696

A biography for the dustbin

Trotsky
By Ian D. Thatcher
Routledge, 2003
240 pages

Unforgiving class logic of the labour market

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
By Barbara Ehrenreich
Granta Books, 2005
237 pages, $24.95 (pb)

Too much scorn buries the satire

American Hoax: Undercover in the USA (sort of)
By Charles Firth
Pan Macmillan, 2006
272 pages
$32.95 (pb)

John Pilger: Genocide in Gaza

A genocide is engulfing the people of Gaza while a silence engulfs its bystanders. “Some 1.4 million people, mostly children, are piled up in one of the most densely populated regions of the world, with no freedom of movement, no place to run and no space to hide”, wrote senior UN relief official Jan Egeland and Jan Eliasson, then Swedish foreign minister, in Le Figaro. They described people “living in a cage”, cut off by land, sea and air, with no reliable power and little water, and tortured by hunger and disease and incessant attacks by Israeli troops and planes.

Sri Lanka's war on Tamils escalates

Fifteen-thousand people fled from the town of Vaharai in eastern Sri Lanka following heavy shelling by the Sri Lankan army on January 18. According to the Tamilnet website, the shelling was intensified in the evening despite an urgent message sent to the International Committee of the Red Cross from Vaharai hospital authorities saying that the area around the hospital, where many displaced people had sought refuge, was under attack.