Archives

Image

Beyond the Inauguration: The Shifting Ground of Protest Strategies for Real Change in the Obama Era

Matt Dineen March 5, 2009 Matt Dineen

"What the cynics fail to understand," Barack Obama declared in his inaugural address, "is that the ground has shifted beneath them-that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply." Can progressive social movements in the United States apply the new president's own words toward successful strategies for truly meaningful change under his administration? What does the lack of visible dissent at Obama's inauguration suggest about the politics of protest and the prospects for global justice in the post-Bush era?

Image

Grassroots Beer Brewers Score a Victory in Utah

Benjamin Dangl March 3, 2009 Benjamin Dangl

Just three companies control approximately 80 percent of the beer industry in the US. Brewing beer at home is one way to counter this corporate monopoly. However, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama and Oklahoma still outlaw the craft. Recently, a victory for homebrewers was scored in Utah, when on February 19th the State Senate legalized homebrewing, bringing the state out of the shadows of prohibition.

Image

Homeless in Delhi

Jeremy Seabrook March 3, 2009 Jeremy Seabrook

A smoky sunset in the choking streets around Old Delhi Railway Station, where the traffic is permanently stalled. Low sunlight through a violet cloud bathes the scene in blood. Stringy cycle-rickshaw drivers strain every muscle with a mountainous load of goods to be despatched from the station. Everything moves with agonizing slowness, as though people are in an alien element. As indeed they are: displaced villagers struggling to survive in the city.

Image

Obama and the ‘war on terror’

Tony Iltis March 2, 2009 Tony Iltis

In a speech to military troops at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina on February 27, US President Barack Obama announced that most of the 142,000 US soldiers in Iraq will be withdrawn by August 2010, leaving behind a "residual force" of 50,000 troops. The remaining troops will be withdrawn by the end of 2011, he said. Obama supports continuing, and even intensifying, Bush's phony "war on terror" in Afghanistan, while signalling he wants to wind it back in Iraq.

Image

Of Blood and Gold: How Canadian Mining Companies Loot the Congo

John Lasker February 26, 2009 John Lasker

Mining in the DRC
In the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo where some analysts say a decade-long "resource war" has taken the lives of millions, a Canadian mining company has caught a fever over gold. Once again, the presence of a foreign mining company in the DRC offers a stunning example of disparity between the "have-mores" of the West and the local Congolese, who in turn seemingly have nothing but violence and struggle.