Toward Freedom: Reflections of a Former Editor
When I first edited an issue of Toward Freedom Ronald Reagan was midway through his second term as US President and the Sandinistas were running Nicaragua.
Month: September 2010
Is the Drug War a Class War?
Source: Grit TV
The war on drugs. We keep calling it that, it seems, because we like wars on abstract concepts. Like the war on terror, the war on drugs racks up one hell of a body count, and its victims are mostly innocent civilians with no more love for the corrupt regimes that rule them than we have.
Molly Molloy, who runs Frontera List, which focuses on border-related news and specifically Ciudad Juarez, and Charles Bowden, author of a new book on Ciudad Juarez, both call it not a war on drugs but a war on the poor.
The Real Pirates in Somalia: Washington, Paris and Oslo
Many people seem not to understand that more than half of Somalia consists of the seas around the country. This makes the oceans vital to the survival of the Somali people.
Immigration Economics
Source: Foreign Policy in Focus
Facts or no facts, many people simply do not want to believe that undocumented immigrants coming to this country don’t steal jobs and undermine the American economy. When economic studies come along that challenge their preconceptions, they don’t take kindly to the troublesome conclusions.
Recently, economist Giovanni Peri — an associate professor at the University of California, Davis and visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco — wrote a paper for the Fed summarizing recent research in immigration economics. Evaluating the data, Peri concluded that, “on net, immigrants expand the U.S. economy’s productive capacity, stimulate investment, and promote specialization that in the long run boosts productivity. Consistent with previous research, there is no evidence that these effects take place at the expense of jobs for workers born in the United States.”
Impunity in Print: How Argentine Newspapers Benefited from the Dictatorship
The wind has changed in Argentina with the government taking on a number of initiatives to target corporate media in an attempt to democratize media ownership and access.
Take Back the Land: Giving Root to Democracy
In our moment of crisis and stagnation, Take Back the Land is a group full of creativity, improvisation, and highly potent political analysis.