"There was no plebiscite. No vote. Now we have these games being shoved down our throats." These are the shocked and stunned words of London organizer Katie Andrews, upon finding out that the Olympics will be marching into New Britannia.

Hiretsukan is a loud New York hardcore punk band whose lyrics on their latest, End States range from the deeply personal and emotional, sometimes surreally so, to highly charged political and historical matters. f you love blues, jazz, folk, or roots music in any combination and haven’t discovered Otis Taylor, you have missed out on an excellent body of work.

I didn't think too much of George Lakoff until I'd read enough of him myself.  I was scared off by his praise for Clinton's stealing right-wing language on welfare, and by his asking Howard Dean to write a forward to one of his books.

Seven hundred people braved rising flood waters in Lismore, southern NSW, to join more than 100,000 across the state. Although their city had been declared a disaster zone, people battled to several venues to hear about the campaign on a Sky Channel broadcast that linked 220 venues on Friday July 1.

To workers and union leaders, it is a familiar refrain. These days, the story goes, consumers demand low prices, meaning goods must be produced and sold cheaply — and retail wages must be kept as low as possible. Companies like Wal-Mart insist they’re feeling the squeeze and must pay workers poverty wages — even while netting $10.5 billion in annual profits and awarding millions to top executives

Arroyo's cheating in the May 2004 elections was exposed, with the public airing of wire-tapped recordings of over a dozen of Gloria Arroyo's election-period calls to Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC). In one of those recorded conversations (now widely known as the "Hello Garci" calls), Arroyo demanded, and was assured, a lead of over 1-million votes over her closest presidential rival.

African Heads of State and Governments are winding up Tuesday the 5th Ordinary African Union (AU) summit in Sirte, Libya, reaffirming their demand to have two permanent seats at the UN Security Council.

Recent Chinese attempts to buy American multinationals have been stirring up "nationalist" worries in the United States. Economist Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, has just published an article that was reproduced in the Brazilian newspaper "Folha de Sao Paulo" on June 28th, the title of which suggests that "the Chinese are more dangerous than the Japanese."

The bribes have been spent. The pimps paid off. The "escorts" shuttled home. Now it's sweat-time for local fat cats, anxiously tapping their uncalloused fingers, as they wait to see if "their" city will be chosen Wednesday as host for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The motley Montgomery Burns's of New York, Moscow, London, and Paris already have the champagne on ice, in expectation of feeding at the trough of Olympic slop.

Once again on the road early this month to attract popular support for his plan to privatize social security, President George W. Bush has proposed a model for pension reform based in part on the formula adopted in 1981 by the regime of Chilean military dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

Last week the United Auto Workers (UAW) union announced a major victory for Thomas Built Bus workers in High Point, North Carolina. The workers voted by a large majority of 58% to join the UAW in an election supervised by the National Labor relations Board (NLRB), the federal regulatory body that oversees union matters.

3000 delegates, including delegations from the SACP and COSATU, gathered together for the ANC’s second NGC between 29 June and 3 July 2005 in Tshwane. For the delegates, and indeed for the commentators in the public media, there was no doubt that this marked a very decisive moment in the ongoing South African transition.

On June 1, Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco agreed to a parliamentary inquiry into the funding of his 2002 presidential campaign, his travel records and his business contacts. Now the fourth president in a row to be implicated in a string of government corruption scandals, Pacheco hitherto has been a strong advocate for the official investigation of dishonest practices.

On 12 June Gordon Brown announced that he had persuaded the G8 leaders to cancel £32 billion of debt for twenty seven of the world’s poorest nations. BUT what does it say in the small print?

IT IS vital, in the run-up to the G8 summit, that anti-poverty campaigners are able to tread a path between wide-eyed idealism and abject cynicism.

The Communist Party of India expresses its serious concern and disapproves the new framework for the US-India Defense Relationship which was signed by our Defense minister in Washington yesterday.

Forty-five years have passed since the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty was revised. Pushing aside strong public opposition, the Kishi Cabinet and the Liberal Democratic Party in the House of Representatives on May 20, 1960 single-handedly approved the revision.

About 100 contract delivery drivers held a 10-hour strike yesterday, over unreasonable fining policies, poor payment and intense workload.

Here is another of our occasional book round ups consisting of short notices of works we have not been able to fully review. These are essentially meta-reviews (reviews of book reviews). If any of our readers are inspired to read one of these books and wish to write a full review, please contact pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.

Workers of a Taiwanese factory in central Vietnam during a strike in protest against alleged mistreatment, long hours, and low pay. Many factory workers in Vietnam still suffer from long hours, low pay and poor working conditions, but workers are realizing that going on strike may be their best recourse to get what they want – better rights.