The Peoples Voice News

What the U.S. Undid for Women in Iraq

The U.S.-led invasion and then occupation of Iraq brought a sharp setback to the rights of women in that country, UNFPA head Thoraya Obaid tells IPS in an interview. The view that Muslim societies are necessarily backward on the position of women arises from stereotyping, she says. And she speaks of herself as a Muslim woman who does not fit the stereotype.

France Erupts Sarkozy Under Siege

The French are deeply unhappy with the way they have been governed, but their main grievance is about pension reform, which is seen as a cynical ploy to make ordinary people work more for inferior entitlements, while bailed-out bankers and the rich get tax rebates and continue to enjoy the high life.

US-trained cartel terrorises Mexico

Founders of the Zetas drug gang learned special forces techniques at Ft. Bragg before waging a campaign of carnage. Despite the deployment of 50,000 troops, Mexico seems to be losing the 'war on drugs' It was a brutal massacre even by the gruesome standards of Mexico’s drug war: 72 migrant workers gunned down by the "Zetas" - arguably the country’s most violent cartel - and left rotting in a pile outside a ranch in Tamaulipas state near the US border in late August.

UK announces 490,000 job cuts

Harshest austerity measures since second world war unveiled as public spending is slashed to deal with country's debts. Osborne said that the job losses were 'unavoidable when the country has run out of money'. Britain will cut 490,000 public sector jobs over four years under austerity measures designed to reduce the country's record deficit. George Osborne, the finance minister, told parliament on Wednesday that the job losses were "unavoidable when the country has run out of money". "Today is the day that Britain steps back from the brink. It is a hard road but it leads to a better future," he said.

Showcasing the Crude, the Violent and the Aberrant The Media and the Far Right

Last Sunday in the October 10, 2010 New York Times, two very lengthy features appeared on the rancid Ann Coulter and the blogger Pamela Geller—a grotesque anti-Semite against Arabs who flaunts her sweeping bigotry as a badge of pride. Geller even called herself a ‘racist-Islamophobic-anti-Muslim-bigot’. One veteran reporter called the sprawling two page feature, with all of twenty color photos “an advertisement.”

A new stage in the war on dissent

Michael Ratner is the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a leading organization in opposing the dismantling of civil liberties under the Bush, and now Obama, administrations. He spoke with Nicole Colson about the recent raids on the homes and offices of antiwar and socialist activists in Chicago, Minneapolis and North Carolina--and why the Obama administration, despite claims to the contrary, has been disastrous when it comes to promises to protect our civil liberties.

The French strike wave: A new stage in the class struggle

The strikes and mass demonstrations in France against pension cuts are the latest and most developed expression of a new stage in the class struggle—the entry of the international working class into mass opposition against the ruthless assault on jobs and living standards being carried out by the capitalists. These events deal a shattering blow to all claims that the working class is a spent force and the class struggle is a relic of the past. Once again, the immense social power of the working class is beginning to find expression. The basic division of modern society, between the bourgeoisie and the working class, is asserting itself under conditions of a historic breakdown of world capitalism.

Major FAIR Exposé of PBS: Taking the 'Public' Out of Public TV

A multi-part FAIR exposé of PBS's most prominent news and public affairs programs demonstrates that public television is failing to live up to its mission to provide an alternative to commercial television, to give voice to those "who would otherwise go unheard" and help viewers to "see America whole, in all its diversity," in the words of public TV's founding document. What PBS Thinks You Need to Know

Geithner Weak Dollar Seen as U.S. Recovery Route

For U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, a weaker dollar may now be in the national interest. The dollar has dropped more than 7 percent since Aug. 27, when Chairman Ben S. Bernanke signaled the Federal Reserve is prepared to ease monetary policy. Where once such a decline may have been met with resistance from the U.S., Geithner may now be tolerating it as a way of bolstering the recovery.

Obama spending stimulates the national debt by $3,039,000,000,000

No wonder the president's wife is passing the hat to his supporters asking for $3 campaign donations. Have you seen the size of the national debt? It's a new record. The United States of America now owes someone(s) $13,665,000,000,000. By 2012, when Hillary Clinton next challenges Barack Obama for their party's presidential nomination, the national debt will be even larger than today's record -- $16,500,000,000,000, according to current federal estimates. That's more money than the entire United States economy produces in a complete year.

AWAKENING OF THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

Please, be so kind to listen to me; I am not going to speak long. Wise persons do not need long speeches, what they need is a short, but sensible and comprehensible talk. With all my compliments and respect to you I would like to speak to you concisely and clearly, the way I would speak to intelligent people.

Who do you think you're kidding Mr Geithner?

There’s a race going on right now. A "war" if you take the words of Brazil’s finance minister, Guido Mantega, to devalue currency. The reason is simple: by keeping your currency low against your competitor you will export more. Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, says his country is not involved in currency manipulation. On the other hand, the US accuses China of being a currency manipulator and has delayed publishing a report to this effect.

Workers Without Status in France

At the end of the afternoon of May 27, a mass demonstration marched into the Place de la Bastille in Paris. The march itself represented what can now be viewed as a low point in the national union mobilizations to challenge the proposed weakening of France's public pension regime and other reactionary responses of Nicholas Sarkozy's government to the world economic crisis. But despite the rain, despite the niggling worry that fatigue was overtaking the movement and apathy the French public, a group of marchers went to work making sure it was a day the French labour movement won't soon forget.