Radical media, politics and culture.

News

March 18, 2005 - 9:48am -- jim
News
News

Carol Lang Arrested at New York Army Recruitment Protest


Carol Lang, long-time clerical employee of CUNY and
former shop steward of DC 37, was arrested last Friday
(Mar. 11) in her office by four plainclothesmen. She
had been caught up in a scuffle with campus security
on Wednesday the 9th, when security attacked a group
(including Carol) protesting army recruiters' presence
at a campus "jobs fair".

The initial charge was
felonious assault on a security officer, subsequently
reduced to a misdemeanor. Carol was held for 36 hours
(while police obstructed communication between her and
her attorney), in a holding cell with 15 women and 3
mattresses to sleep on, and a filthy toilet facility
that prison employees refused to clean. CCNY has
suspended Carol for one month without pay, prior to
any trial or conviction. DC 37 is thus far minimally
defending Carol, accompanying her through
administrative procedure over her suspension.


There is a rally to defend Carol on the CCNY campus
on Thursday Mar. 17 at 12:30 PM, at the administration
building (opposite the NAC). Carol cannot be present
because she has been banned from campus. (To get there
by subway, take the A or the D to 145th St and walk to
the intersection of 138th and Convent, where the rally
will take place.


To let the CUNY administration know what you think of
this attack on a long-term radical activist, write to
CCNY President Gregory Williams at gwilliams@ccny.cuny.edu.

March 16, 2005 - 10:18am -- jim
News
News

Italy Planning to Start Pullout of Iraq Troops

Ian Fisher, New York Times

ROME, March 15 — Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Tuesday that he aimed to begin withdrawing Italy's 3,000 troops from Iraq by September, in a signal that the domestic cost of loyalty to the United States over the war was growing too high.


Mr. Berlusconi, one of President Bush's few close allies in Europe, framed his words carefully, saying in brief comments on a talk show here that the timing of the withdrawal depended on the strength of the Iraqi government. Italy has the fourth largest contingent of foreign troops in Iraq, its soldiers acting largely as peacekeepers near the southern city of Nasiriya.

March 16, 2005 - 10:14am -- jim
News
News

Wolfowitz To Be Named To Lead World Bank

London Financial Times

Paul Wolfowitz, US deputy secretary of defence, is to be nominated by president George W. Bush to replace James Wolfensohn as the president of the World Bank.


The nomination of Mr Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of the Iraq war and a former US ambassador to Indonesia, would likely be highly controversial, and could raise new questions about the process by which the World Bank chief is selected. One administration official said his nomination “would have enormous repercussions within the development community”.

March 14, 2005 - 8:39am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

"Iraq Elections and the Liberal Elites:

A Response to Noam Chomsky"

Ghali Hassan, Countercurrents

In a recent opinion piece, Noam Chomsky writes, "In Iraq, the January elections were successful and praiseworthy. However, the main success is being reported only marginally: The United States was compelled to allow them to take place. That is a real triumph, not of the bomb-throwers, but of non-violent resistance by the people, secular as well as Islamist, for whom Grand Ayatollah Al Sistani is a symbol" (Khaleej Times Online, 4 March 2005). Mr. Chomsky is either completely out of touch with reality in Iraq, or simply ignorant of the legitimate rights of the Iraqi people to self-determination.

March 9, 2005 - 10:15am -- jim
News
News

Chilean Communist Gladys Marín, 1941-2005

London Times

GLADYS MARÍN was sometimes known as Chile’s “La Pasionaria”. Like the redoubtable Spanish communist leader Dolores Ibárruri, she was an impassioned and indefatigable campaigner for the causes she believed in.

A supporter of Salvador Allende’s left-wing Government, she became a leader of the long resistance to the military dictatorship that followed his violent overthrow in September 1973, and felt the impact of General Augusto Pinochet’s iron fist in her personal life: her husband, Jorge Muñoz, another communist leader, “disappeared” in 1976 and has not been heard of since.

March 8, 2005 - 10:10am -- jim
News
News

Guenter Reimann, 1904–2005

Casting A Critical Eye on Capitalism

Michael Hrebeniak, London Guardian

Guenter Reimann, who has died aged 100, was a pioneer of global financial analysis and founder of the prestigious newsletter International Reports On Finance And Currency, which provided an independent voice in the field after the second world war.


Reimann was born Hans Steinicke into a bourgeois German-Jewish family in Angermuende, north-east of Berlin. As a schoolboy, he joined the Communist party, then a vigorous force in German national politics. He was instinctively drawn to the leftist intelligentsia of inter-war Berlin, and regular nights in the company of Ernst Thaelmann, Anna Seghers and Walter Ulbricht at the Romanische Cafe followed. At 17, under the pen-name Guenter Reimann, he was appointed economics editor of the communist newspaper, Rote Fahne.

March 7, 2005 - 8:20am -- jim
News
News

US Attack Against Italians in Baghdad Was Deliberate, Companion Says

Agence France Press


Rome — Pressure has increased on the United States to explain its troops firing on a convoy carrying freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena, that wounded her and left one of her rescuers dead.


The companion of freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena on Saturday leveled serious accusations at US troops who fired at her convoy as it was nearing Baghdad airport, saying the shooting had been deliberate.


"The Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming," Pier Scolari said on leaving Rome's Celio military hospital where Sgrena is to undergo surgery following her return home.


"They were 700 meters (yards) from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints."


The shooting late Friday was witnessed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office which was on the phone with one of the secret service agents, said Scolari. "Then the US military silenced the cellphones," he charged.


"Giuliana had information, and the US military did not want her to survive," he added.

March 4, 2005 - 10:28pm -- Rob Eshelman
Analysis & Polemic
News

The U.S. and Europe: Quasi-Allies
Immanuel Wallerstein

George W. Bush, having failed to intimidate Europe in his first term of
office, has decided to try another tactic. First, Condoleeza Rice, then
Donald Rumsfeld, then Bush himself traveled to Europe on a charm offensive.
They all said essentially the same three things. Let's forget our quarrels
over Iraq; the U.S. considers Europe its allies; and let's discuss what the
U.S. wants now and what we can do together. But they all added a fourth
thing: The U.S. will still do what it wants, if the Europeans won't go
along. In a press conference in Europe, Bush said about the debate with
Europeans concerning Iran: "The notion that the United States is getting
ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. Having said that, all options
are on the table."

February 17, 2005 - 2:53am -- Rob Eshelman
Analysis & Polemic
News

The Nuclear Club Expands
By Immanuel Wallerstein

North Korea has now said officially that it already has nuclear weapons, and is not at all interested
in discussing giving them up. Iran still claims it
doesn't intend to make nuclear weapons. However it also says it will not
discuss abandoning the progress it has made in developing nuclear enrichment
facilities (which means of course that it could easily produce nuclear
weapons when it wished to do so). And what does the United States say? The
United States doesn't know what to say and is floundering. Henry Kissinger
is sputtering, in print and on television. Condoleeza Rice is calling Iran a
totalitarian state and telling the Europeans that they have to tell Iran
clearly and loudly that, if Iran persists in its nuclear enrichment program,
there will be U.N. sanctions (and the Europeans are telling her that such
statements by her, made publicly or even privately, are distinctly
counterproductive).

February 16, 2005 - 9:17am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
News

nolympics writes:

"Mara Salvatrucha, Social War and the Decline of the Revolutionary Movements in Central America"

Ramor Ryan

Once this was a place of great hope. During the late 1980’s, the Sandinistas were consolidating the revolution in Nicaragua, the FMLN were on the brink of overthrowing the government in El Salvador and the radical movements in Guatemala and Honduras were gaining ground. Today it is a region convulsed by massive delinquency and chronic state corruption whose economies are surviving tenuously on remittance money sent by migrants. The defeat of the revolutionary movements has ushered in an era of social disintegration resulting in a veritable neo-liberal dystopia.

Chicken Bus Diaries

People in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have always had travel like this. 100 people crush into generic American school buses. The old school buses earn the chicken moniker because of the propensity of people to bring their livestock onboard. Sometimes the animals are tied up in boxes on the roof. In other Latin American countries the passengers cram on the roof too, but not here in Central America. The way the drivers swing the buses around the mountain curves would pitch anything off the roof that was not tied down. But the bus service is cheap and abundant, catering for the poorest passenger, and it must be said they are painted in the most exquisite manner — each bus a blaze of color and a work of art.

Pages

Subscribe to News