Auteur/autrice : Heidi Barathieu-Brun

Reports document US slaughter of civilians in drone strikes

Published on World Socialist Web Site WSWS, by Barry Grey, Oct 23, 2013.

A series of reports released over the past several days document the killing of thousands of people, including hundreds of non-combatant civilians, in US drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other countries. The reports, issued by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, 105 pages, on Tuesday and the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions last Friday, expose as lies the claims of President Obama and administration officials that the drone strikes are “surgical” attacks that kill few civilians.  Continuer la lecture de « Reports document US slaughter of civilians in drone strikes »

Let’s Get This Class War Started

Published on truthdig, by Chris Hedges, Oct 20, 2013.

“The rich are different from us,” F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked to Ernest Hemingway, to which Hemingway allegedly replied, “Yes, they have more money.”

The exchange, although it never actually took place, sums up a wisdom Fitzgerald had that eluded Hemingway. The rich are different. The cocoon of wealth and privilege permits the rich to turn those around them into compliant workers, hangers-on, servants, flatterers and sycophants. Wealth breeds, as Fitzgerald illustrated in “The Great Gatsby” and his short story “The Rich Boy,” a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities.   Continuer la lecture de « Let’s Get This Class War Started »

Economic uncertainty and the effectiveness of monetary policy

Published on VOX.org, by Knut Are Aastveit, Gisle James Natvik, Sergio Sola, October 19, 2013.

Many analysts blame uncertainty for at least part of advance nations’ poor economic performance since the crisis. This column discusses new research showing that the economic impact of monetary policy is dampened when uncertainty is high. This means that high uncertainty forces monetary policymakers into a trade-off between acting decisively and acting correctly as policy must be more aggressive than otherwise in order to stabilise economic activity. The finding is particularly stark when uncertainty measures from financial markets are utilised.   Continuer la lecture de « Economic uncertainty and the effectiveness of monetary policy »

Patrick Henningsen

USA: This Land is Our Land?

Published on Civil Eats, by Bob St Peter and Raj Patel, October 18, 2013.

Imagine a country where ideologues bent on land reform turn agriculture into the plaything of the world’s richest investors, and poor local farmers are locked out of millions of acres prime agricultural land. Then stop imagining some African country run by a despot and his friends and start picturing the United States. Rural America is on the cusp of one of the greatest transfers of land in its history and no one’s talking about it.   Continuer la lecture de « USA: This Land is Our Land? »