Posted By:  MarianD Posted On:  Oct 3, 2008	Understatement by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Reps
"... I don't think we've invested well... in the last few years..." - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (daughter of late mayor of Baltimore, Maryland; multimillionaire; Democratic congresswoman, 8th Congressional district, California - San Francisco) on the current state of U.S....... [view]

Posted By:  MarianD Posted On:  Sep 30, 2008	Coping with public fear: "Bailouts only add to sense of panic," O'Grady, The Independent (London)
We're reading Sean O'Grady's article in today's Independent: "... no amount of taxpayer money, no vote in Congress or the Commons and no speech by a president or prime minister can now fully restore the confidence that has been drained...... [view]

Posted By:  MarianD Posted On:  Sep 25, 2008	One reason I won't vote Democrat in 2008 (voting Green instead)
Politics may make "strange bedfellows," as the saying goes, but there have to be limits, and every now and then I reach one of mine. In this case, for me, it's around the 2008 U.S. presidential election. As Peter Finch's...... [view]

Posted By:  MarianD Posted On:  Sep 21, 2008	Global crisis: Congress was warned in 2000 of predatory loans
Thanks to my sister for sharing news of veteran U.S. legal aid attorney William Brennan and his testimony in Congress on 24 May 2000. So Congress had first-hand knowledge of what was going on from an attorney helping elderly, often...... [view]

Posted By:  MarianD Posted On:  Aug 7, 2008	August 7, 1998: Julian Bartley and many other lives
I will never forget that August 7, 1998 was a Friday. In Croatia I finished a report for work. My colleague-friend Melinda and I had taken a day of leave and arrived on Croatia's beautiful, rocky, pine-scented Dalmatian coast to...... [view]

Posted By:  MarianD Posted On:  Apr 24, 2008	Hastings holds State of Black Europe hearing in Congress
In London in September or October 2004 this writer spoke on the panel, "Alliances We Need to Fight Racism" at the 2004 European Social Forum. I participated as a member of the network Alliance of People of African Descent in...... [view]

Posted By:  MarianD Posted On:  Mar 21, 2008	March Madness? Bombing, from Belgrade to Baghdad
It's just days after the "Ides of March" - the date when the emperor Giulio Cesare was assassinated in Rome. In English we call him Julius Caesar. In English we also have a saying about March, that it "comes in...... [view]

Posted By:  MarianD Posted On:  Feb 23, 2008	Castro, Cuba, the Americas: next door, yet so far away
From Cuba this week, at age 81, Fidel Castro announced his retirement. As a child in the late 50s, early 60s, I remember the feeling if not every political detail, of the way Cuba's "surprise" revolution shifted forever the power...... [view]

Posted By:  MarianD Posted On:  Feb 25, 2008	Kosovo: Albanians, Serbs - And what about the Roma?
After five years living in the Balkans, and longer if I count Italy and France, there are a few things I know about Europe and Kosovo, and even more I remember about that area and the rest of former Yugoslavia....... [view]