Free Republic

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Maywa Montenegro de Wit joined the UC Santa Cruz faculty this past July, amidst the global coronavirus pandemic, and that experience has guided her work in some important new directions. Montenegro de Wit’s research focuses on the intersection of agroecology, food sovereignty, and biotechnology. But this past year, she undertook a new project to document the role of the food system in the pandemic and explore how lessons from the abolition movement could position agroecology to bring about transformative change.

Founder of today’s China killed 45 million of his own people (TibetanReview.net, Sep05, 2010) Recently declassified Chinese Communist Party archives show that the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao Tsetung's regime cased the greatest "man-made famine" the world has ever seen, reported the ANI news service Sep 3, citing a new publication from Hong Kong. Mao's Great Famine, by Frank Dikotter, Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, is reported to show that 45 million Chinese people were killed between 1958 and 1961. Chinese propaganda posters of the late 1950s show smiling young workers marching jubilantly towards unity under the...

"In America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations." — Barack Obama, Chicago Reader, Dec. 8, 1995 Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was not only the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate in 2007, according to the National Journal, but if he becomes the Democratic Party's nominee, he will probably be the most liberal politician to ever to get it. Obama’s past...

Italian investigators are focusing their attention on a shadowy group thought to be based in Bologna after a string of bomb attacks beginning in the Christmas period. A Red Brigades logo was found near a murder scene in 2002 They suspect that a number of letter bombs received by EU officials, including European Commission President Romano Prodi, are the work of Italian anarchists. An Italian-based group calling itself the Informal Anarchist Federation has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Investigators believe the group has fewer than 300 members in Italy. The previously unknown group shares the Italian initials - FAI -...

CAJAMAR, Brazil -- Elias Antonio dos Santos is 40 but looks 60. With only a fourth-grade education and a checkered employment record as a shoeshine boy, moving man and foundry laborer, he has scrambled all his life to keep a roof over his family's head. Like millions of poorly educated, impoverished Brazilians, dos Santos has always dreamed of a better life, a dream that invariably centers on owning a house and land. Now he's closer to his dream than ever before. An organizer for a Brazilian group called MST, the Portuguese acronym for "Landless Workers Movement," dos Santos joined about...