Home
Tamer Mowafy's Library tagged → View Popular, Search in Google
"More than half a million people have been affected by this month’s floods in Sri Lanka. Officially, 700 houses have been destroyed, and another 3,833 partially damaged."
"The New York Times reported Sunday that American special forces units are operating in and around the Afghan city of Kandahar, assassinating or capturing alleged leaders and militants of the Taliban resistance ahead of the major US-NATO offensive scheduled for June."
"The impact of the economic crisis on housing in New York City has once again laid bare the nature of class relations that exist in America’s largest city and the capital of global finance."
-
Thanks to the massive government bailout of the financial system, the city’s financial aristocracy is awash in bonuses and stock market profits. Wall Street dished out tens of billions in bonuses this past year, a record increase from the previous year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average recently rose above 11,000, reaching the highest point since September 2008, the month when Lehman Brothers collapsed.
"The result of the March 7 Iraq election has given the largest bloc of seats in the 325-member parliament to the Sunni-based and ostensibly secular Iraqiya coalition headed by Iyad Allawi, a former CIA asset and one-time US-installed prime minister."
At least 19 miners were killed and 24 trapped by a mine explosion in the central Chinese province of Henan on Wednesday evening. The disaster occurred as rescue workers were still battling to save at least 153 construction workers trapped underground by a flood inside Shanxi’s Wangjialing coal mine project last Sunday.
-
It has been a bloody week for China’s coal industry, with four reported accidents. On Tuesday, 10 workers were trapped when the Shajihai mine collapsed in Hoboksar County in the north-western region of Xinjiang. On Thursday, nine workers lost their lives during a fire in Shaanxi province’s Quanzigou mine.
-
While official corruption is certainly a factor in China’s mine accidents, the scapegoating of junior officials and individual managers is a diversion from the real cause of the mounting death toll—a reckless drive for profit from the over-heated economy’s soaring demand for coal.
- 2 more annotation(s)...
Figures released by the US Commerce Department Thursday highlight the continuing decline in living standards for wide layers of the population, suffering from the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.
-
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported earlier this month that personal income in the US declined 1.7 percent in 2009.
-
In total, the populations of 42 American states suffered personal income losses in 2009, while two states experienced no change and six, plus the District of Columbia, enjoyed gains.
Two days after French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) had suffered a landslide defeat in the regional elections, over a million French public service and government employees struck yesterday against the government’s austerity plans.
Southeast Michigan, comprising Detroit, its suburbs, and surrounding counties, has been the metropolitan area hardest hit by the economic crisis. Regional unemployment was 15.7 percent in December 2009. In real terms, about one in four workers is unemployed or underemployed. In Detroit proper, the figure is likely one in two.
The Obama administration is spearheading an unprecedented assault on public education in the US. The White House and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are promoting a nationwide wave of school closures, teacher and staff layoffs, attacks on teachers’ wages and conditions, and an expansion of privately run charter schools—all in the guise of education “reform.”
US corporations are beginning to release figures on CEO pay for last year. Multi-million dollar packages are the norm in a year that saw the continued deterioration in the living conditions of the vast majority of the population.
A New Orleans police supervisor pled guilty February 24 in a federal court to charges of conspiracy to cover up the police shooting of six unarmed people a few days after Hurricane Katrina struck the city.
-
Ronald Madison was shot to death near a motel on the west side of the span. He was crossing the bridge with his brother Lance, a FedEx worker, as they tried to reach the dentist’s office of his brother, Romell.
-
The other five victims were shot while walking together on the eastern side of the bridge. Leonard Bartholomew III was shot in the head, his wife Susan Bartholomew lost part of her arm, their daughter Leisha and a nephew, Jose Holmes, were hit by multiple gunshots. Brissette, a cousin of the Bartholomews, was killed.
- 5 more annotation(s)...
The US Supreme Court’s treatment of convicted Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling is an object lesson on the social interests upheld by the US judiciary and the class divisions that dominate every aspect of American life.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy traveled for a one-day visit to Haiti on February 17, amid rising popular opposition to the Western-backed Préval government and international tensions over how to rebuild the country.
-
Sarkozy, the first French head of state ever to visit Haiti, was greeted with street protests by thousands of Haitians demanding the return of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ousted by a US- and French-backed coup in 2004, Aristide was flownto the Central African Republic, a former French colony.
-
Protesters held pictures of Aristide aloft and demanded that Sarkozy repay $21 billion paid to France by Haiti, a former French slave colony. In 1825 warships under the orders of France’s King Charles X—soon to be toppled by the 1830 revolution—forced Haiti to repay 90 million gold francs in exchange for its freedom.
- 2 more annotation(s)...
"The Obama administration has taken extraordinary measures to prevent desperate Haitians from entering the US"
"The Obama administration has announced that former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush will head the fundraising for relief efforts in the wake of the Haiti earthquake."
-
Obama demonstrates that the devastating human tragedy in Haiti will not bring any alteration in the rapacious role of US imperialism in that impoverished semi-colonial country.
"More than 48 hours after a devastating earthquake leveled much of the city of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, millions are without shelter, power, food and water. The estimates of the death toll range from 50,000 (the Red Cross) to ten times that number, and with each passing hour, the higher figures seem more and more likely."
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »
Join Diigo