by Sulaimon Giwa* This is a time of fiscal austerity, when governments are cutting back their spending and asking Canadians to assume responsibility for the shortfall. Questions are being asked about how publicly funded institutions are being held accountable for how they manage the financial resources entrusted to them for the delivery of their […]
Confronting Prison Slave Labor Camps and Other Myths
by James Kilgore* There are moments when our longings for social justice cloud our vision, times when the way we want the world to be blocks our understanding of the way things really are. A good example of this is the notion of the United States’ prison system as totally driven by profit-hungry corporations that […]
Criminologists and Criminal Justice Reformers Say: Negotiate Now Before There Is Blood on Your Hands
Finally, there is some good news for critics of the American justice system: a decline in the nationwide prison and jail population; a significant drop in the rate of African American imprisonment; conservative activists advocating “criminal justice reform”; judges in New York and California blowing the whistle on unconstitutional police and prison practices; a decrease […]
Mixed Messages: World War II and the Uses of Oral History
by Tony Platt* I have been teaching about the history of inequalities in the United States for more than forty years. I started off using oral histories in my curriculum when it was against the grain to do so. I still use them today, though to do so now has become something of an acceptable […]
Margaret Thatcher
by Phil Scraton* For years I anticipated my emotions and reaction to the day of Margaret Thatcher’s death. I remember being in Liverpool’s Royal Court at an Elvis Costello gig, knocked out by his Tramp the Dirt Down…, but this was at the height of the ferocious ideological and political activation of the “New […]
Drone War Is Coming Home: A View from across the Ocean
by Volker Eick* Since Nobel Peace Prize laureate and US president Barack Obama began targeted killings of supposed Islamic terrorists using Special Forces and the CIA in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia,(1) an envious German government has sought to catch up with its Atlantic partner in the adoption of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAVs), or drones. […]
Italian Elections, 2013: Novelty or Déjà Vu?
by Alessandro De Giorgi* The results of the 2013 elections in Italy were shocking to most international observers. Expectations in the media had been that the center-left coalition would win a majority and steer the country along a path of economic austerity and budget conservatism that Mario Monti’s technocratic government had initiated. Instead, Italians […]
The Víctor Jara Case: Justice in 2013?
by J. Patrice McSherry* In 2012 and 2013 there have been important developments in the case of Víctor Jara, the beloved Chilean folk singer and songwriter who was tortured and killed in the Stadium of Chile after the 1973 military coup in that country. The murder of Jara was one of the earliest and […]
Richard Aoki’s Troubled World: A Response
by Gregory Shank Seth Rosenfeld’s case documenting Richard Aoki’s role as an FBI informant understandably provoked a strong reaction from those who knew him or had extensively researched his life. In his 70 years, Aoki had developed deep networks among veterans of Asian American and African American struggles, as well as the broader progressive movement […]
The Case for and Against Richard Aoki
by Tony Platt The blogs are full of charges and countercharges about journalist Seth Rosenfeld’s claim (in his recent book, Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan‘s Rise to Power and published articles) that Black Panther Party cadre Richard Aoki was a “paid FBI informer.” Here are a few thoughts about the debate: […]