Aug 24, 2002

The earliest New York City photographers of note, from the 1880s to the 1920s, lugging their heavy tripods and glass-plate negatives from site to site, focused mainly on the awesome drama of the sheer size of the city – its skyscrapers, crowded streets and institutions.

Arístides Esteban Hernández Guerrero, known as Ares, is an internationally acclaimed cartoonist living in Havana. His drawings have won hundreds of awards in world cartooning and satire competitions.

NEW BERLIN, Wisc. – The struggle for social justice is generally no picnic. But an exception to that rule may be the community picnic at Lions Park, held last weekend by the Wisconsin chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which drew hundreds for a day of political action, sunshine and barbecue.

The Czech Republic and eastern Germany are digging out from the worst floods in a century but here in the U.S. just under half the lower 48 states are afflicted with the worst drought since the 1930s. Is this global warming with a vengeance, drowning one continent in a deluge and turning another into a dust bowl?

When President George W. Bush recently rejected a U.S. Senate financing bill to protect the rescuers and victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 disaster, he repeated a mistake made by previous Republican administrations. They showed their arrogant and crass class interests and the voters eventually tossed them out.

MILWAUKEE – A carnival atmosphere greeted George W. Bush as he arrived here for his third visit in several months. As Bush gave a perfunctory policy address at the University of Wisconsin, using the 37th anniversary of the Social Security Act as an occasion to criticize Democratic presidents’ anti-poverty measures, about 150 mostly labor and Democratic Party activists lampooned Bush and Wisconsin Governor Scott McCallum at a “circus,” complete with jugglers and clowns.

The fight is on in Connecticut to win pro-worker representation in Washington and Hartford in November. Delegates to last week’s Connecticut AFL-CIO Political Convention left fired up to mobilize their members for a massive voter turnout in this high-stakes election.

Protests erupted in response to the Aug. 14 Venezuelan Supreme Court decision to drop the case against the four military officers accused in the April coup.

HAVANA – My first trip to Cuba coincided with the 49th anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, July 26. The revolution ended with national liberation in 1959.

PRAGUE – The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (CPBM) called on the Czech government to call off the NATO summit due to be held in Prague in November and spend the $560 million on helping the victims of this week’s catastrophic floods. At the same time, the CPBM announced it was donating $30,000 to help flood victims and also opening a flood relief fund.