Jane Smiley's Blog, page 2
March 17, 2010
Capitalist Pigs
In the 1980s, American hog farmers became nervous about African Swine Fever, and exterminated the Haitian pigs. As a result, the peasantry moved to Port-au-Prince, now one of the great disaster areas in modern history.
January 16, 2010
Capitalist Pigs
The horror that is the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake has many of us, of course, looking around for explanations of why Haiti is so poor. Since I have no ideas to offer for the resurrection of Haiti, I've spent my time looking for people to blame, and there are many. Some of them are French, since the government of Charles X committed an act of armed extortion in 1825 when it demanded of its former slaves 150 million francs in reparations (you know those French, the pact with the devil t...
November 28, 2009
Stop The Injustice: Free Gary McKinnon
If you read the Guardian, then you know already that the screaming injustice that is about to be perpetrated on Scottish computer hacker Gary McKinnon has taken another step toward the cruel and unusual. McKinnon is a 43-year-old man from North London who, in 2001 and 2002, hacked into US military computers, looking for evidence of visitors from other planets. He was extremely successful, not only because he was a smart guy, but also because, as he said in messages left on the victim computer...
November 16, 2009
HuffPost Book Review: Republican Gomorrah
Republican Gomorrah is full of crimes--both those we've already heard of, such as Abramoff's and Ted Haggard's, and those we haven't.
October 18, 2009
Retreat and Surrender
If Obama had organized his cohorts and gone on the offensive and stayed on the offensive from the beginning in the health care debate, he would be winning this battle, not losing it.
Other Economists in the Room
I don't disagree with Paul Krugman, but he is missing out on some big issues that also need to be discussed and understood before we actually know what is going on in our world.
September 25, 2009
What's the Big Deal?
Make no mistake, if we as a nation sweep the Bush crimes, committed both here and abroad, under the rug because we're too lazy or afraid or "poor" to investigate, our criminals will be back with bigger plans.
September 17, 2009
HuffPost Book Review: Republican Gomorrah
About twenty years ago, I read an article about a death row inmate who
had shot a clerk in a convenience store. The way the murder was presented
by the man on death row was mysterious--his hand just rose up
and the gun went off. Shooting the clerk in the face in the midst of a
robbery wasn't in fact his fault. He never said, "I shot a man." It
just happened.
I thought of that man while reading Max Blumenthal's
terrific, but also, of course, appalling new book, Republican
. Apparently...
September 16, 2009
What Now?
If we step up to the plate and support Obama now with both our money and our feet, what will we get in return? If the last six months are any indication, the answer is, "Nothing."
