Dean Baker
Truthout, August 22, 2011

Mark WeisbrotThe Guardian Unlimited, August 22, 2011

CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot has filed his latest Guardian column from Port-au-Prince. It highlights ongoing forced evictions following a tense stand-off over the weekend between residents of Camp Barbancourt 17 and actor Danny Glover and other activists, on the one side, and the camp’s landlord, on the other.

Mark writes:

Port-au-Prince, Haiti --  At this sprawling IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp of battered tents and tarps here in the neighborhood of Barbancourt in Port-au-Prince, a confrontation was underway. A landlord who claimed ownership of the land on which some 75 families had been living since the earthquake was very angry. A crowd of hundreds had gathered and a man in his thirties said that the landlord had beaten him and destroyed his tent.

“These people have been here for 19 months and I want them out of here!” the landlord shouted.  He was yelling in English now because a group of activists had arrived, including the actor and human rights campaigner Danny Glover. They were defending the camp residents, but the landlord wasn’t having it.

Meanwhile a group of heavily armed troops from MINUSTAH – the UN military force that has occupied the country for the past seven years – arrived on the scene.  They were tense and sweating in the morning heat, and as the standoff continued and the crowd spilled into the street, another contingent of troops arrived, bringing the total to about fifteen.

Dean Baker
International Relations and Security Network, August 22, 2011

Unless European officials can find a viable solution soon, the continent's sovereign debt crisis threatens to derail the increasingly fragile world economic recovery. The conventional wisdom blames Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland — the poorer “periphe

Several new labor market research reports were released this week:

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Policy Basics: How Many Weeks of Unemployment Compensation Are Available?

Demos 

The Cost of Regulatory Delay
Ben Peck

Economic Policy Institute 

Deconstructing Crain and Crain: Estimated cost of OSHA regulations is way off base
Ross Eisenbrey, Isaac Shapiro