The first of the 388 workers arrested in the immigration raid on the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, were deported in mid-October, having spent five months in federal prison. Their crime? Giving a bad Social Security number to the company to get hired. Among them will be a young man who had his eyes covered with duct tape by a supervisor on the line, who then beat him with a meathook. The supervisor is still on the job.
The latest humanitarian crisis in Cuba presents the Bush administration with a rare opportunity to stave off a looming migration crisis here and simultaneously boost the U.S. image abroad. Unfortunately, the Bush government seems inclined to pass on the opportunity.
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from the introduction to The Tyranny of Oil: the World’s Most Powerful Industry, and What We Must Do To Stop It (William Morrow 2008). Within days of the New Year, 2008 began with three landmark events. Oil reached $100 per barrel for only the second time in history as […]
Barack Obama has alienated key sectors of his progressive base with statements and policy proposals regarding Israel in which he allies himself with right-wing Republicans.
The five-day Russo-Georgian war in the Caucasus brought into sharp focus many conflicts rooted in the region’s history and in aggressive U.S.-NATO policies since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Notable among these were the military encirclement of Russia and attempts to control energy resources in areas long dominated by the Soviet Union. The net effect was to hasten a dangerous new era of rivalry between the world’s two most powerful nuclear states, one that will be shaped hereafter by the current global recession and the changes it is bringing about in the economic practices of all states.
Prelude
[Daniel Heyman, “They Put me in an Animal Cage,” gouache on nishinoushi paper, 2008.]
The recently passed financial bailout package has drawn the ire of citizens throughout the United States. Both conservatives and liberals have condemned Congress and the White House for rescuing Wall Street titans, who caused the economic death spiral in the first place, by transferring an enormous fiscal burden to middle- and working-class taxpayers. At a time when people are losing their homes and struggling to make ends meet, many Americans find the bailout’s $700 billion price tag to be simply outrageous.
For the first time in history, African farmers have directly addressed the UN General Assembly. Ndiogou Fall, the president of the Network of West African Peasant and Agricultural Producers’ Organizations (ROPPA), and Elisabeth Atangana, who heads the Federation of Peasant Organizations of Central Africa, spoke on behalf of the people most directly and disastrously affected by the current food crisis.