals
Rethinking Canada's Left History Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 McKay looks at the history of the left in Canada as a series of experiments in "living otherwise" -- efforts to work out ways of life and thought strategically opposed to the prevailing liberal-capitalist order.
- Reclaiming the Ivory Tower
Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 An organizing handbook for contingent faculty.It examines the situation of adjunct professors in U.S. higher education today and puts forward an agenda around which they can mobilize to transform their jobs - and their institutions.
- Remembering a Revolutionary Artist: Vlady Presente!
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Vlady Kibalchich, born in Petrograd, Russia in June 1920, died on July 21, 2005 at home (in his studio) in Cuernavaca, Mexico after a difficult battle with cancer which began as a melanoma, but spread to his brain. He was 85.
- Revolutionary Centennial: Guyana's 1905 Rebellion
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 1905 was a landmark year in the history of Guyana, as it was for several places around the world. In Russia, the Tsar and his troops shot workers delivering a petition in St. Petersburg. In Bengal there were communal shootings; in South West Africa the German massacre of the Herero people was in full progress.
- Right and Wrong Responses to Palestinian Suicide Bombers
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The Israeli government hypocritically seizes upon every suicide bombing to justify the far greater Israeli state terror against Palestinians. To side with Israel in this hypocrisy is as morally bankrupt as it would have been to side with slave owners or the genocidal U.S. cavalry or the apartheid South African government because of objections to terrorism.
- Right to Life - Ghouls and the Schiavo Case
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Exploiting the Terri Schiavo tragedy.
- Right-Wing Thought Police Assault Free Speech on Campus
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The Orwellian campaign to portray the expression of views in the university that run contrary to those ruling the country as a lack of "academic freedom."
- Rights and Freedoms State Fear The Global attack on rights
New Internationalist March 2005 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 A look into rights and freedoms, the connection to occupation, and their state in different parts of the world.
- The rise of humanism and secularism in Iran
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The backlash and opposition in Iran is at its essence strongly humanist, secularist and modern. You can see it clearly in the rational, popular, and spontaneous acts and the
establishment of hundreds of organisations outside government structures and restrictions that are non-religious and purely for the defence of the human being via reliance on human will.
- Rogue State
A Guide to the World's Only Superpower Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 A mini-encyclopedia of the numerous un-humanitarian acts perpetrated by the United States since the end of the Second World War.
- Rosa Luxemburg & the Mass Strike
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The Russian revolution of 1905 sparked strikes and protests all over Central Europe. In Germany the workers took an active interest in the Russian situation and demanded the presence of the SPD’s (Social Democratic Party) inspiring speaker, Rosa Luxemburg. For Luxemburg, the upsurge in strikes symbolized the revolutionary spirit of the working class. She became increasingly disillusioned and frustrated, however, with the SPD’s lack of support and the Trade Unions’ attempts to prevent strikes.
- Ruling Canada
Corporate Cohesion and Democracy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- Ruling Canada: Corporate Cohesion and Democracy
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Ruling Canada critically examines Canada's "economic elite" -- a collection of the country's richest and most powerful individuals, many of whom preside over Canada's largest corporations. Brownlee argues that this corporate elite is increasingly unified and class conscious. As a direct result, a broad array of state policies and programs have been cut and/or implemented which serve the interests of this elite minority at the expense of most Canadian citizens.
- Said, Edward, Critical Notes on
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Edward Said was admired by the anti-imperialist left for his courageous defence of Palestinian rights. However, Irfan Habib argues that unfortunately Said's scholarly work, notably his major work 'Orientalism,' was confused and sloppy to be point of being unethical.
- Salmon Wars
The Battle for the West Coast Salmon Fishery Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 The history of the west coast salmon fishery and the recent controversies that have surrounded it.
- San Francisco Transit Fight
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005
- Sanctions Against the Israeli Occupation: It's Time
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 A call from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) for sanctions as the next logical step in the global campaign to end the Occupation.
- Scamming Social Security
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Susan Weissman interviews Michael Hudson. Susan Weissman, an editor of Against the Current, interviewed author Michael Hudson this past April on her program “Beneath the Surface” on radio station KPFK, Pacifica in Los Angeles. Many thanks to Walter Tanner for transcribing. The following is an abridged and edited text of the interview.
- Margaret Schirmer Remembered
Against The Current vol. 114 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Progressive Pilipinos lost a steadfast friend in Margaret (Peggy) Schirmer when she died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 8 at the age of 89.
- The Second Fall of Aristide
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Many observers in the progressive community have argued that the forced departure into exile of Haiti’s former President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, had little to do with his own policy failures or the country’s domestic class structure. Instead they blame the international community and especially American imperialism. While there is some truth to this argument, it is ultimately flawed; it ignores Haitian agency and exaggerates the omnipotence of U.S. hegemony.
- Setting the Record Straight
Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Critics Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 There is a hope a bi-national soluation will be brought about through political discussion and agitation within both left and liberal circles, especially within the United States, a much less timid Israeli peace movement, and a Left within Israel and among US pro-peace Jewish activists, that courageously embraces the possibility of bi-nationalism and, of course, a Palestinian resistance that works to overcome the nationalism within its own ranks and forges a democratic alternative to the Arafat fraud.
- The settlers' retreat was the theatre of the cynical
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The settlers' retreat from Gaza was the theatre of the cynical.
- Sexing Susan Sontag
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The death of Susan Sontag, one of the most acclaimed intellectuals of her time, on December 28, 2004 immediately inspired controversies about her sexuality. Many writers rightfully questioned major newspapers’ studied silence in their obituaries on her relationships with women.
- Shell Shock
The Secrets and Spin of an Oil Giant Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense
Find Your Inner Chomsky Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Published: 2008 What must a citizen in a democracy know to make the word democracy meaningful? Baillargeon provides readers with the tools to see through everyday spin and jargon -- from politics to advertising, from mysticism to news reporting.
- Shorter Hours Now!
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The bumper stickers say, "Unions: the folks who brought you the weekend." For almost a century, the success of workers' drive to shorten working hours and increase leisure time was considered a sign of progress and humanity. After all, "we work to live," not "live to work."
- Should People Opposed to Bigotry and Anti-Semitism Support Israel?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 That the Zionist project is bad for Jews as well as for non-Jews is an idea which, for many decades, has been suppressed. It is time good people -- of all faiths -- rediscovered it.
- Silenced
International Journalists Expose Media Censorship Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Published: 2008 What happens to journalists who expose uncomfortable truths? How far are journalists prepared to go in order to report a difficult story? Silenced provides answers to these questions with the stories of journalists who risked their careers so that the public might be informed.
- Simple Truths, Hard Problems
Some thoughts on terror, justice, and self-defence Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Chomsky discusses the truth behind commonly rejected moral truisms. This rejection, according to Chomsky, has serious human consequences.
- Sir! No Sir!
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2005 A documentary about the anti-war movement within the ranks of the United States Armed Forces during the Vietnam War.
- Smooth Talking! Explore the Paid Speaking Market
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Becoming a professional speaker.
- Snapshots of the Bolivarian Revolution
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 This summer I traveled to Venezuela with my family and these are some impressions. Thanks to my friend Fred Rosen for correcting some errors of fact and offering some useful information. My colleague Susan Paulson was also kind enough to read and comment, as was Deborah James of Global Exchange. I alone am responsible for the views presented here.
- The Social Security Non-Crisis
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Chomsky reveals the conception of Social Security trying to be sold by Bush administration. He claims such reformers encourage people to think solely of their own interests rather than caring for the community.
- Socialist Register 2005
Volume 41: The Empire Reloaded Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005
- Socialist Register 2006:
Volume 42: Telling the Truth Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 A collection of essays that examines the difficulties of illuminating the degenerative and secretive nature of public life.
- Soldiers in Revolt
GI Resistance during the Vietnam War Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 A definitive account of GI resistance in the Vietnam War. With an introduction by Howard Zinn.
- Solidarity with Iraqi Labor
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The first delegation of Iraqi labor leaders to visit the United States—and one of the few Iraqi groups of any sort not sponsored by the U.S. government—addressed more than 70 meetings across the country this June. The group included representatives from the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) and General Union of Oil Employees (GUOE).
- Sports & Resistance
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The two most famous fists in American history belong to Tommie Smith and John Carlos. In 1968, Smith and Carlos finished gold and bronze, respectively, in the 200-meter dash competition in the Olympic Games in Mexico City. Just months before, the two African-American men, both members of the Olympic Committee to Protect Human Rights (OPHR), had been considering a boycott of the games with their fellow OPHR members.
- Stop the War
The Story of Britain's Biggest Mass Movement Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- A Story About Making a Sex Movie
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Politicians try to impose censorship by the back door, by imposing record-keeping obligations that are impossible to comply with.
- Street children
New Internationalist April 2005 - #377 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 A look at the lives of street children around the world. Discussion of the challenges they face day-to-day and what some are forced to do to survive.
- Studying State & Capitalist Development
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Given the dominant neoliberal ideology of our times, it is assumed in most quarters that state intervention in the economies of the post-World War II era was an utter fiasco. This argument is taken as even more self-evident in the case of the countries of the capitalist periphery or “Third World.”
- Surviving When the State Disappeared: Community vs. Katrina
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Suzi Weissman interviews Mike Davis. Suzi Weissman interviewed author Mike Davis for her "Beneath the Surface" program on KPFK, Pacifica radio in Los Angeles. The discussion was transcribed by Alice Taylor and edited for publication.
- Targeting Disability
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 In addition to old-age benefits, it is often forgotten that Social Security provides survivor and disability insurance protections as well. The privatization debate has overlooked the fate of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) as a part of the program's family of benefits.
- Telling it like it isn't
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Let's call a colony a colony, let's call occupation what it is, let's call a wall a wall.
- Ten Thousand Roses
The Making of a Feminist Revolution Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 Using interviews with many feminist activists, Rebick provides an oral history of feminism in Canada from the 1960s through the 1990s.
- Those Bush Two Blues
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The imperial investiture of George W. Bush was celebrated with corporate-financed balls through the night. Half a world away in Iraq, the empire burned, and bodies from the Indian Ocean tsunami continued to be retrieved from the surf and the muck of shattered villages from Aceh to Sri Lanka to India to Somalia. The cost of the coronation, a few tens of millions of dollars (but who's counting?), could have paid for a warning system to save the lives of many of the 250-300,000 victims.
- Torture by Taser
When police abuse their newest 'nonlethal' toy, people die. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005
- Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered
New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 This collection of essays underscores the interlocking relationship between prostitution, migration and trafficking. They reveal a deep seated anxiety about borders, economic resources and the fragility of the nation-state. Far from from helping women and children become free from explotaiton, the obession with women sex workers has led to the detriment of all by excluding the questions of human rights, freedon of movement, basics such as food and shelter and a living wage. The book is a call for all those involved -- governments, aid workers and trafickees -- to go beyond a paternalistic and colonial view of these issues and deal with them in a spirit of cooperation.
- Understanding Imperialism: Old and New Dominion
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 It is a commonplace today that we have entered a “new age of imperialism.” The emergence of complex world money markets, increasingly integrated global production systems, aggressively neoliberal policies imposed by the likes of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and the belligerent militarism of the American state — all these are recognized as new modalities of capitalist empire.
- Understanding the Venezuelan Revolution
Hugo Chavez Talks to Marta Harnecker Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 The exchange between Harnecker and Chávez brings to light the process of thought and action behind the public pronouncements and policies of state.
- The United Nations at 60 Upside dowm
New Internationalist January/February 2005 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2005 A look into the United Nations system and its role in history.
- Urgent Appeal from the Philippines: End Violence in the Movement
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Dear Friends, recently, our executive director Walden Bello was named by the key organ of the Communist Party of the Philippines as a "counterrevolutionary" in a list that included both living and dead activists. After consultation with a number of people, we have reasons to believe that this represents a real threat to Walden's security.
- U.S. Labor in Crisis
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 There is today a rare open debate going on within the U.S. Labor Movement over its future. Rarer still is the fact that much of it appears on competing internet blogs. The current debate, provoked by some within Labor’s national leadership, has been almost exclusively focused on “restructuring” and resource reallocation. But the leader-led debate has failed to discuss the more fundamental question of the “culture” of unionism in America today.
- U.S. Law: Religious or Secular?
Against The Current vol. 118 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 “The Founding Fathers,” my fundamentalist Christian friend once declared to me in the midst of a rather heated argument, “were Christians and created a Christian country.” “No, you’ve got it all wrong,” I sputtered and hastened to explain, “Jefferson was a Deist.”
- Using the Holocaust
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The crowd of world leaders visiting the new Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem attests to the strength of Israel’s position in the West. Israel is often criticized in the home countries of these leaders, but many Israelis and Jews will, as usual, attribute such criticism to anti-Semitism.
- Views from the Steel Plant
Voices and Photographs from 100 Years of Making Steel in Cape Breton Island Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2005
- Vigilante Man, 2005 Style
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The vigilantes are back. In the 1850s they lynched Irishmen in San Francisco; in the 1870s they terrorized the Chinese throughout the West; in the 1910s they murdered striking Wobblies in California, Washington and Montana; in the 1920s they organized “Bash a Jap” campaigns; and in the 1930s they greeted the Joads and other Dust Bowl refugees to California with teargas and buckshot.
- Vlady: ¡Presente!
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 He belonged to a unique generation who saw clearly, fought tenaciously, but were defeated. Vlady was generous of spirit and intellect, an artist and a revolutionary to his core; he refused compromise yet socialized in wide circles of poets, politicians, writers, artists and dignitaries.
- The Wall Must Fall
End the Occupation and Violence in Israel-Palestine Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2005 Published: 2007 A resource for interested union and community members featuring voices from the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements often shut out of the mainstream media. By highlighting the progressive peace movement, The Wall Must Fall demonstrates that this issue is not a Jewish vs. Palestinian one, but one of basic human rights.
- Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2005 A documentary film about the largest company on earth, featuring the stories and everyday lives of families and communities struggling to survive in a Wal-Mart world.
- Wanted a Leader for America
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Chomsky depicts how the issues concerning the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), including the pre-determined risk of 9/11, went ignored under the Bush Administration which focused instead upon global domination ambitions.
- War, Globalisation and Reproduction
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005
- Wasáse
Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 An integration of anarchist thinking with indigenous theory.
- Water War in Bolivia
Against The Current vol. 117 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 ¡Cochabamba! is a window on the potential for liberation, and on the strategic challenges, of our times. Oscar Olivera, one of the key leaders of the struggle, and Tom Lewis, a member of the editorial board of International Socialist Review (U.S.), have done a tremendous service in writing this book. Although some basics of the Cochabamba story and considerations on strategy are recounted here, you can only get the Full Monty by reading the book.
- We Must Act Now to Prevent Another Hiroshima -- or Worse
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Noam Chomsky explains why society should be concerned about the threat of self-destruction, citing, for example, the failure of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- We need to be told
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 When journalists report propaganda instead of the truth, the consequences can be catastrophic - as one largely forgotten instance demonstrates.
- "We Went into the Mall and Began 'Looting'"
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Peter Berkowitz is a long-time Monthly Review subscriber. He was in New Orleans bringing his son Ernesto to begin his freshman year at Loyola when they were caught in the hurricane. Peter and Ernesto spent five days on the street by the Convention Center.
- Wealth, Income, and Power
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we can use these two distributions as power indicators.
- What Ford did to the Ramapough Mountain Indians
Ford, the feds, the mob: Making a wasteland Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Ford repeatedly dumped in poor communities and failed to clean up its mess. Documents reveal that Ford executives knew as early as 34 years ago that its waste had contaminated a stream that feeds the Wanaque Reservoir. They show that the company tried to evade responsibility by presenting tainted land as a “gift” to the state. Organized crime played a key role in a vast assault on the environment. An analysis of public records and interviews with truckers who hauled Ford’s waste shows mob-controlled contractors dumped anywhere they could get away with it. They bribed, threatened, even murdered to maintain control of Ford’s trash.
- What Will It Take To Win?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Our current strategy engages people in an arena - history and events in Palestine/Israel - far from their direct experience. We are the experts on a topic they know little about. We ask people to learn from us about something far away, and to take some local action (like voting for divestment) to express their agreement with us about it. There is a limit to how many people will be interested in doing this. A revolutionary strategy, in contrast, engages people in the arena which they know a lot about, and into which they have tremendous insights from direct personal experience.
- Whose Health Care?
Challenging the Corporate Struggle to Rule Our System Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005
- Why We've Been Targeted
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Jose Maria Sison must take us for fools. He and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) leadership compile a list of living and assassinated “counterrevolutionaries,” disseminate it among CPP members, then claim this is simply a harmless exercise in information dissemination!
- Winds of Change: The Daughters of Bilitis and Lesbian Organizing
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 A history of Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first national lesbian organization in the United States.
- Witch Hunt vs. Academic Freedom
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 I appear before you today because of a campaign of intimidation to which I have been subjected for over three years. While this campaign was started by certain members of the Columbia faculty, and by outside forces using some of my students as conduits, it soon expanded to include members of the Columbia administration, the rightwing tabloid press, the Israeli press, and more locally the Columbia Spectator. Much of this preceded the David Project film “Columbia Unbecoming,” and the ensuing controversy.
- Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005 The stories of the hard-rock miners’ shooting wars, Elizabeth Gurly Flynn (the “Rebel Girl”), the first sit-down strikes and Free Speech fights, Emma Goldman and the struggle for birth control access, bohemian radicals John Reed and Louise Bryant, field-hand revolts and lumber workers’ strikes, wartime witch hunts, government prosecutions and mob lynching, Mexican-American uprisings in Baja, and Mexican peasant revolts led by Wobblies, hilarious and sentimental songs created and later revived—all are here, and much more.
- The Wobblies Heritage
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 The cover of this Against the Current issue features something new that is also a century old: a Wobbly icon. This one is an image, on a banner (one of twelve made by labor muralist Mike Alewitz), foregrounding the old “Sabo-Tabby” of sabotage, backgounding the striking coal miners’ tactic of putting nails in the path of cars and trucks bringing scabs to work.
- Wobblies on the Southern Home Front
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Most readers of Against the Current know the Industrial Workers of the World by their imaginative and daring radical tactics and campaigns in the Northeast and the West — the Free Speech campaigns; the Lawrence, Massachusetts Bread and Roses textile strike, made colorful by its propaganda, and especially the pageants and children’s evacuation that brought the strike publicity; their organizing of itinerant workers and hoboes; and the Wobblies’ clarion calls for direct action and sabotage on the job, as well as loudmouthed boasts of violent action in response to the bosses’ violence.
- Women in the Venezuelan Revolution
Against The Current vol. 115 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 In the referendum of 15 August, 2004 Venezuelans reaffirmed Hugo Chávez as president by a vote of 59% to 41%. We know that the 59% was overwhelmingly the voice of the poorest, not only reaffirming Chávez in power but insisting that the program of change continue and increase.
- Workers Power and the Russian Revolution
A review of Maurice Brinton's For Workers Power Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005
- Working Toward Whiteness
How America's Immigrants Became White Resource Type: Book First Published: 2005
- WSF Youth Camp
Against The Current vol. 116 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 First, a picture of the World Social Forum’s Youth Camp in Porto Alegre, Brazil: Imagine an unending sea of tents and tarps, hammocks hanging from the trees-all of it baking under the sun. Dirt paths divide the camp and are lined by a colorful array of vendors hawking soap, food (“Refri, agua!” was the constant chant), marijuana plants, and jewelry.
- Zimbabwe: Mbeki to Mugabe's Rescue
Against The Current vol. 119 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2005 Consider these wise words from a leading African National Congress politician: "As we speak, the neoliberal orthodoxy sits as a tyrant on the throne of political-economic policymaking. The dominant social and economic forces are doing their utmost to hegemonize the discourse — both materially and in respect of how developmental processes are to be institutionalized and theorized. Among other things, they use such transnational governmental organizations as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization to shape the discourse within which policies are defined, the terms and concepts that circumscribe what can be thought and done."
2004
- Abu Ghraib: The Politics of Torture
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 A series of essays on the Abu Ghraib prison and the political climate surrounding the Bush Administration's intervention into Iraq.
- Abusive Conditions as China Goes Capitalist
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The second meeting of the 10th National People’s Congress, held in March 2004, made some amendments to the Constitution. The clause “citizens’ legitimate private property will not be violated” has been added to further defend private property rights and inheritance rights.
- An Action a Day
Keeps Global Capitalism Away Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004
- Action Will Be Taken
Left Anti-Intellectualism and Its Discontents Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Marxism's decline isn't just an intellectual concern -- it too has practical effects. If you lack any serious understanding of how capitalism works, then it's easy to delude yourself into thinking that moral appeals to the consciences of CEOs and finance ministers will have some effect. You might think that central banks' habit of provoking recessions when the unemployment rate gets too low is a policy based on a mere misunderstanding. You might think that structural adjustment and imperial war are just bad lifestyle choices.
- Agent of social change: A history of Canadian University Press
MA Thesis, Ryerson and York University, 2004 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004
- AIPAC: Israel's U.S. Spy Den
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The socialist Left must remain clear in its avoidance of a conspiratorial view of history. The entire U.S. political spectrum in the aftermath of the 2000 election, and especially since 9/11, has been awash with conspiracy theories. With deep roots in our political culture, ahistorical conspiratorial views of the workings of the world, devoid of any class understanding or a structural and institutional analysis of what we live in, come bubbling to the surface, especially during times of "national crisis."
- Amer Jubran: From Exile to Exile
Against The Current vol. 108 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 In January 2004, Palestinian activist Amer Jubran will leave the United States, where he has lived for most of the past 15 years. He will return to Jordan, where he grew up in a family already exiled once from their homeland.
- America Beyond Capitalism
Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Published: 2006 Alperovitz goes beyond the confines of orthodox thinking, imagines a new way of living together, and offers a set of practical ideas that promise a truly democratic society.
- Anarchism
Or the revolutionary movement of the 21st century Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004
- Anarchism, Marxism and the Bonapartist State
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 A critique of Marxism, with emphasis on its alleged obsession with economics.
- Anger, Sadness, Patience, Determination
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 During the fall of 2002 I had heard the personal stories of two Palestinians. One told me about her grandfather's ancient olive trees that had been confiscated and then chopped down by the Israeli government.
- Another World Is Possible
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The period since George Bush Sr. declared a "new world order" has been marked by growing global inequality and war. The failures of neoliberalism mean that more than fifty countries have seen declining per capita income in recent years, while millions every year die from easily preventable diseases and lack of access to safe drinking water. The costs of the last fifteen years have been immense, whether for those cut off from electricity in Durban, sacked from factories in Mexico City, or bombed in Baghdad.
- Another world is possible if...
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Susan George suggests that we can create a new and better world -- if we act together to bring about changes. She discusses the ifs and hows.
- Anti-Vaccination Fever
The Shot Hurt Around the World Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Sensationalist media, religious fanatics, and alternative medical practitioners fanned the fires created by questionable research to spawn worldwide epidemics of a disease that has almost been forgotten.
- Bad Marxism
Capitalism and Cultural Studies Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Cultural Studies commonly claims to be a radical discipline. This book thinks that's a bad assessment. After an introduction critiquing the so-called 'Marxism' of the academy, Hutnyk provides detailed critical analyses of the approaches and theorists of cultural studies.
- Black Liberation and the American Dream
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Race has always been the most visible source of division in the United States. Slavery, segregation, and the current ethnic profiling of the “Arab-looking” are just a few of examples of racism in American history.
- Black and White on the Inside
Against The Current vol. 112 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 In April 1993, Lucasville, Ohio, was the site of the longest prison siege in U.S. history during which lives were lost — longer even than the far more infamous 1971 Attica rebellion.
- Born into Brothels
Calcutta's Red Light Kids Resource Type: Film First Published: 2004 The chronicling of two documentary filmmakers and their time in Sonagchi, Calcutta and the relationships they developed with children of prostitutes who work the city's notorious red light district.
- British Labour Today
Against The Current vol. 111 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The glory days of the British Labour Party are long behind it. Labour won the 1945 General Election and used the next six years in office to nationalize the Bank of England, the railway network, electricity, the steel industry and road transport.
- California Home Care: Terminated!
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Question: What's the best health care plan in the U.S. Answer: Don't get sick!
- The Capitalist City or the Self-Managed City?
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The opposite of gentrification should not be decay and abandonment but the democratization of housing. Community land trusts may be a way of working towards this goal.
- The Caribbean Left's Legacy
Against The Current vol. 112 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Sara Abraham interviews Eusi Kwayana of The Working People's Alliance (WPA) in Guyana. The WPA continued to organize and build its ranks through a democratic socialist multi racial agenda, but has continuously been marginalized by the two party system, wining only one or two seats in each election.
- Cascadia Rising to Save the Forest
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Protests in nine cities across California, Oregon and Washington took place February 23rd, coordinated by the Cascadia Rising Project, in response to the Bush Administration's removal of protections on federal lands for over 100 rare and uncommon species associated with the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.
- The Case for an Alternative
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 A statement by Solidarity: The strategy of “the lesser evil” hasn't worked, and less than ever will it work today. The loyalty of labor, racial minorities, women, LGBT people and other progressives — expressed in massive campaign contributions and large numbers of votes — comes at a very low cost for the “New Democrats,” who know perfectly well that no matter how far to the right they move, the advocates of “the lesser evil” remain their captives.
- A Century's Feminist Journey
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 International feminism -- and feminist internationalism -- have existed since at least the early 20th century, but forms of women's organizing and mobilizing have varied over the past 100 years. Since the 1980s, a new transnational feminism -- encompassing Third World countries as well as the core countries -- has emerged which requires explanation.
- Neil Chacker, 1942-2004
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 During the Vietnam war, one Colonel Reberry at Fort Lewis, Washington, posted a threatening notice forbidding the distribution of material that would promote "disloyalty and discontent." A response shortly appeared on the same bulletin board, written by GI Neil Chacker, an American Servicemen's Union organizer.
- Challenged Books List
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 A partial list of books subjected to censorship attempts in Canada from the early 1980s to 2003.
- China Mao or never
New Internationalist September 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004 A look at the communist government China and the people's dream of free speech.
- Chinese Workers' Resistance
Against The Current vol. 111 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Norm Diamond interviews Tim Pringle, who lives in Hong Kong, where he participates as an observer and also as a member of the editorial board of the Chinese-language magazine Globalization Monitor.
- The Chinese Working Women's Network
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 There is no doubt that China is growing rapidly in importance in the global economy. China has now surpassed the United States as the largest destination in the world for foreign investment. While many U.S. businesses (and other multinationals) look eagerly to both the large Chinese market and the very low wages of Chinese workers, the U.S. labor movement has been focused on stopping the flow of U.S. production and jobs to China.
- Colombia Against All Odds
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Despite historic ties to the inmost nexus of cocaine trafficking and aramilitarism, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez is Washington's leading exponent of the “war on drugs and terror” in the Western hemisphere.
- The Coming Plague of Slums
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Mass death may be coming to a neighborhood near you, and the Department of Homeland Security will be helpless to prevent it. The terrorist in this case will be a mutant offspring of influenza A subtype H5N1: the explosively spreading avian virus that the World Health Organization (WHO) worries will be the progenitor of a deadly global plague.
- The Conquest of Bread
150 Years of Abribusiness in California Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 California has been the world's most advanced agricultural zone that not only out-produces every state in America, but also most countries. Its success has come at significant costs for a family-farm region like the Midwest manipulated and exploited to serve modern business interests.
- The Contract Struggle at an Auto Parts Plant
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 A new t-shirt has appeared at the American Axle and Manufacturing (AAM) plant where I work, and it is selling like hotcakes. The hi-lo driver shuttling parts to my job was wearing it.
- Control Room
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2004 Shows the coverage of the 2003 Iraqi war from the perspective of Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news outlet.
- Co-operatives Bite back! The return of the co-op
New Internationalist June 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004 A look at the issues regarding and the basic principles of a co-op. Discussion of the history of the international co-operative movement and information on how to set up a co-op.
- The Corporation
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2004 The Corporation explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time.
- DARE's Struggles in Rhode Island
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Let's start in a scene from last summer that will be familiar, not exactly but approximately, to many older readers: the labor awards banquet. The setting is a "casino"— in the 1880s sense of a banquet hall, used for wedding receptions and assorted fraternal functions for six generations — set in a venerable public park in a working-class neighborhood, long ago designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.
- Dark Age Ahead
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 A dark age is a culture's dead end. Jacobs argues that our society is facing the coming of a dark age.
- Deconstructing Derrida
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 There is little doubt that Derrida was an erudite and learned philosopher, but his erudition was bent towards a destructive aim. In him the unreason of the age found its cunning articulator.
- Democracy Is the Key
Against The Current vol. 112 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Ann Menasche interviews Peter Camejo: Against the Current: What is the importance of Nader-Camejo campaign in 2004?
- The Destabilization of Haiti
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 A short summary of the illegal and suppressed details of American intervention in Haiti during the 1990's and early 2000's.
- Disciplining Dissent
The Curbing of Free Expression in Academia and the Media Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 A look into the restrictions on free speech in the media and academia in Canada, the US and Europe.
- The Disconnect in US Democracy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Noam Chomsky describes how the American people are excluded from political participation, claiming that action must also come before and after elections and not only once every four years.
- Dobbin replies to Green Party
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Murray Dobbin replies to the Green party.
- The 'Dollar' Crisis, and Us
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 A capitalist crisis like the current one resembles a poker game where the table is swept clean and all cards and chips must be redistributed for the game to continue at all. This could happen as an 'orderly bankruptcy proceeding' but it will most likely happen (as it has always happened in the past) chaotically, through economic blowout, class confrontation, and war.
- Don't Think of an Elephant
Know Your Values and Frame the Debate Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Lakoff explains how conservatives think, and how to counter their arguments. He outlines in detail the traditional American values that progressives hold, but are often unable to articulate. Lakoff also breaks down the ways in which conservatives have framed the issues, and provides examples of how progressives can reframe the debate.
- Dorothy Day
Champion of the Poor Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004
- Elections & the Democrats
Against The Current vol. 112 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Revolutionary socialist political strategy is based on the fundamental idea of working class self-emancipation. This means that working people and the oppressed can generate the power they need to change the world only through collective self-mobilization and class self-organization.
- Emma Goldman: A life of controversy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 More than six decades after her death, the anarchist Emma Goldman still stirs passionate political debate. Goldman made headlines in January 2003 when University of California, Berkeley, officials refused to allow the university's Emma Goldman Papers Project to send a fundraising appeal that quoted Goldman speaking out against war and for free speech. University officials said the appeal was too "political" to appear during the Bush administration's ramp-up to war in Iraq. Researchers at the Papers Project, which houses Goldman's personal and public papers, refused to concede in the face of university threats and organized protests against the university's suppression of free speech that forced the university to back down.
- Empire of Lies and Torture
Against The Current vol. 111 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The prohibition of torture in international conventions is absolute. There are no exceptions for so-called "ticking bombs," for "high-value terrorists" or "illegal enemy combatants" or similar improvised fictions—or for extraterritorial prison camps (Guantanamo) where the jailers exercise absolute power but somehow disclaim the legal responsibilities of "sovereignty."
- The End of Guzzlemainia
Against The Current vol. 111 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 "The world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil. If we manage somehow to overcome the shock by shifting the burden to coal and natural gas, the two other primary fossil fuels, life may go on more or less as it has been until we start to run out of all fossil fuels by the end of this century. And by the time we have burned up all that fuel, we may well have rendered the planet unfit for human life. Even if human life does go on, civilization as we know it will not survive, unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels."
- The End of Suburbia
Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2004 Documentary about the Peak Oil theory and its implications for the America way of life.
- Ending Poverty As We Know It
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The phenomenon of local living wage campaigns sweeping the country is one of the few causes for celebration in American politics. Led by unions, community organizations and religious groups, Americans are demanding that their local tax dollars fund jobs that pay a living wage.
- Equality
New Internationalist January/February 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004 A look at theories on the thought of equality and its progress in society.
- Eyewitness Chile: After 30 Years
Against The Current vol. 108 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 When I returned to Chile for the first time in 32 years to attend a week-long seminar called “Thirty Years -- Allende Lives! Popular Alternatives and the Socialist Perspective in Latin America,” I found myself entering the chilling atmosphere of the world's first laboratory for militarily imposed economic neoliberalsm.
- A Feminist Reader for Today
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Each time I teach History of Feminist Thought at my university, in order to highlight the limitations of a gender-only feminism and to exemplify the strengths of socialist feminism, I show my students "Salt of the Earth" (1954), a deeply moving and inspiring film based on a successful "predominantly Mexican-American" miners' strike in which the miners' picketing was blocked by the Taft-Hartley injunction.
- Fighting Subpoenas and Gag Orders in Iowa
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 More than two months have passed since federal officials withdrew the grand jury subpoenas against four peace activists and Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The withdrawal of the subpoenas and the gag order against Drake came amidst a firestorm of protest, not only from progressive and civil liberties lawyers and peace and justice activists from around the state and the country, but also from mainstream news media and elected politicians from both parties.
- The Follow-Up Telephone Call
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Making follow-up phone calls to the media.
- For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution! Part Two
How the Liberals and Reformists Derailed the Struggle for Integration Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 There is a lot of talk today about multiculturalism, diversity, whiteness and "racialized subjects" and other liberal jargon that essentially attempts to erase the centrality of anti-black racism and black oppression in racist capitalist America.
- Four Years of Disaster
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The second Intifada, now entering its fifth year, has seen the world distracted by events in Iraq, enabling Israel to continue violating Palestinians’ human rights with complete impunity.
- Free the Cuban Five!
Against The Current vol. 112 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Political times have emblematic cases. The ongoing Mumia case, Lynne Stewart’s current prosecution, and the two cases involving the U.S. and Cuban governments illuminate the reality of today’s politics in America, just as the Sacco/ Vanzetti case in the 1920s with respect to immigrants and anarchists or the McCarthite anti-communist Rosenberg case in the 1950s defined their eras.
- The Free Trade Game
New Internationalist December 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004 A look at free trade and and the effects of NAFTA. Discussion of the opposition to free trade and alternatives.
- Freeing the World to Death
Essays on the American Empire Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 A collection of essays written by William Blum, some of which were published over the past decade in various magazines and anthologies, some appeared in his regular internet newsletter: The Anti-Empire Report, some which appeared only on his website, and some written explicitly for this book.
- From Central America to Iraq
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Noam Chomsky bitterly criticizes the regular exclusion of America from the principle of universality and the impunity with which the nation acts.
- The Future of Food
Resource Type: Film/Video First Published: 2004 Explores the radical changes in our diet and our food in the last half century.
- Gag Rule
On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Dissent is democracy. Democracy is in trouble. Never before, Lapham argues, have voices of protest been so locked out of the mainstream conversation. A call to action in defense of one of the most important liberties, the right to raise our voices against the powers that be, and to have those voice heard.
- Gardening and food-growing guide
Personal advice and tips on growing your own fruit and vegetables to stay healthy and save money. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 We all know the advantages of organically produced food, but why should we have to spend a fortune on organic fruit and veg? It is often from miles away, over packed, expensive, a bit manky by the time we get it and in some areas only available from supermarkets.
- Gay Marriage Yes!
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Any doubts about the meaning of the struggle for the right of gay and lesbian marriage should have disappeared forever when Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco opened the marriage bureau at city hall to same-sex couples.
- German Social Democracy in Crisis
Against The Current vol. 112 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The Crisis in German Social Democratic Party (SPD) is now in a historic crisis, one that threatens its very existence as a part of the international progressive movement. Under the leadership of its chairman, Gerhard Schröder, who also heads the national coalition government with the Greens, the party has undertaken a series of neoliberal reforms that represent a sharp blow to its core constituency: Germany’s workers and the poor.
- Getting Ink for Your New Product
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Get media coverage of your product.
- Green Party Convention: A Party Divided
Against The Current vol. 112 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 In an election year when so many antiwar activists, progressives and even socialists are embracing the “anybody but Bush” (“ABB”) rationale for giving backhanded support to pro-war, pro-corporate John Kerry, the Green Party of the United States emerged from its June convention deeply divided.
- Guide to dealing with the press
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 An article with advice on all aspects of dealing with the mainstream press, including face-to-face, press releases, interviews, making complaints and more.
- The Health Care Crisis and Kerry-Bush
Against The Current vol. 111 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 A permanent crisis has plagued American health care since 1981. It began with Ronald Reagan, whose tax cuts led to cuts in Medicaid as well as more stringent eligibility rules. The crisis has continued, even through the boom years presided over by Bill Clinton, to the present.
- A History of Modern Palestine
One Land, Two Peoples Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 A history of the people of Palestine.
- Honoring Walt Sheasby
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Walt's passing is a triple loss. Personally he was a very dear friend. Second, as we are hearing, in many different ways he was a true stalwart activist, of immense energy and dedication.
- Hope in the Dark
Untold histories, wild possibilities Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Published: 2016 Solnit reminds us of how changed the world has been by the activism of the past five decades. She argues for hope - hope even in the dark. She offers a vision of cause-and-effect relations that provides new grounds for political engagement in the present.
- Housing guide
Advice on taking action to house yourself cheaply and know your rights Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Advice on taking action to house yourself cheaply and know your rights, in a time when buying a property is beyond many people, council housing is being sold off, rents are rising and hundreds of thousands are homeless.
- How America Determines Friends and Foes
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Bush II's approach to "ridding the world of evil" includes treating every nation harboring terrorists as terrorist states. Chomsky ponders what this standard would mean if applied to America.
- How 'diversity' breeds division
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Diversity training is supposed to help 'promote good relations' between different ethnic groups and capitalise on workforce diversity. However, there is warranted scepticism about whether such training alleviates tensions or exacerbates them. Much of the content of this training is overreliant on pop sociology and pseudo-therapeutic techniques. Participants are expected to talk about stereotypes they harbour deep in their subconscious, and disclose feelings of harassment and victimisation. Trainers claim to eliminate stereotypes in the workplace, yet in talking about 'different cultural perspectives' they end up generating new and more insidious stereotypes in their stead.
- How Strikers Educated Miami University
Against The Current vol. 108 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The cleaning workers, kitchen workers, and maintenance workers at Miami University of Ohio -- the people who make this place work because they work -- voted on Wednesday, October 8 to end their strike and return to their jobs.
- How to Build a Media List
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Often your desired target audiences are diverse so this should be clearly defined before beginning to build your media list.
- Hundreds of Proofs of God's Existence
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 From the Atheists of Silicon Valley Humor Page.
- Ideas for the Struggle
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2004 Published: 2016 A revision of Harnecker's 2004 collection of essays, examining the movements of the left and the challenges faced in organizing and furthering movements, edited for the US historical context.
- IMF World Bank More World Less Bank
New Internationalist March 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004 A look into the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and what they have done.
- The Impacts of Mountain Biking on Wildlife and People
A Review of the Literature Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 It is clear that mountain biking is harmful to some wildlife and people. No one, even mountain bikers, tries to deny that. Bikes create V-shaped ruts in trails, throw dirt to the outside on turns, crush small plants and animals on and under the trail, facilitate increased levels of human access into wildlife habitat, and drive other trail users (many of whom are seeking the tranquility and primitiveness of natural surroundings) out of the parks.
- Imperial Crusades
Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia: A Diary of Three Wars Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Iraq was just one of three major imperial crusades in the decade after 1992, orchestrated by a new generation of American politicians, both Democrat and Republican, who backed pre-emptive strikes to overthrow unruly regimes in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan under the pretext of humanitarian intervention. Imperial Crusades chronicles the lies that are now returning almost daily to haunt the liars in Washington and London, the secret agendas and the under-reported carnage of these wars.
- In Print: Maximizing Coverage in Community Newspapers
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 How to get coverage in community newspapers.
- In Search of Fatima
A Palestinian Story Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 A frank and intimate memoir by diaspora Palestinian Ghada Karmi, detailing her experiences of displacement, nostalgia and loss.
- In the name of GOD The abuses of religion
New Internationalist August 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004 Discusses the relationship between religion. The role of religion within political issues.
- Independent media guide
A guide with advice and information on developing your own media, from online and printed publications to speeches, flyposting and more. Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004
- Inequalities Are Unhealthy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The growing inequalities we are witnessing in the world today are having a very negative impact on the health and quality of life of its populations.
- Introduction to the Johnson-Forest Tendency and the Background to 'Facing Reality'
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004
- Inventing Human Rights: A History
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 A history of human rights, from the initial conceptualization that 'all men are created equal' to current ramifications.
- Inventing Tax Rage
Misinformation in the National Post Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 How the National Post created an agenda for the tax cuts that mostly benefits the wealthy.
- Inventing Tax Rage (excerpt)
Misinformation in the National Post Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Published: 2005 The propaganda campaign to invent "tax rage".
- Iran on the Verge of Revolution?
Against The Current vol. 108 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Interest in the political situation in Iran has grown noticeably in recent months. In large part, this is due to the far more aggressive policies of the current U.S. administration, which has used the attacks of September 11 as the excuse to intervene directly in the region and bring about “regime change” in accordance with its own longstanding interests.
- Is It Even Worthwhile Doing the Dishes? Canadians and the Nuclear Threat, 1945-1963
PhD Thesis, McGill University, 2004 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004
- Israel's Struggle Within
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 ATC interviews Uri Davis.
- It's the Law
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The laws of media relations.
- Jewish Statement in Opposition to the Geneva Accord
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 A false peace is no peace at all. A peace not based on human rights and justice will collapse and rekindle violence.
- Jews, Arabs & the Geneva Accord
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Talking publicly about the virtues and hazards of the Geneva accords these days is not an easy task, as the topic is both highly emotional -- rightly so, as a matter of utmost importance -- and highly divisive.
- Judeophobia: The scourge of antisemitism
New Internationalist October 2004 - #372 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004 A look at the history of antisemitism and the fight against it.
- Judges Run Wild
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The puffed-up arrogance of many family court judges is born of their unfettered control over our lives.
- Kicking Out Corporations
Resource Type: Pamphlet First Published: 2004 Rural areas revoke corporate "personhood" in order to reclaim self-rule.
- Korean Labor: Protest by Suicide
Against The Current vol. 111 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 In January 2003, Dalho Bae, a 47-year-old worker at Doosan Heavy Industry Co., committed suicide by burning himself. On October 17 Juik Kim, the chief of the metal labor union branch at Hanjin Heavy Industry Co., a ship-constructor, committed suicide after a 129 day-siege on the jeep-crane.
- Learning from Autonomous Marxism
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004
- The Left and the Elections
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Two electoral paths will be taken by those left of center this year, and all the spilled ink in the world won't affect the choices.
- Letter to a Progressive Democrat
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Dear Progressive Democrat: I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and I'm proud of it. You voted for Nader and you regret it (or, you voted for Gore, even though you liked Nader better).
- Letters to the Editor
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The Letters page is one of the most popular sections of any newspaper, and is therefore an ideal way to keep your name and your core message in front of the public.
- The Liberal Virus
Permanent War and the Americanization of the World Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Argues that the ongoing American project to dominate the world through military force has its roots in European liberalism, but has developed certain features of liberal ideology in a new and uniquely dangerous form.
- Life after Communism West goes East
New Internationalist April 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004 A look at the effects of communist rule in the former Soviet Union and the post-communism transition.
- The Lobby Up Close & Personal
Against The Current vol. 111 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 "AIPAC has one goal only," said Lee Rosenberg, "Strengthening the U.S. Israel relationship." Acting on behalf of the Board of Directors of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), Lee welcomed 1600 participants to a conference entitled "AIPAC Presents: The Israeli Summit, Tools for Action".
- Lucasville
The untold story of a prison uprising Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 In 1993 prisoners took control of the maximum-security prison in Lucasville, Ohio. Their 11-day ordeal started with a dispute between the warden and Muslim prisoners and ended with a negotiated settlement, but only after nine prisoners and one hostage had been killed.This offers the inside story of the uprising, the subsequent trial and sentencing.
- Marriage and the Capitalist State
For the Right of Gay Marriage...and Divorce! Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Gays and lesbians ought to have the right to marry - but they shouldn't have to.
- Martin Luther King's Speech on Vietnam
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 On January 20, President Bush made a photo-op visit to Atlanta, Georgia, to participate in the celebration of the life of the greatest civil rights figure in American history, Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Marx, Hegel, Ricardo; The "Inverted World" in the Heart of the Critique of Political Economy
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004
- Marx on the Planet
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 We have arrived at a turning point in human history. Scientists feel that we have until perhaps 2050 before the multiple and massive environmental problems we face will become irreversible. After that, the planet will not support the existing global capitalist civilization.
- The Meaning of Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 A feature of revolutions is that they keep coming around in unexpected ways and in unexpected places. Who would have dared predict the eruption that was Seattle in November 1999, when the powers behind neoliberal globalization seemed completely incontestable?
- Media Relations: Rule of Engagement
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Rules for dealing with the media.
- Medical Reform - Volume 23 Issue 3
January 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004
- Medical Reform - Volume 23 Issue 4
April 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004
- Medical Reform - Volume 24 Issue 1
July 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004
- Medical Reform - Volume 24 Issue 2
October 2004 Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical) First Published: 2004
- Meeting the Media Face-to-Face
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 What to do when a reporter calls or when meeting the media face to face.
- Mexico in the Grip of Corruption
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Mexico's left of center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has been shaken by a scandal that could well reshape the nation's political life.
- The Miami Model in Your Face
Against The Current vol. 108 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The major police riot in Miami was an operation undoubtedly as thoroughly planned as it was obscene. This was a deliberate, bare-knuckled threat: Assemble in 2004 against war, “free trade,” the Republican Convention or roundup of immigrants under the police-state monstrosity known as Homeland Security, and this is what you'll get.
- Monogamous Voles
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Vole reversal.
- A Movement of Movements
Is another world really possible? Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 The Movement of Movements charts the strategic thinking behind the mosaic of movements currently challenging neoliberal globalization.
- Murdered by Capitalism
A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death on the American Left Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Much of this book is in the form of a fictional dialogue between two radicals discussing the political events of both of their lifetimes.
- The Mythology of Corporate Social Responsibility
Against The Current vol. 111 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 For Dow Chemical, corporate social responsibility means encouraging its employees to volunteer in their communities as long as that doesn't take up company time. It means, according to the Dow website, that "At Dow, protecting people and the environment is part of everything we do and every decision we make."
- The Nakba - an event that did not occur (although it had to occur)
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004
- Naming the Darfur Crisis
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 How can we name the Darfur crisis? The U.S. Congress, and now Secretary of State Colin Powell, claim that genocide has occurred in Darfur. The European Union says it is not genocide. And so does the African Union.
- A New City Agenda
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 While Canadians have quickly recognized the importance of healthy cities in their own lives and communities, governments have lagged far behind. In A New City Agenda, journalist and former mayor, John Sewell answers the question: What would a new deal for cities look like? He articulates a new vision for Canada’s largest urban regions and the implementation of required changes in social services, public education, settlement, health, housing, policing, land use and governance.
- New Left, not New Liberal
1960s Movements in English Canada and Quebec Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Published in Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 41 (February, 2004)
- New Legal Landscape Affecting PR
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 New laws affecting public relations.
- A New Trade Framework for Global Healthcare R&D
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The AIDS crisis has brought to public notice what has always been generally true — that the existing business model for drug development leads to high prices and unequal access. There is now widespread dissatisfaction with drug prices in both the developed and developing world.
- Nicaragua Twenty-five Years Later
Against The Current vol. 112 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Twenty-five years ago, on July 17th — under the impact of an insurrectional general strike — President Anastasio Somoza Debayle fled Nicaragua, leaving the government in the hands of his Vice President Francisco Urcuyo. Urcuyo’s task was to negotiate a “provisional government” and, with Washington’s agreement, implement a cease-fire that would freeze the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) army and National Guard positions.
- The Nightmare Comes True
Against The Current vol. 111 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 I was standing on a hill overlooking the infamous Kalandia checkpoint. Below me was a narrow road, packed with Palestinians in the blazing sun, 30 degrees centigrade in the shade (but there was no shade) trudging towards the checkpoint.
- The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Peter Steven aims to make readers realize the power and influence of dominant media but, at the same time, also understand that they are not "omnipotent" and that there are alternative forms available.
- No "Respect" for Class
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 In his article on Britain’s ‘Respect Coalition’ in ATC 111 (July-August 2004), Liam MacUaid used the indisputably anti-working class record of the Blair government to justify the highly disputable claim that Respect is a supportable alternative. We want to reply.
- Noam Chomsky and Marxism
On the roots of modern "authoritarianism" - Part One Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Heiko Khoo argues that Noam Chomsky doesn't understand Marxism.
- Northern Ireland's Troubled Compromise
Against The Current vol. 113 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 August 31 marked the ten-year anniversary of the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) cease-fire, and a turning point in the recent history of Northern Ireland.
- The Olga Document
For Truth and Reconciliation, For Equality and Partnership Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 A document written in a series of meetings in Givat Olga, Israel, and titled after the location, The Olga Document. Advoctes coexistence of the peoples of this country, based on mutual recognition, equal partnership and implementation of historical justice.
- On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking About the Fundamentals
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 Delves into the question of how to build a strategy for nonviolent struggle. Covering a variety of topics--such as ways to identify a movement's objectives, preparing a strategic estimate for a nonviolent struggle, and operational planning considerations--this publication contains insights on the similarities between military and nonviolent strategy. It represents a major new contribution to this field of study. Additional topics covered in the book include psychological operations and propaganda, contaminants that may affect the efficiency of a nonviolent movement, and providing consultations and training for members of movements and organizations. \
- On the History of Human Nature
Against The Current vol. 108 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 First, humans have the capacity for love, solidarity, compassion AND the capacity for great aggression and cruelty. Which capacity dominates depends on certain geographic and social conditions.
- 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century (and Beyond) in English
A CounterPunch Reading List Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Published: 2014 CounterPunch editors' list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the 20th century,originally compiled in 2004.
- Organizing Korean Contingent Labor
Against The Current vol. 109 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Interview with Ae-Lim Yun. Ae-Lim Yun is an activist in Solidarity for the Abolition of Contingent Work, in Seoul, South Korea.
- Outsourcing & the Unions
Against The Current vol. 110 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Why are outsourcing and offshoring hot button issues? The Bush administration defends it; the Democratic challenger John Kerry attacks it.
- Palestinian farmers face settler terror
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 Jewish settlers have a long history of terrorising olive farmers, and they are now increasingly resorting to a worrying tactic: poisoning Palestinian water sources.
- Parecon
Life after capitalism Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 In this book Albert depicts 'Participatory Economics' - 'Parecon' for short - a new economy, an alternative to capitalism, built on familiar values including solidarity, equity, diversity, and people democratically controlling their own lives.
- Paying for It
A Guide by Sex Workers for their Clients Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 A book of advice for sex work customers, written by sex workers and former sex workers, about how to treat sex workers so they like you more and give you better service.
- The Pension Crisis
Against The Current vol. 112 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 First, wages. Then health care. Now pension benefits.
- Personal guides
Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 The advice contained in this section won't change the world, but it can help you improve your life by helping you not get messed around by debt collectors, social services or the police.
- The Poetry of J. Quinn Brisben
Against The Current vol. 111 Resource Type: Article First Published: 2004 J. Quinn Brisben is known as a retired schoolteacher, civil rights worker, disability rights advocate and former Socialist Party presidential candidate. In publishing a literary historical account in verse, he reveals to us his role of poet.
- Political and Economic Determinants of Population Health and Well-Being
Controversies and Developments Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004 A compilation of recent contributions to the areas of social epidemiology, health disparities, health economics, and health services research. The overarching theme is to describe and explain the ever-growing health inequalities across social class, race, and gender, as well as neighborhood, city, region, country, and continent.
- The Political and Social Context of Health
Resource Type: Book First Published: 2004
- Portraits of the Unionista
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