Colombia: What did Interpol find in the laptops?
More on the Interpol report on the supposed finding of laptops belonging to bombed FARC rebels. ‘What’s really happening with this dodgy laptop story’, asks Pepe Escobar. Forrest Hylton says its part of the US’s propaganda war against Hugo Chavez.

Monthly Review -The World Food Crisis Sources and Solutions
This article argues that one factor pushing up food prices is the increasing cost of farmland, which is encouraging US equity firms to buy large amounts of farmland in North and South America. Offers some solutions and a quote from Hugo Chávez.

Boston Review — Kevin Mattson on Liberal Fascism

A review of a book about how fascism is totally a Left wing thing, calling it liberal fascism and that it has nothing to with right-wing ideology at all. Kevin Mattson tears this poppycock to shreds of course. But the question is, why bother?

Zichrot or “Remembering” - An Israeli organization remembering the Nakba
Zochrot works to make the history of the Nakba accessible to the Israeli public, to engage Jews and Palestinians in the recounting of a common history and to bring the Nakba into the Hebrew language in order to change political discourse in the region.

Barack Obama’s “Appalachian problem” | Salon
Sen. Clinton’s and her Appalachian supporters – those darned red-necked mountain people, or according to British historian Toynbee writing in 1947, "latter-day white barbarians of the Old World — Rifis, Albanians, Kurds, Pathans, and Hairy Ainus."

Ralph Nader: A Trip Inside Google
"When the internet began, some of us thought that it would make it easy and cheap for people to band together for lobbying as consumers. At last, the big banks and so forth would have organized countervailing consumer power. It has not happened."

The Free-Trade Paradox: Financial Page: The New Yorker
Free trade with poorer countries has a huge positive impact on the buying power of middle- and lower-income consumers—a much bigger impact than it does on the buying power of wealthier consumers.

Hillary Clinton and the Possessive Investment in Whiteness
Historical perspective on Clinton’s use of race in her final attempts to get at the nomination. She is articulating a long standing racial undertone since the time of the 15th amendment: you should always support a white woman before a black man.

Has Ireland’s Rising Tide Benefited Its Poor? « Consider the Evidence
Lane Kenworthy looks at poverty rates in Ireland, and leaving aside a relative poverty rate argues that in absolute terms the rising tide of the boom years does appear to have lifted most Irish boats.

Project Syndicate - The Elusive Legacy of 1968
“It was, undeniably, a political failure. But just as undeniable was the huge tremor that shook our antediluvian conceptions of society, morals, and the state.” Daniel Cohn-Bendit on the ‘elusive’ legacy of 1968.