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A Love Story, A War Story and A Story About Brutal Work

Olivia Laing New Statesman
The Patriot Act is a nightmare for immigrants without papers already living precarious lives of dead-end jobs, zero-hour contracts, squats, and physical danger. When a young Asian woman, alone in the U.S., meets an ex-serviceman, himself traumatized by three tours in Iraq and living in a basement flat , the two bond in a tough but brilliant first novel absent stock characters or cartoon emotionality but with a profound and intimate knowledge of life on the margins.

Tidbits - April 2, 2015 - Mexican Farmworkers Strike; Death Penalty; Water Privatization; Elizabeth Warren; Cesar Chavez; and more

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Reader Comments - Mexican Farmworkers Strike; Innocent Man on Death Row - Prosecutor Apologizes; Stealing Africa's Seeds; Fighting Water Privatization - Ireland and Mexico; Run Elizabeth, Run; Jews Who Speak Out Against Israeli Policies; Cesar Chavez, the UFW - Lessons for Today; Feminist Heroes for Children; Cuba Eradicates Syphilis; Billie Holiday and Ethel Rosenberg; Resources for Passover; To Better Understand Greece and Syriza; Announcements

books

Houellebecq Submits

Adam Shatz London Review of Books
Soumission, Michel Houellebecq's novel about a Muslim party's takeover of France, is "a melancholy tribute to the pleasure of surrender." It's 2022, the National Front is set to win the presidency, so the Socialist and Gaullist parties bloc so that a charismatic centrist Islamist politician wins instead. Whether or not France deserves a moderate Islamist state, "it has found in Houllebeque a sly and witty chronicler..." An English version will appear in September.

Tidbits - March 26, 2015 - Student Protests; Vietnam War; Slavery, American Capitalism; Israel; Socialists and Socialism; more...

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Reader Comments - Today's Student Protests; Vietnam War History, My Lai; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Israel - Right Wing Nation with Nukes; Unions Key to Fighting Inequality; Women Fighters; Venezuela Sanctions; Socialists, Socialist Movement and Socialism; Human Genome Tinkering; Hey, World! Let's create a nuclear-free future -- April 24-26, New York City Remembering Jean Hardisty, Geraldine Blankinship and Grace Paley

Surviving the Nazis, Only to Be Jailed by America

Eric Lichtblau New York Times - Sunday Review
Today the U.S. government treats immigrants from Latin America the way liberated Jews were treated after World War II. Then a presidential aid reported: "we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops." Our nation of immigrants treats modern immigrants with arrest and detention; and modern immigrant (concentration) camps.

Tidbits - February 12, 2015 - Black Future Month, Selma, LBJ, Vietnam War, Labor, Greece, Science and more......

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Reader Comments - Black Future Month, Vanishing Black Professors, Black-Brown Unity, Lynching; Selma, Civil Rights, LBJ; Vietnam War; Immigration: ISIS, Charlie Hebdo; Labor's Bigger Tent, Adjunct Profs and Right-to-Work (for less); Science; Greece, Spain and the EU; Educational Testing; South African women against big coal; movie feedback; Announcements - Malcolm X; Spain; Cuba Embargo; Labor and the Police; Black Men Speak; Debra E. Bernhardt Labor Journalism Prize

Tidbits - November 27, 2014

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Reader Comments - Darren Wilson Acquittal - Reader Responses; Black Friday Protests; Election Lessons for the Left; Immigration Reform; Ursula K. Le Guin, Pension Reform(?); Water Grab; Facebook Drivers Vote Union; Berlin Wall's Fall - Reflections from the GDR; Israel Lobby and Ukrainian Fascists; Mexico - 43 students murdered; Israel, Palestine and Rasmeah Odeh; The Selfless Gene; Announcement - New Politics Forum on the Environmental Crisis - New York - Dec. 9

Immigration Reform - Pres. Obama's Order, Immigrant Groups Respond

Tonight President Obama issued an Executive Order to reform some of the broken immigration system in the country. This is not unprecedented - previous presidents have also used Executive Orders to accomplish their goals. Here is Pres. Obama's speech; along with responses from immigrant and immigration activists around the country, many outlining what more is needed.

Tidbits - October 2, 2014

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Reader Comments - Ten Points Towards a Two-State Solution; Students Walk Out Suburban Denver Schools; Indiana Autoworkers and Two-Tier Contracts; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; War on Drugs Damages Black Social Mobility; Freelancer Economy; Transformative Utopias and Human Rights; Climate Change Rally; Banned Books; Texas Schoolbooks; ISIS, Iraq and Syria; Freedom University Georgia; Immigrants; Cuba Training World's Doctors

For Muslim New Yorkers, a Long Path from Surveillance to Civil Rights

Moustafa Bayoumi The Nation - September 29, 2014 edition
For years, Muslim New Yorkers have been spied on, not heard; now they're finding their political voice. As the gears of federal government have ground to a halt, a new energy has been rocking the foundations of our urban centers. From Atlanta to Seattle and points in between, cities have begun seizing the initiative, transforming themselves into laboratories for progressive innovation. This is the latest in the The Nation's series, Cities Rising.
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