The Katrina Pain Index 2013: New Orleans Eight Years Later

Published on ZNet, by Bill Quigley, August 27, 2013.

Eight years after Katrina, nearly a hundred thousand people never got back to New Orleans, the city remains incredibly poor, jobs and income vary dramatically by race, rents are up, public transportation is down, traditional public housing is gone, life expectancy differs dramatically by race and place, and most public education has been converted into charter schools.  Continuer la lecture de « The Katrina Pain Index 2013: New Orleans Eight Years Later »

what everyone ought to know about Angola 3 and solitary confinement

Published on Amnesty International / Human Rights Now Blog, by Sarah Shourd, August 26, 2013.

Until recently, both Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox had been held in solitary confinement for 4 decades in Louisiana – longer than almost any other known prisoner in recent U.S. history. It’s long enough for one’s body to forget it ever knew anything else but four white walls and for the mind to be reshaped by extreme isolation. Juan Mendez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, says that after 15 days, further isolation can cause permanent psychological damage and constitute torture.   Continuer la lecture de « what everyone ought to know about Angola 3 and solitary confinement »

Latin America: Class Struggle and Resistance in the Age of Extractive Capitalism

Published on Dissident Voice, by James Petras, August 25, 2013 (Linked with our new blog: politics for the 99%).

Class struggle is central in framing the issues of political rule, the relations of classes, the economic structures and strategies, and the distribution of wealth.
Especially in the era of imperialist globalization, the class struggle takes on an international character, as multi-national corporations, international financial organizations and imperial states directly intervene, or act through proxy collaborator states, in ‘the class struggle between labor and capital’ … // Continuer la lecture de « Latin America: Class Struggle and Resistance in the Age of Extractive Capitalism »